Page 12 of The Russian's Kidnapped Bride

The reminder makes my heart beat irregularly with fear. “Whatever I saw, it wasn’t clear. It was dark down there. I don’t even know what was happening.”

Mikhail narrows his eyes and leans his forearms on his thighs, studying me closely for any crack in my bluff. “But you did see something.”

I swallow hard and try not to give away just how much I saw. “I saw shadows and shapes, but nothing definite. I wouldn’t be able to describe anything even if I wanted to.”

“But you could try, and that’s the problem,” he murmurs, still studying me.

“I was right behind you…you saw more than enough,” the other man says, not letting my attempt to cover up the truth slide.

I don’t let myself look over at him despite how badly I want to sneer at him for even saying it. Instead, I focus on Mikhail, who lets vague irritation move through his features.

“You watched a man die tonight. Don’t try and erase the facts,” he mumbles, unwavering. “That is why you’re here.”

I stare at him a moment longer, but my gaze is less assessing and more stunned. My heart aches from how fast it beats.

“You say that like you’re dangerous.”

He doesn’t flinch. “Because I am.”

A harsh, cold silence lingers between us, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.

I don’t want to believe the man I kissed at the bar and hooked up with could be so different in reality. How, for a few hours, he didn’t feel like a stranger to me.

But the man in front of me…he isn’t that guy.

He’s sharp and almost frigid, yet he’s so deathly calm about it all. His words leave him like my life is hanging in the balance, and he couldn’t possibly be more nonchalant about it.

After a tense moment, I let go of a breath. “Now what?”

“I told him I’d handle it—make sure you’re not a risk.”

“You told who?” I ask, knowing there are far too many missing pieces in this equation.

“My older brother,” he says simply. “He’s in charge of this operation.”

My blood turns cold. “In charge of what, Mikhail?”

He pauses again, as if mulling over just how much he can say. Then he sighs and sits back in his chair.

“Business that isn’t entirely above the board,” he answers, looking vaguely annoyed to be answering my questions. Then he gestures to the man behind him. “The club we met at…my family owns it. We own a lot of businesses on the Vegas Strip. Some are less clean than others.”

My stomach drops, and the implication weighs heavily on me, and I glance between the two of them.

That must be one of his brothers, then.

“You mean…you’re involved in organized crime?”

He nods.

Everything in me freezes at once, and I have the urge to be sick. “You’re lying.”

“I wish I were.”

Looking at him, I can feel the full weight of what I’ve done and how little I truly understood. How I hooked up with a man connected to the very thing I despised.

He isn’t just a man with a dark side. He’s embedded in the city’s criminal underbelly, and I somehow found myself wrapped up in it all.

He’s like someone from a movie I’d rather not be part of.