Brutal Bratva's Hostage Bride

Chapter One

Valentina

I never felt like I belonged in the poker lounge, no matter how many nights I spent there.

It was nestled two floors beneath one of the Golovin casinos, tucked behind a door that most tourists would never notice.

There was no neon, no signage, nothing that screamed ‘look at me’ like the casino did.

The people who came down here didn't need to be lured in with flashing lights.

They already knew exactly what they wanted, and where to find it.

They paid a great deal of money to make sure the rest of the world never found it.

I'd worked there long enough to know how the place operated.

My life depended on it after all. I knew which of the regulars turned ugly when they lost, changing in a way that made the room feel smaller and the air harder to pull into my lungs.

I also knew which ones let their eyes linger too long on the hostesses and the ones who barely registered us as human at all.

Even after years of glitter and excess, I still felt like an impostor in my uniform.

The dress was black and fitted, cut just low enough to remind everyone what I was there for, and it wasn’t the cards.

I was a reminder that privilege belonged to men with lots of money if not necessarily sense.

I tugged at my hem out of habit as I crossed the floor with a tray of drinks, weaving between suits that cost more than my rent and watches that cost more than my whole education.

Before my shift, in the cramped little staff room behind the coat check, I'd caught my reflection in the mirror above the lockers and barely recognized the woman looking back. I’d only seen lined eyes, a glossed mouth, and dark hair pinned into the sleek twist Varley insisted on for anyone working the floor.

I'd stood there reminding myself, like I did most nights, that the woman in the mirror was a costume.

Underneath the black dress and the careful makeup was still Valentina Cruz.

I had a simple hack. Polite. Efficient. Invisible. The three things that kept a woman safe in a room full of men who measured their own worth in chips and blood money. Three things I'd learned to wear as armor the same way I wore the dress.

But invisible didn't last long once Dmitri Golovin walked in.

Before I’d even registered his presence, I’d felt the way the air in the room seemed to tighten at the edges, the way the dealer at table three straightened his spine without appearing to move at all, the way two of the cocktail waitresses near the bar exchanged a look that was half excitement and half warning.

Dmitri didn't enter a room so much as arrive in it, like the space had been waiting all evening for him to fill it.

He came through the private entrance already tugging his collar loose, jacket slung over one shoulder, a grin on his face like he'd walked in on a joke only he was in on, and might, if you asked nicely, let you in on it too.

Unlike his brothers—the men of whom I'd only ever heard secondhand stories of in the hushed, half-admiring, half-terrified way the staff talked about the Golovin men—Dmitri looked like he'd come here to be entertained.

Like the whole lounge, the money changing hands, the danger humming beneath every table, was a party someone had thrown just for him, and he intended to enjoy every second of it before the sun came up.

Security nodded him through without a word, without so much as a pat-down, which told people everything they needed to know about where he sat in the family's hierarchy.

Guests who recognized him drifted closer, the way moths drifted toward a flame that hadn't burned them yet, hoping for a little of his attention, a little of the reckless charm that made him the most talked-about Golovin brother on the floor even though he wasn't, by anyone's account, the most powerful.

I kept my tray steady and my eyes on my work, hoping, as I did every single time, that tonight might finally be the night he walked past without noticing me.

It never was.

“Valentina,” he said, drawing the syllables out slowly as he fell into step beside me, close enough that I caught the low, expensive scent of his cologne. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been working," I said, not looking at him, keeping my pace even. "There's a difference."

"Is there?" He reached past me, not quite touching me, and plucked a glass of champagne off my tray. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks a lot like avoidance."

"From where you're standing, I imagine everything looks like it's about you."

He released a low, delighted laugh like I'd said something clever instead of something true and slightly disdainful. He walked beside me as I moved toward the next table, totally unbothered by the sharpness in my tone.

"You wound me," he said, pressing a hand briefly to his chest while the playful smirk remained on his face. "Here I am, making an effort, and you won't even give me the satisfaction of admitting you missed me."

"I didn't miss you. I noticed you weren't here for a while, which is a different thing entirely."

"Semantics."

"Boundaries," I corrected, and finally turned to look at him, because if I didn't hold his gaze, he'd think he'd won something. Hell, he’d even boast about it to me. "I've told you before, Dmitri. I'm not interested. I'm not going to become interested no matter how many times you do this."

Something flickered behind his eyes. Not hurt, though. I didn't think Dmitri was a man who let himself feel hurt where anyone could see it, least of all a hostess he pursued casually. It looked more like I'd shifted the terms of a game he'd thought he knew the rules to.

Then, unexpectedly, he stepped back. He held both hands up, palms out, with his easy grin sliding back into place like it had never slipped.

"Alright," he said. "Noted."

He didn't argue or corner me against the bar the way some of the other men who worked this floor might have. He gave me one last look, long enough that it settled somewhere under my skin, and then turned and let the crowd swallow him whole, already laughing at something one of the pit bosses said.

I didn't breathe again until he'd disappeared toward the private tables.

I found Camila in the service corridor behind the bar, garnishing a row of martinis with the precision that comes from years of doing the same thing, night after night, in heels that should have been outlawed. She took one look at my face and grinned before I could say a single word.

"He got to you again."

"He did not get to me."

"Val." She set down her paring knife and folded her arms, the knowing look on her face making me prepare to be teased already. "Your face is flushed, baby.”

"That's just what irritation looks like."

"Mm-hm." Camila had a way of looking at me like she could see straight through whatever I was trying to sell her.

We'd worked t together long enough that she knew most of my tells better than I did.

"I'm just saying. A man that gorgeous chasing you around the casino for months, and you're telling me there's nothing there at all. "

"There's nothing there because there can't be anything there. Camila, look at where we work."

"I'm well aware of where we work, hon. I clock in the same as you."

"Then you know what it means." I lowered my voice.

"It's not just the name on the building.

It's blood money, all of it. The casino, the lounge, this whole beautiful building we stand in every night.

Isla married into that family. I love her, but I also know exactly what she married into, and I'm not looking to repeat it. "

Camila's expression softened, the teasing edge fading into something gentler. "I know that. I'm not saying marry the man. I'm just saying… it's allowed to be fun, being looked at like that. Just a little. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"It's not fun. It's terrifying."

"Terrifying and fun aren't mutually exclusive, in my experience.

" She picked her knife back up and twirled a twist of lemon peel without even glancing down at her hands.

"You know he only wants you because you keep saying no.

A man like that's probably never heard the word no in his entire life, not from anyone who mattered. "

"Which is exactly why I'm going to keep saying it, as many times as it takes."

"Sure you are." She didn't believe me. Worse, I wasn't entirely sure I believed myself.

There was something about the way Dmitri made danger seem like it might actually be fun that unsettled me far more than any of the quiet, calculating men who usually walked through that door.

I knew how to read a violent man when he wore a serious face, when he sat heavy and silent at a card table and counted his chips without smiling.

Dmitri wore his like a punchline, and I didn't know what to do with a threat that smiled like it was flirting.

Those men I understood; Dmitri I did not.

"I don't want him," I said again.

Camila slid a tray of martinis toward me without looking up, already reaching for the next round of glasses. "Keep telling yourself that, hon. See how far it gets you by Christmas."

I didn't get the chance to argue further, because that was when Varley, our senior operations manager, appeared in the corridor. Every ounce of teasing air seemed to go out of the room all at once, like someone had cracked a window in the dead of winter.