Page 51 of Sexting My Bratva Boss

He’s glaring down at me. Angry.

I know why; I’m acting crazy. Irrational. Pushing him away when I practically begged him to come last night, figuratively and literally…

“We need to talk,” he growls.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Too bad.” He jerks me closer. I let out a pained sound, but it doesn’t hurt; not physically, at least. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to get to know him better, or let him in.

I don’t want to get attached and then leave… just like I requested.

A one-way ticket to the west coast.

A child left behind.

Is it freedom if all I ever think about is this place is him, and our potential child?

“I wanted to give you time to calm down,” Konstantin says. “You were scared. When they came after you. But I need answers, Audrey. I need to know who Sal Imperi is to you, and why you were working with him.”

“I wasn’t working with him?—”

It’s not a lie, not exactly.

Konstantin doesn’t like my tone. He calmly puts a hand on my throat, his thumb in the dip between my clavicles. It grounds me, but it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t like to be held like this, steadied, made to obey.

“I wasn’t working with him,” I grind out, teeth clenched. My eyes search his; I know he isn’t letting me walk away from this conversation.

He gave me this job, and he can take it away. Doesn’t matter if I’ll be late. He can just fire me all over again.

Make me disappear, if he wanted to.

Could he do that? To someone he’s been buried inside? Someone he’s commanded to come, over and over?

“I… I borrowed money,” I whisper, watching his walls crack just a little. “I borrowed money from Sal. I had to. I met him while my grandmother was sick, and he took advantage…”

His eyes light with anger and I hurry on, wanting to take the focus away in case he does something stupid, like go after Sal to finish him off this time. “When I started seeing him and he offered the money for her hospice care, I thought he was being nice. Caring. I didn’t realize it was the mob’s money, and I wasn’t thinking, I couldn’t let my Nana go into an institution. She wanted to stay home.”

I trail off, the memories flooding in. I’ve worked so hard to keep them away for the past year, but now I feel it all over again: the grief of mourning someone before they’re gone. Nana had always been so strong, opinionated; she would have hated Sal if she’d been in her right mind. But back then, when she looked at me, she lookedthroughme. The pain took her away before she ever really passed.

“A few months after her funeral, Sal made it clear that I had to pay back the money. With interest.”

When I don’t say any more, afraid of what other secrets I might spill, Konstantin says: “So you started working for me.”

“Yes.”

I don’t say that it was Sal’s idea, that he got me the job at the construction site.

I don’t say that he’s the one who casually suggested I could skim money, little by little. That a man like Konstantin Martynov wouldn’t miss a couple grand.

I don’t say that the interest caught up quickly, and “little by little” wasn’t enough.

“You didn’t finish paying the debt,” he says rather than asks.

I nod.

“Is that why he keeps coming for you?”

,I nod again, pursing my lips tight to keep the other half of the truth in, that for some reason, Sal wants Konstantin. It’s clear now that getting to Konstantin has always been his goal.