Gilded Cage: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 1) Nicole Fox (people reading books TXT) 📖

depths of Antarctica in the blink of an eye.

As numbness slips into my bones, I dress in a daze and walk downstairs to find Artem on the phone.

He’s talking in low, guttural Russian that has my hair standing on end.

Bratva business—it has to be.

I stand rooted in place and watch him for a moment. He hasn’t seen me yet.

But I see him.

I see the man he thinks he wants to be.

The man he thinks he has to be.

This is the Artem who stormed the Moreno compound, killed my father, and abducted me.

The gentle man who held me through my night terrors, who made love to me on the beach this very morning…?

That man is gone.

It’s the loneliest feeling in the world.

I choke back a sob, but Artem hears it anyway. He mutters something quickly in Russian before hanging up and turning to me.

“Come on,” he orders. “We don’t have time to waste.”

He doesn’t wait to make sure I’m following him. He charges ahead, leaving me to trail along in his wake.

We get into the waiting car and drive to the ferry. From there, we head to the airport, where the Bratva’s private jet is waiting. Men stand outside the plane in black suits like funeral ushers.

It feels like I’m being pulled back into the same sunken nightmare world I just left.

The men stand a little straighter when they see Artem coming.

“Don Kovalyov,” one says to him with a bow as Artem passes by.

Don?!

I suck in my breath as I begin to piece together what’s happened.

Something has happened to his father.

And now Artem has inherited the Bratva throne.

I stare at my husband’s back as he climbs the steps to the jet, but my legs feel cemented to the ground.

“Ma’am?” says one of the men. I don’t even know which one is talking to me. “You have to board.”

My stomach sinks. We had been doing so well. Finding common ground, rediscovering a connection that had sparked the first time we’d met in The Siren months ago.

I’m carrying his child, but I hadn’t realized until just now how much I had been banking on our temporary truce turning into something more permanent.

It’s like my heart is breaking all over again. It freezes me in place.

Suddenly, I feel a shadow fall over me.

I look up. Artem is standing in front of me, glaring down at me with impatience.

“What is wrong with you? We don’t have time for this.”

I stare at his face, trying to find any trace of familiarity in his features, but he looks so different.

And then I realize why: he’s wearing a mask, too.

The cold, hard mask of a Bratva don.

The same one that Cesar had tried wearing every so often.

But it had been different with Cesar. His mask hadn’t fit quite so well. His mask was chipped at the edges, riddled with fissures of doubt and uncertainty.

Artem’s mask is so perfect that I can’t see past it.

“I want to go back to the beach,” I whisper in a voice so low that the wind carries my words away.

“What?” Artem barks.

I flinch at the harshness of his voice. “Never mind,” I mumble. “Nothing.”

He wraps his hand around my arm in a vise grip and tugs me up the steps of the plane himself.

I go silently, suddenly so tired that I’m actually glad for the support.

The moment we’re on the plane, he drops my hand. The doors close behind us.

Artem walks to the furthest end of the plane, leaving me to find a seat at the front. I sit and close my eyes, trying to picture the ocean, trying to imagine the feel of the sand beneath my feet again.

But I can’t.

The images from this morning feel like a daydream. A childish one at that.

At some point, we take off. And at some point, I fall asleep, though I don’t really know how. Maybe my brain and body are just so tired from everything that’s happened. From my life being upended again and again and again. Like all systems are shutting down to protect me.

But even sleep can’t keep me safe.

My dreams are plagued with images from my past.

I see my father.

I see my brother.

I see my unborn child.

I see all the people I’ve lost, staring back at me through the walls of a new gilded cage.

Just like always, I’m the one trapped on the inside.

36

Esme

I wake up when we touch down, but before I can get my bearings, I’m ushered off the plane and pushed towards a black sedan by more faceless men in suits.

I turn, expecting Artem to follow behind me. He doesn’t even look up before stepping into a second black sedan parked behind the first.

Someone shuts my door. Moments later, we pull away from the plane and cruise onto the streets of Los Angeles.

I recognize the building we pull up in front of. It’s Artem’s apartment.

I recognize the two men waiting on the sidewalk, too.

If they recognize me, they don’t show it. Crew Cut and Blue Eyes say nothing as the driver opens my door and helps me out.

They still don’t say anything as I approach. They just turn and lead me inside—one in front, one behind, as always.

We take the private elevator up to the penthouse. It’s so eerily silent that I want to scream, to shout, to fight. I want somebody to say something to make it all make sense.

But it’s just quiet.

So fucking quiet.

The moment the elevator doors open, I rush through the foyer and head straight for my room.

Slamming the door behind me, I throw myself down on the bed and cry for the lost hope that I allowed to blossom the last few days.

I was a fool for thinking that this relationship—if you could even call it that—could be salvaged.

That it was anything other than a beautiful lie.

Half an hour later, I hear a knock on the door. I sit up, my eyes puffy and swollen from all the crying.

I don’t particularly care about my appearance as I walk to the