Page 10 of The Bratva’s Innocent Sold Bride (Fokin Bratva #9)

Seeing Gordon Taurus brought so low was satisfying, but not nearly as gratifying as making CJ mine. Everyone we knew and cared about watched us join as man and wife, and while I never supposed it would be under those odd circumstances, I was thrilled it was official.

My brothers were right to be shocked that I had married an American, let alone gotten married at all.

I just didn’t have time for more than dalliances, and even though I was pushing forty, I still felt like I had time if I ever wanted to settle down.

I never did, until I laid eyes on CJ. She would have said she was my complete opposite, but I suspected differently.

I didn’t think it would take much convincing for her to see that we were more alike than she’d ever admit.

Until she began trembling with fear once we got in our getaway limo.

Someone, probably Mila or Rurik, had tied cans to the back end, and they clanked noisily until I ordered the driver to pull over and tear them off.

Then, as we got on our way, I meant to make a joke about it to CJ, but she practically recoiled from me like I was a venomous snake.

It annoyed me when she said she hated me, because the way she melted into my kisses told me otherwise.

Her terror pissed me off. For one, it wasn’t like her.

For another, it made me question if I’d already been too harsh on her when I first thought I was being lenient.

As enamored as I was by her, in the beginning, I wasn’t sure if she was culpable in her father’s criminal activities.

She was his sole heir after all, and I’d learned she recently got a job at the company. A job she still wanted to keep.

However, it didn’t take much digging to find out she was completely innocent, and her shock at finding out about her father wasn’t feigned.

I was going to shower her with gifts tonight and tell her she no longer had to do any chores around the house.

My staff would be returning, and she would be treated like a princess.

And she was cowering from me, as if I… had taken her as payment and forced her to marry me. The sudden thought almost made me laugh. I’d have to move slowly.

Once we arrived at home, I swept her into my arms as she struggled to get out of the car in her voluminous dress. There had been some arguments about her changing into another dress for the reception, because Mila said this was stylish, but CJ put her foot down, tired of fittings and fuss.

“Now I suppose you’re wishing you had on a different dress,” I said, carrying her up the steps to the front door.

She was stiff in my arms, only holding onto my shoulders so she wouldn’t tumble backwards. “This dress might be as ridiculous as that ten-foot-tall cake, but I can still walk in it.”

“You’re very capable,” I said. “And no nonsense.” I admired both qualities about her, but she thought I was being sarcastic and scowled at me.

“So put me down.” She kicked her feet, sending one of her satin heels flying.

“May as well kick the other one off,” I said.

Through the door, I slid her body down mine until her feet hit the floor. She stood slightly lopsided, her brief bout of anger at being carried over the threshold doused again by that fear I despised seeing on her pretty face.

“I-I…” she stuttered until I slid my hand into her hair and kissed her.

“Welcome home, Mrs. Fokin.”

She pushed against my chest, then pulled me closer. What was it this time? Five seconds with my mouth on hers? She wasn’t fearing me now. As her fingers trailed against my neck, she began to soften in my arms. I wanted her with a fire I had never felt before. Not for any woman, or any acquisition.

And I wanted her to want me even more.

Gently extricating myself from her grasp, I nodded toward the stairs, wanting to curse when I saw the flash of fear return to her eyes. “Go to your room and get some sleep. You’ve worked hard the last couple of weeks and must be exhausted.”

“Did you say my room? The guest room? Not your room?”

Even her hopeful confusion was charming. She had me tied in knots. And at the same time, I wanted to lift her up, carry her to my bed, and make her see who she belonged to.

“Would you rather go to my room?” I growled, reaching for her again.

She was gone in a flash of white, almost tripping in her haste.

I swore under my breath and headed to my office.

Since I had just bought the house, it wasn’t completely furnished.

Mila had offered to hook me up with one of her designer friends to put it together for me, and I might have jumped at that before CJ, just to get it done.

But I thought CJ might have ideas of her own.

