Accidentally Impregnated By the Bratva (Zolotov Bratva #16)

Chapter 1 - Anja

I shove the key into the lock so hard the metal seems to bite my fingers. The door to Fadir’s apartment swings open with a soft whoosh of cold air, and I’m already screaming before my boots hit the marble floor.

“You absolute bastard! I saw the messages, Fadir. Don’t you dare lie to me this time!”

The words rip out of me raw, echoing off the high ceilings, and I can feel my anger rising. His place always feels too big for one person with its two stories of glass and steel perched on the twenty-eighth floor, with the city lights glittering like spilled diamonds through the wall of windows.

Black leather couches curve around a glass coffee table that probably cost more than my first car. A half-empty bottle of Macallan sits beside two crystal tumblers, one with a faint lipstick print on the rim. Even from this distance, I know it’s not my shade.

The air smells like his cologne, a mix of sandalwood and something sharper, like the unsettled air after a storm, and underneath it, the faint metallic tang that’s always clung to him. The one I used to tell myself is just from the gym and his workout.

But now I know different.

He’s standing in the open concept kitchen, shirtsleeves rolled up, and his dark hair still perfect even at nine at night. Fadir Klem looks every inch the successful businessman I thought he was, and how lucky I am to have gotten involved with him six months ago. His sharp jaw, always clean-shaven.

My eyes are drawn to his expensive watch glinting under the pendant lights, then to his easy smile that used to make my knees weak.

Now? Now it just makes my stomach twist.

“Anja,” he says, voice smooth as the whiskey he’s pouring. “Baby, slow down. You’re spiraling again.”

“Spiraling?” I laugh, but my voice cracks midway through the word..

I slam the door behind me hard enough that the abstract painting on the wall rattles.

“I saw the texts from ‘Elena.’ The hotel receipt in your jacket pocket. The one from last Thursday when you said you had a late supplier meeting. Is she the supplier, Fadir? Or just another pretty distraction while I am busy losing everything?”

I'm fuming, and begin pacing between the leather sectional and the window overlooking the city. My mind is spinning, and I will not fall for his lies anymore. I can't allow myself to do that.

Fadir sets the bottle down with a soft clink. Slowly, he crosses the room, like I’m a startled horse he doesn’t want to spook. His hand reaches for my arm, and I jerk back so fast my heel catches on the edge of the ridiculous white shag rug.

“You’re seeing ghosts,” he murmurs, using his condescending tone when he thinks I’m being dramatic. “Elena’s a client. You know how these deals work. Late nights, schmoozing. You’re exhausted from the job hunt. Come here.”

“Don’t touch me. I’m not your damn puppet anymore.” I slap his hand away.

“Nothing you can say will make me believe you!”

His eyes narrow, just a fraction. The smile stays, but it doesn’t reach them anymore. The smirk on his lips now causes me to shiver. Something evil is within him, and I'm about to live through its wrath.

“Anja. You’re overreacting. Again...” he takes a step closer to me. “Remember last month? You thought I was hiding money because of that bank alert. Turned out to be the car payment I made for you. I’m the one who’s been here. Who took you in when your landlord changed the locks.”

The words land like a slap I didn’t see coming.

Not just because he’s right about that, but because I know without him, I'm alone. The memory slams into me so hard I have to grip the back of the couch to stay upright. I am still Anja Kuzmin, bright-eyed marketing assistant at a boutique agency downtown. I’d clawed my way out from having nothing back home except a beat-up, decade-old Honda Civic and a marketing degree I paid for with two jobs and sheer spite.

Then the layoffs hit. “Restructuring,” they called it. Translation... the boss’s nephew needed my desk. One pink slip, two weeks’ severance, and suddenly the eviction notice is taped to my door like a scarlet letter. I slept on a friend’s couch for four nights before the guilt ate me alive.

Fadir showed up with takeout and that smile, offering the spare key to his place. “Just until you’re back on your feet, baby. No pressure,” he said.

I should’ve seen the trap then. The way he paid my phone bill without asking. The way my clothes migrated from his guest room to his closet. The way he started answering my texts before I could even read them.

