Gilded Cage: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 1) by Nicole Fox (best books for 20 year olds .txt) 📕

It’s started to grind on my soul.

What the fuck happened in the safehouse? I’d been talking to Cillian in the second bedroom when we’d heard a crash.

I’d bolted into the hallway to find her crouching there, pale and wide-eyed, with broken ceramic and glass scattered around her feet.

She’d looked at me as though she couldn’t recognize me and in the next second, she’d lost consciousness.

I was close enough to catch her before she hit the ground.

But since that moment, she hasn’t opened her eyes.

Cillian and I rushed her to a private facility that the Bratva uses when we want privacy and a medical staff that doesn’t ask the wrong kind of questions.

“Don Kovalyov?” Igor repeats.

“What?”

“Your uncle is on the phone for you.”

I don’t take my eyes off Esme. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”

Igor nods and backs out of the room just as two nurses walk in. I turn to the blonde one holding the clipboard.

“Well?” I ask.

She looks at me without giving anything away. “The doctor will be here in a moment to speak with you, sir.” She moves forward to check Esme’s IV.

She’s the only nurse who doesn’t seem completely intimidated by our presence here. An impressive feat, considering there’s an entire contingent of Bratva soldiers outside the facility, four armed guards stationed outside Esme’s private room, and two more in the room at all times.

I know my wife is strong. I’ve seen her fire. I’ve felt it.

But I can’t stop worrying until she opens her eyes and tells me she’s going to be all right.

That’s another wife you stand a chance of losing.

I push away the unwelcome thought, trying to get ahold of myself.

It’s not just Esme I need to worry about. I have an entire Bratva under my control, not to mention an unknown enemy out there, waiting to finish what the bastards started.

I can’t afford to remain stationary at her bedside.

And yet, this is the only place I want to be.

“Artem?”

I turn at the sound of Cillian’s voice.

“Yes?”

“Budimir has been trying to get a hold of you,” he tells me.

“Well, he can fucking wait,” I hiss.

Cillian walks to the opposite side of Esme’s bed so that I can’t avoid looking at him.

“She’s going to be okay, Artem.”

“We don’t know that.”

“She had a panic attack,” Cillian continues. “The attack on the funeral must have shaken her worse than we realized. She’s not used to this. Not the way we are.”

“But I should have realized.”

“You were dodging bullets and fending off enemies,” he reminds me. “How could you have?”

“I mean afterwards,” I explain. “When we were alone together.”

But that’s exactly what has me so fucking pissed off, not to mention confused.

Esme seemed fine when we’d gotten back to the safehouse. Fine enough, at least. She’d taken everything in stride.

She was fucking phenomenal through the whole damn thing, and afterwards, she’d been the one to initiate sex.

So what the fuck had gone so wrong between then and the moment I’d crashed into the room to find her staring at me, dazed and glassy-eyed, like I was some fucking freak?

“Artem, I know you’re worried about her,” Cillian says. “But we need to have a meeting. This situation needs to be dealt with.”

I nod. I know he’s right. He’s my best friend for a reason.

“Set it up,” I tell Cillian. “But first, I’ll speak with Esme’s doctor before I leave.”

I sense Cillian is about to say something else, but he stops himself at the last moment. A call comes in on his phone and he glances at it before looking up at me.

“Budimir again?” I guess.

“Yes.”

“He’s been trying to find leads on who launched the attack,” Cillian tells me.

I grunt. It strikes me that Budimir and I will be working together a lot more going forward. He has decades under his belt working alongside my father, and now he will serve me.

My whole life, I’ve never spent much time thinking about the pecking order. I always thought my stubborn father would outlive us all.

“I’ll call him soon,” I tell Cillian. “I want him to brief you, too.”

Cillian narrows his eyes at me.

“What?”

“I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?” I ask.

“Budimir is your second, Artem,” Cillian tells me. “I can’t be.”

“I’m the fucking don now—"

“And what? You think that makes you invincible? You think that means you can do anything you want?” Cillian hisses. “You are one man, Artem, and there will be those that are loyal to you. But there will be as many, if not more, who are loyal to your uncle. Alienating Budimir by putting me above him will not ingratiate you to the men who have sworn fealty to him. It’s a bad idea.”

Cillian’s right about everything, but I still feel a twist of anger when I think about the fucking politics of being don.

I’ll have to exercise qualities that I’m not even sure I possess. Diplomacy was never one of my strengths.

“Budimir is an old man now,” I point out.

“Exactly, which means he has decades on you,” Cillian retorts. “Decades building contacts and strengthening alliances. You need your uncle and he’s been working for you this entire time. Don’t insult him by turning to me before you turn to him.”

I nod, unable to deny the wisdom of his words.

“In any case, the Bratva will never accept an Irish outcast into the fray.”

I frown. “They’ve done that for years,” I point out.

“Sure, when I was merely your well-meaning sidekick,” Cillian says, with his trademark smile, though his eyes are sad. “They’re going to be less accepting if I’m advising the Bratva in a leadership position.”

“Fine,” I growl. “I see your point.”

“Happy to be your voice of reason.”

“And as always, the pain in my ass, too.”

Cillian chuckles and glances at Esme with a sigh.

“She really will be all right, Artem,” he tells me.

I badly need to hear that, but I still have trouble believing. The way she looked at me in that safehouse hallway still haunts me.

“I’ll