There was no denying it now, no more pushing those thoughts aside. The deal was only a bonus; I was the thing hewanted all along. He’d planned it all out so neatly, trapping me into a relationship I had no hope of getting out of. Men like him always got what they wanted, no matter what. And they did what was necessary to keep what they considered theirs.
Oh my God, not Rurik.
Yes, Rurik.
I was on my way home to a man who made my psycho ex look like a choir boy.
Chapter 32 - Rurik
The takeout delivery arrived long before Clem did, but a glance at the traffic report showed me she was probably stuck in traffic. I set the table, going outside to pick some of the blooms she liked and putting them in a vase. Fast food Chinese wasn’t the height of romance, but the flowers might make her smile.
That was all I wanted. And for it to last. I had resolved not to tell her about what I had really been up to that day, or the nights before we left for Tokyo, or what I was doing with Konstantin. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she could handle it. More than I knew she’d hate it.
Not just the fact I was Bratva, but the lies I’d been telling and the secrets I’d been keeping. It had been a mistake not to lay everything out the moment those marriage papers came through, but for the first time in my life, I feared something.
After countless fights, having guns aimed at me, hell, guns shot at me, death threats, and dealing with my family constantly being in danger, I finally felt real fear. Of losing Clem. From the moment I saw her, I had become obsessed. She was already mine from that first day, no matter how long I held back and fought what was meant to be.
And she felt it too. There was no faking what we had. The only way to be able to tell her the true depths of my feelings, which had nothing to do with any business deal, was to get it all out. Following her, keeping her safe, making her mine. And my damn Bratva ties.
Would I give them up if that’s what she demanded? It wasn’t like quitting an ordinary job.
Could I give up my family?
My phone rang, jolting me out of my thoughts, and I set down the vase of Clem’s flowers in the middle of the table, ready to ask her how much longer she thought she’d be stuck on the road.
It wasn’t Clem, but the discreet guard I had assigned to watch over her whenever she was out of the office without me. After Clem kept spotting my guys, this time I had a woman keeping an eye on her. She might have looked like a middle-aged housewife, but she was a highly trained fighter and was always packing heat. She wouldn’t hesitate if someone threatened my wife.
So why did she sound so nervous when I answered her call?
“The weird guy who kept popping up in her vicinity finally made contact,” she said.
So my guard wasn’t just being paranoid. This was why I paid her so much; she saw things others might not. “What the hell?” I asked. “Made contact, how? Does he still have his hands?”
She didn’t laugh because it wasn’t a joke. “It was a very brief conversation. Your wife acted like she knew him.” A second later, a couple of images came through, and I put her on speakerphone while I looked them over.
Clem’s back was mostly to the camera, standing next to a man around her age, tall and gangly, with a dark hoodie pulled up to only reveal a gaunt profile and some stringy hair hanging across his furrowed brow. He was standing much too close to her, but she wasn’t recoiling. Instead, she leaned over his phone, interested in whatever he showed her.
The next image had her looking up at him questioningly, looking both upset and angry, and my hands clenched, wishingI could serve him some of the same dish I had to dole out to the gang members earlier that day.
The third and final picture showed Clem shoving past him, head down as she hurried away. Good girl. Let me handle that scum. In this shot, I got a clear view of his face, mouth open, like he was calling to her.
“The entire interaction was less than three minutes,” my guard said. “I almost intervened, but then it looked to me like she knew him. I didn’t want to blow my cover.”
“You did well to get these pictures,” I said. She assured me Clem had gotten into her car, and she also sent me pictures of the license plate as the driver pulled away, the young man nowhere in sight. “Are you following her now?”
A brief pause. She cleared her throat. “I’m working on it.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Did she have Clem in her sights or not?
“I thought I should keep an eye on the man. He left the store shortly after Clem and took off on foot. I followed him a short distance but lost him when he ran across a street and nearly got himself killed to give me the slip. Sorry, Boss, I don’t know how he spotted me.”
I didn’t know, either. Not someone with her level of expertise. “You did all you could. Now what about Clem?”
“I think I can catch up with her. The direction she went is gridlocked. I’ll let you know as soon as I have eyes on her.”
I sent the pictures to Mat’s wife, CJ. She was the daughter of a tech billionaire and a genius in her own right, and my brother was lucky she deigned to be with him. We were all lucky she decided to stick with our family, because between her and her business partner, Anatoli, who had somehow found the codeto my cousin Masha’s heart, they had created the most amazing tracking software currently known to mankind.
I asked her if she could find out anything and everything about this guy who was bothering Clem, and within ten minutes, CJ sent me her findings.