His Captive Bride (BRATVA’S Arranged Brides #4)

Anya

I press my back against the wall outside Diomid's office and hold my breath.

The voices carry through the heavy oak door, my brother's low, measured tone and the tinny speaker of his phone on the desk. He always puts it on speaker when he's pacing. He always paces when he's losing.

"The Baron is not a flexible man," the voice on the other end says.

I don't recognize it, one of Diomid's contacts in Europe, maybe.

Someone who knows the territory. Someone who's supposed to be helping.

"He has made his terms clear. Access through his corridor comes at a price, and that price is your sister. "

"My sister is not currency." Diomid's voice is tight. Controlled. But I know my brother. That control is a wire pulled taut and one wrong word from snapping. "There are other arrangements we can make. Money. Product. Territory on our end. There are plenty of lucrative options."

"The options are irrelevant. He doesn’t want them. He wants Anya."

The silence that follows is the loudest thing I've ever heard.

I close my eyes. My palms are flat against the wall, the wood paneling is cool under my fingers, grounding me while the rest of the world tilts sideways.

This isn't new information. I've known for weeks that the Baron, Grigori Kuznetsov, seventy-three years old, three dead wives, an empire built on blood and old money, has taken an interest in me.

Diomid told me himself, sat me down and said, I will handle this.

He told me to stay in the house. To trust him.

And I do trust him. My brother would cut off his own hand before he let someone hurt me.

But trust and results are not the same thing, and right now, standing outside this door, I'm hearing my brother run out of cards to play.

How long am I going to be held captive in my own home just to be given to a man like the Baron, where my fate would be worse than imprisonment.

"Give me more time," Diomid says.

"You've had time. The Baron expects an answer by the end of the week."

End of the week. Four days. Four days until I become the fourth wife of a man old enough to be my grandfather, a man whose previous wives had a habit of falling down stairs and walking into doors and overdosing on medications they didn't take.

I push off the wall.

My hands are shaking but my legs are steady, and that's what matters right now. That my legs work, that the front door is thirty steps away and no one is watching it because Diomid didn't post guards. He didn't think he needed to. I'm his little sister, and I've always done as I'm told.

Not today.

I take the stairs quickly and quietly, my socked feet silent on the hardwood. My shoes are by the front door, a practical pair ankle boots, the ones I can drive in. My coat is on the hook. My keys are in the left pocket, right where I dropped them three days ago when Diomid told me to stay put.

Three days of pacing my bedroom. Three days of pretending to read, pretending to eat, pretending I'm not quietly losing my mind while my brother tries to outmaneuver a man who has been outmaneuvering people since before either of us were born.

I shove my feet into my boots, grab my coat, and open the front door.

The cold hits me like a slap. Late afternoon, gray sky, the kind of damp chill that crawls under your clothes and settles in your bones.

I don't care. I pull my coat on as I walk, fishing the keys out and clicking the fob.

My car, a white Audi that Diomid bought me for my twenty-first birthday, chirps from the driveway.

I'm behind the wheel and pulling out before I let myself think about what I'm doing.

Because if I think about it, I'll stop. I'll turn around.

I'll go back inside and sit on my bed and wait for Diomid to come upstairs with that look on his face, the one that says I'm sorry, Anya, I tried, and I will become the fourth Mrs. Kuznetsova, and maybe I'll last longer than the others, or maybe I won't.

The Orlov estate is forty minutes from ours.

I know the route because my mother used to drive it.

Every other Sunday, rain or shine, Marina Agapova would load me into the car and take me to visit Saoirse Orlova, and the two of them would drink tea in the conservatory while I played in the garden with Iris.

I was eight when my mother was diagnosed. Ten when she died. The visits stopped, and Diomid, fifteen and suddenly the man of the house, with our father already three years in the ground, didn't have time for social calls. The connection between the Agapovs and the Orlovs thinned to a thread.

But it didn't break.

Saoirse sent flowers when Momma died. She sent a card every year on the anniversary. When I turned eighteen, a gift arrived. A sapphire bracelet with a note that said, Your mother would be so proud of the woman you've become. My door is always open. — Saoirse.

I'm banking everything on that door still being open.

The estate appears through the trees like it always did, stone and ivy and old money, the kind of house that looks like it grew out of the ground rather than being built on it.

The gates are open, which is either luck or a sign that security is lighter than I expected.

I pull up the long drive and park near the front steps, and for a moment I just sit there with the engine running and my hands on the wheel.

This is insane.

I am about to walk into the home of one of the most powerful Bratva families in the world and ask the matriarch if I can marry one of her sons.

I don't even know which ones are available.

I don't even know if the rumor is true. Diomid mentioned it weeks ago, offhand, almost amused.

The Council's put the screws to the Orlovs.

All the unmarried men have to take wives or the family loses its seat.

He'd said it like it was gossip. Like it had nothing to do with us.