But I am drowning, and he is the only hand reaching out. Now that hand feels like a cuff.

“I’m not going back home,” I whisper, voice cracking despite myself. The words taste like ash. I can already picture it. The dusty main street, the same old gossip at the diner, whispering about Viktor Kuzmin’s latest screw-up.

How my father gambled away the rent money, how men dressed in expensive suits came at three a.m. and smashed the living-room table while I hid in the closet at fifteen. How my mom left when I was nine, with nothing but a note that said I can’t do this anymore.

Everyone back home knows I ran at eighteen rather than let Dad marry me off to some creep to settle his debts. They will see me crawling back, tail between my legs, with proof that the big-city dreams are just another Kuzmin failure.

Fadir steps closer. His cologne wraps around me like smoke.

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he growls. “This is your home now. Your things stay. You stay. I’m not letting you throw us away over some paranoid fantasy.”

The threat is quiet, and it sinks its claws into my ribs.

Never leaving.

The apartment suddenly feels smaller, the glass walls closing in. I can smell the leather and his whiskey alongside the faint trace of another woman’s perfume still clinging to his shirt collar. My chest tightens until breathing hurts.

“I hate you!” I choke out.

He sighs like I’m a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, then pulls me against his chest anyway. His arms are strong, familiar, and for one nauseating second, I let myself sag there because my legs won’t hold me.

“Shh. You’re just scared. We’ll figure it out. I love you, Anja. You know that.”

I want to shove him off. I want to scream until the windows crack. Instead, I stand there shaking while he strokes my hair like I’m something fragile and broken he gets to keep. An object he broke, but now intends on fixing. Repairing to perfection.

Once again, I fall for his trap. I allow myself to be taken down by him, and I hate myself for it.

He calms me down eventually, the way he always does, with soft words, a glass of water, and endless promises whispered against my temple. By the time I crawl into the guest bed, as I refuse the master suite tonight, my throat is raw, and my eyes burn.

I tell myself tomorrow I’ll leave. Tomorrow I’ll pack my duffel and figure out a plan that doesn’t end with me going back home, and begging for shifts at the truck-stop diner while everyone stares.

But tomorrow comes and goes.

Three days blur into a haze of pretending everything’s normal. I smile when he kisses my forehead before he leaves for “meetings.” I make coffee in his stupid Italian espresso machine and scroll job listings on my phone like a good little kept woman.

But deep down, my rage simmers under my skin, low and constant, until it finally boils over into something sharper. My suspicion returns, and I know I have to act on it. I need to let my fury guide me. Only then can I leave Fadir.

He’s hiding more than Elena. I feel it in the way he locks his study door now. The way his phone lights up at 2 a.m. with numbers instead of names. The way he’s started watching me like he’s measuring how much I know.

So on the fourth night, when he kisses me goodnight and says he’ll be back late, I wait exactly twenty minutes after his taillights disappear down the ramp of the underground parking facility. Then I slip out the service entrance. My heart is hammering so loud I’m sure anyone nearby would hear it.

My old Civic is parked three blocks away in a pay lot. Fadir doesn’t like it in the building’s garage. He says it looks cheap.

Tonight I’m grateful for his demand, as I tail his black Mercedes at a careful distance with my headlights off once we hit the industrial stretch near the river. The moon gives me enough make weaver my way through the shipping containers and parking areas.

The city fades away, and warehouses and chain-link fences take over. I kill the engine behind a stack of empty pallets two blocks from the address his GPS pinged on the tracker I slipped into his glove box last week.

My hands are ice-cold as I quietly open my car door and creep forward on foot. My sneakers silent on the asphalt.

The warehouse squats low and ugly, with corrugated metal sides streaked with rust. A single loading door is cracked open, spilling yellow light onto the cracked concrete. Voices drift out to me, and I detect Fadir’s smooth baritone and two others, rougher and heavily accented.

I press myself to the cold metal wall beside the door, breath shallow. Out of nowhere, rain drips down the back of my neck. I'm so focused on getting to Fadir's secret meeting that I pay no attention to when it begins raining.

“…Sokolov territory is locked down tighter than a nun’s habit,” one of the men says. “You push there, you’re asking for a war.”