If she wanted to choose every item herself or hire the designer, I’d leave it up to her since she was now in charge of our home.

Because of that, my office was spare, but it had everything I needed to keep tabs on everything going on in Moscow as well as my new operations here.

I hadn’t checked in since the day before, since my brothers and cousins insisted on a final celebration that involved drinking until three in the morning.

“This isn’t what I should be doing on my wedding night,” I grumbled, sitting down to bring up all the messages from my various teams.

Everything was quiet, which made me wonder if Anatoli Ovinko was monitoring me the same way I was trying to keep tabs on him.

If he were, this would have been the perfect night to try something.

Either he knew I would have accounted for that, or he knew more than I suspected and thought the relationship between CJ and me was only a business transaction.

That was ridiculous, because no one in my family knew anything about it.

CJ had done a great job at playing the loving fiancée, so much so that I began to believe her myself.

The only other person who knew this wedding took place because of a debt was Gordon, and there was no way he was stupid enough to talk about it to anyone.

It only made him look worse than he was, if that was possible, and it was pure insanity to risk fucking with me more.

I dismissed the thought that Gordon was talking to Anatoli, or that he even knew who he was.

How could he, when I didn’t?

At the reception, Lev had wanted to catch up quickly, but I had no new information to share.

He hadn’t been hit yet, so it was as I suspected.

Because I was the new Fokin in town, Anatoli considered me the weak link.

I’d prove him wrong and, without involving my more established cousins, if I could help it.

After I took an ice-cold shower to keep myself from going crazy remembering the soft sighs CJ made when I nudged her mouth open with my tongue, I got a call from Lev.

It was close to two in the morning, and if he wasn’t asleep by now, he should have been out partying with his brothers before they returned to LA.

“There’s something going down at my warehouses,” he said as soon as I answered.

“I’m on my way,” I told him, heading for my closet instead of my bed.

“Absolutely not. Enjoy your wedding night. I only thought you should know, so you could get extra security at your places. We’ve got this.”

“It’s no problem,” I said. “Really.”

“If you show up, the rest of the guys will laugh at you for the rest of your days. Just keep your ass covered.” He snickered like a twelve-year-old. “Or not.”

I ended the call and paced. There was no wedding night, no beautiful bride enticing me back to bed. As soon as I started to call my second in command, Garik was already calling me.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, but I heard a gunshot in the background. “We’ve got it covered. But I just thought you should know someone’s trying to break into the storage facility.”

This was the place where we stored the weapons from Russia and other items we weren’t eager to report to customs before selling them.

It was a huge space, rapidly filling with contraband, all of it valuable, none of it anything I wanted to fall into the hands of my enemies. I swore viciously, pacing faster.

“You think it’s Anatoli?” I asked.

There was a grunt and another shot, but this time farther away, then a moment of silence as I waited, wondering if I should head over there.

The bastard had attacked on my wedding night after all, just waited until he thought I’d be passed out drunk and sated.

I was neither, just furious. Garik returned to the line.

“We’re about to find out if it was Anatoli,” he said, sounding triumphant. “We’ve got a prisoner.”

After a little arguing and insisting that he could take care of things, at least until morning, I hung up. If there was the worst wedding night ever in recorded history, I wondered if this would top it.

I got into bed alone, but thinking of ways to wring answers out of the hostage Garik caught didn’t invite sleep. Thoughts of CJ only made it worse, and I was in no mood for another cold shower.

How could I make my little bride smile? Her request to take that job at her father’s—no, my company—was ridiculous.

It would be far too dangerous right now to even consider it, and putting CJ in harm’s way was out of the question.

I was as certain of that as I was of the fact that my feisty wife wouldn’t let the subject drop.

The first rays of dawn arrived, and I was nowhere near sleep.

The men would expect me to be exhausted anyway, so I headed out to get some long-awaited answers.

I almost felt sorry for Anatoli’s possible underlying.

It was only partly his fault that I was in such a bad mood, but he was going to get one hundred percent of the brunt of it when I started swinging.