But for some reason, it stuck in my mind. And now, sitting in this driveway with four days between me and a monster, it's the only card I have left to play.

I kill the engine and get out of the car.

The front door opens before I reach it, and Saoirse Orlova is standing there like she's been expecting me.

She's smaller than I remember, or maybe I'm taller, but her eyes are exactly the same. Sharp and warm at the same time, the way my mother always described her. Saoirse sees everything, darling. Everything. She can know the worst parts of a person’s life and love them anyway.

"Anya." She says my name like a confirmation, not a question. "You look so much like Marina." She pulls me into her arms and holds me so tight that tears squeeze into my eyes and I have to blink them away quickly.

And just like that, the composure I've been white-knuckling since the hallway cracks down the middle.

"I need help," I say. My voice doesn't break, but it's close. "I need help, and I didn't know where else to go."

Saoirse pulls back without a word and holds the door open.

She takes me to the conservatory. The same room, the same view of the garden, even some of the same furniture. She presses a cup of tea into my hands and sits across from me and waits. She doesn't push or fill the silence. She just waits until I'm ready.

"The Baron Kuznetsov wants to marry me," I say, and I realize I’m shaking now.

Like all the adrenaline that has kept me upright for the last few days is evaporating to nothing.

"He's made it a condition of a business deal with Diomid.

Access through his European territory in exchange for me.

" I wrap both hands around the cup. "Diomid is trying to negotiate, but it's not working. I have four days."

Saoirse's expression doesn't change, but something behind her eyes goes very still. "Grigori Kuznetsov."

"Three dead wives.” It comes out as a whisper. The horror of it taking grip of my throat. "I'd rather not be the fourth."

"No," Saoirse says quietly.

I set the cup down because my hands the shaking is getting worse and I don't want to spill tea on her furniture. "I heard the Orlov men have been ordered to marry. By the Council." I meet her eyes. "Am I too late?"

Saoirse studies me for a long moment. I can see her doing the math, not just the logistics, but the politics, the implications, the weight of what I'm asking. She knew my mother. She watched me grow up, at least for the first ten years. But this isn't a social call, and we both know it.

"Anya —"

"If I marry an Orlov, the Baron can't touch me.

No one can. It solves their problem and it solves mine.

" I hear myself talking faster, pitching harder, and I force myself to slow down.

"I'm not asking for love. I'm asking for safety.

And I know that whoever your sons are, whatever they've become, you raised them.

And that means more to me than any arrangement Diomid could make. "

Saoirse opens her mouth to respond, but the door to the conservatory swings open and Liam Orlov walks in.

I've never met Liam, but I know him on sight, late-thirties, broad, with the kind of quiet authority that fills a room.

"Ma," Liam says, his gaze sliding from Saoirse to me and back. "What's going on?"

"Liam," Saoirse says calmly. "You remember Anya Agapova, Marina's daughter."

Liam's expression shifts to recognition, then calculation. He looks at me properly, and I can see him noticing every detail of me. The coat I didn't hang up. The shaking hands. The fact that I'm here without an escort, without a phone call, without an invitation.

"I heard what she's asking," he says. Not unkind, but not warm either.

"And I understand why. But this can't happen in a vacuum.

If we take Diomid's sister without his knowledge, without his agreement, we're starting something we don't need.

The Council is already breathing down our necks, that's why we're in this mess in the first place. "

"I know," I say.

"I'll have to contact your brother." Liam pulls out his phone. "If this is going to work, it has to be done properly. Diomid has to be part of the conversation, or it will blow up in everyone's face."

I nod. I expected this. I didn't expect it to feel like such a relief, someone else picking up the weight, even just a corner of it.

"Liam's right," Saoirse says gently. "But you're not leaving this house, Anya. Not tonight."

Liam steps into the hall to make the call, and I'm about to let out the breath I've been holding for forty minutes when a voice comes from the doorway.

Low. Rough. Almost amused, but not quite.

"If you're that desperate, you'd marry me."

I look up.

He's leaning against the doorframe, tall, broad-chested, dark hair. One eye is a sharp, stunning green, the kind of green that doesn't look real. The other is milky white, clouded and still, bisected by a scar that runs from his brow through the ruined eye and down his cheekbone.

He's watching me with the good eye.

I don't hesitate.

"Yes."

Surprise flickers across his face, and is buried fast. He wasn't expecting me to agree. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the way his shoulders shift like he's bracing for a hit that didn't come.

I briefly wonder why, but the relief that this is now a tangible option pushes all my questions away.

He is not the Baron. He is Saoirse's son, and Saoirse raised good men under all the Bratva layers, and right now, that is worth more to me than anything.

He steps into the room, walks right up to where I’m sitting on the edge of Saoirse’s sofa, and bends down so his face is only inches from mine. I meet his eyes. One vibrant and alive, the other lifeless and milk white.

"Then I suppose we have a deal," he says.