“War’s already coming. Katya’s just the opening move. Once I’ve got the girl locked down, the Sokolovs bleed slowly. Publicly. I want them watching while everything they built turns to ash,” Fadir laughs, low and ugly.

My stomach drops.

The girl.

He’s talking about someone else the same way he talked about me when he first offered me that spare key. Like I'm a piece of property.

My rage begins rumbling inside.

“And the shipments? The new supplier wants cash up front. No more credit after that last fuck-up with the feds sniffing around,” the second man grunts

“Tell him to relax,” Fadir snaps. “I’ve got leverage now. Anja’s got no one. No job, no apartment, no way back to that shithole town she came from. She thinks I’m her savior. By the time she figures out what I really mean, she’ll be too deep to run.”

I gasp. The sound is small, but in the quiet between their words, it might as well be a gunshot.

Footsteps crunch gravel. A hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream, yanking me backward so hard my feet leave the ground. I thrash, my elbow connecting with something solid, but the man is built like a brick wall. He hauls me inside the warehouse like I weigh nothing.

All I can think is oh, fuck. Now what am I going to do? Fadir has me. I've been caught.

Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Crates stamped with Cyrillic letters are stacked in rows. Fadir stands in the middle of it all, face going from surprise to fury in the space of a heartbeat.

“Anja?” His voice is soft, but dangerous. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The man holding me has a thick neck and knuckles scarred, probably from being one of Fadir's enforcers. When he shoves me forward, I stumble, barely catching myself. I hold my chin up even though my legs are jelly.

“Letting you gaslight me is one thing,” I spit. “But this? You’re not a businessman. You’re a goddamn monster!”

“You were told to stay put. Spying now? With that sharp tongue of yours? You’re going to regret ever sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, sweetheart.” Fadir’s jaw tightens. He steps close enough that I can see the vein throbbing at his temple.

He raises his hand, and I wince, knowing what is coming. The slap is already connecting with my cheek when the warehouse door explodes open with a metallic bang.

A man fills the doorway.

He’s tall with broad shoulders under a black coat that looks expensive enough to pay my old rent for a year. Dark brown hair, slightly damp from the rain, falling just long enough to brush his forehead.

His chocolate brown eyes lock on mine for a split second, and he appears calm, almost bored, like he’s done this a hundred times. A gun rests loose in his right hand, not pointed at anyone, just visible. The threat doesn’t need aiming.

“Building’s wired,” he says, voice low and even, like he’s discussing the weather. “Explosives set. On my command, they detonate... in ninety seconds unless I walk out of here with the girl.”

“Sokolov…” Fadir’s face drains of color.

The man… Alexey, I learned later, doesn’t wait. He crosses the concrete in three strides, wraps one large hand around my upper arm, and pulls me toward the door. His grip is firm, but not bruising. Steady. Like he’s done this before, too.

I should be scared of being whisked away. But I'm actually full of thankfulness knowing Fadir won't be able to touch me again tonight. My hand instinctively goes to my cheek where his hand struck me.

Fadir’s men reach for weapons, but their boss’s voice cracks out, panicked. “Stand down! Everybody stand down, you duraks!”

I’m half-dragged, half-stumbling out into the rain. My heart is a jackhammer in my throat. Behind us, Fadir’s shouting something about consequences, but the words blur under the rush of blood in my ears and the steady rhythm of the stranger’s boots on wet pavement.

He doesn’t speak until we reach a sleek black SUV parked at the curb. He opens the passenger door, guides me inside with that same calm pressure, then he circles the front of the vehicle and slides behind the wheel.

“Who the hell are you?” I’m shaking so hard my teeth click.

He starts the engine. The headlights cut through the downpour, washing the warehouse in cold white.

“Alexey Sokolov,” he says, pulling away from the curb smooth as silk. “And you’re safe now.”

Safe.

The word feels like a lie and a lifeline at the same time. I clutch the seatbelt like it’s the only real thing left while staring at the city lights streaking past, as the man who just wired a building with explosives drives me into the night.

It’s all surreal.

Behind us, Fadir’s world is already starting to burn. I just don’t know yet that mine is about to burn with it.