Page 27

ARSENI

Detectives didn’t find anything on the cameras :(

P eering down at my phone, I sigh at the news from Hudson but am not surprised. Her stalker had been watching her long enough to know about the cameras the same way I did. And just like me, he came through a window.

Probably. A worse scenario is that the detective on the case is the stalker. Margot said he was high up, but how high exactly?

This would be so much easier if she just gave me his name.

Did you look yourself?

Something bangs in the conference room I’m standing by, drawing my eyes. The lieutenants are meeting with the Pakhan, so virtually every important person in the Bratva is in that room. Notice I’m waiting outside.

No… You said just to give the info to the detectives?

I go to reply, but bronze skin wrapped up in a yellow flowing package turns a corner down this hall. Lucia jerks to a stop when she sees me, big brown eyes going wide. I hope it’s from fear.

Going back to my phone, I stab out a text while she wanders this way.

The stalker is one of yours. Someone high up maybe, but young. Need you to look for someone who moved up the ranks quickly.

“They invite Luka to these things now, huh? He must be so important,” I drone to Lucia, lowering my phone to meet her glare.

“He is. And you are not. So what the hell are you doing here?”

Wow, that’s rude.

“Aww you learned how to curse.” I smile and raise my shoulders like I think she’s adorable. She isn’t. At all.

Her arms cross over her chest as her face pinches with a pissed off expression that makes her look like a shrew. I can just picture her stomping around her house, throwing out demands, her husband’s balls held tightly in her fist.

“Luka walked into an especially large doorknob,” she says with a snarky tone like she wants me to explain myself. As if I owe her anything.

“Hm.”

“Two of his ribs are broken.”

“Okay.”

This only pisses her off more. Her eyebrows nearly kiss. But she doesn’t say anything right away. She just stands there glaring at me like I couldn’t kill her if I wanted to.

“You don’t even care…” She shakes her head, her lip curled. “He could kick your ass, just so you know.”

“Oh, I know.” I nod, though I doubt it’s true. In a fair fight, sure. I like to play dirty. “But you can’t.”

Her glare falls as her arms loosen. Her composure is only gone for a few moments, but in that time we both remember how we met. It makes me grin and her grimace.

Luka wanted to kill her. It was me who thought she could be of better use.

I should’ve listened to him.

“Why did you even come to our wedding?” she asks, trying to regain her composure. Her discomfort shows in the way she shifts her weight, her jaw flexing. It’s pathetic that she even tries to look brave.

“ Because , Lucia… I needed to see the look on your face when you saw me again.”

Her lips part, and her hand flies toward my face, but I see it coming a mile away. I grip her wrist, holding it tightly when she tries to jerk away and savor the panic in her eyes.

It’s not because I’m a sadist. I like to have fun, but I just really, really hate this woman.

When the door to the conference room opens, I let her go. She stumbles backward and gingerly grabs her wrist like I hurt her, but I bet she just hates the feel of my hand on her. So do I.

I ignore Luka when he strides out, and for once, he does the same. He gives me a passing glance before taking his wife’s hand and leading her away. I wonder if she’ll tell him about our conversation. If she does, he really will kick my ass.

Nikita is one of the last to leave, only Vitaly—who does not give me a passing glance—behind him. It’s petty, but I get the urge to flip him off as he walks away.

I look down at my last message from Hudson before putting my phone away.

I’m on it.

“Did you have a nice chat with the Columbian girl?” Nikita asks. Lucia is from Mexico, but I doubt he cares. There’s humor in his tone that makes me think the meeting went well. Which, for everyone else, means it went poorly.

“Something about Luka falling down a flight of stairs. He broke a couple ribs. What a shame.”

Nikita snickers as we walk. I’m surprised he’s even speaking to me. He brought me here just to humiliate me, knowing I’d be denied entrance. He didn’t even hide his smirk when the guard stopped me at the door, which we both knew would happen.

Little punishments. Nikita loves to dole them out.

“It’s bullshit that they let her hang around like this. The leadership is soft.”

“Sensitive ears, Arseni,” he chides. He, better than anyone, knows where the cameras are around here. He had them installed.

I don’t know why it matters if someone picks up on me talking shit, though. They know exactly what we think of them.

Nikita doesn’t speak again until we’re in the car and I’m pulling away.

“I think it’s sweet that they let the Columbian follow her husband around like a puppy,” he says, picking up where we left off. “It’s Mila’s presence that annoys me.”

“Right.” I tip my head. I don’t want to talk about Mila. I don’t give a fuck about Mila. but still, I add just to appease him, “Generations can go by without women being allowed into the business, but Vitaly has to be different. There’s no respect for tradition.”

“I don’t care about that.” Nikita waves it away like he’s batting at an imaginary fly. “I’m not a misogynist , Arseni.”

I turn to look at him, my forehead wrinkling as I search for signs of sarcasm. But no, he’s dead serious.

“Every decision made is filtered through Mila. She’s the Pakhan’s wife, it’s only natural but when they agree, everyone is forced to believe it’s because Vitaly is a pussy.

When they disagree, everyone is forced to listen to it.

Wives should not be allowed in meetings.

” He lays his head back against his seat like he’s exasperated.

Though, he’s obviously achieved whatever he set out to today. His talkative mood is a dead giveaway.

I think back to last night, to the promise I made. I’ve been contemplating how to handle this, my mind spinning all night. I’m not quite ready, but I can’t see there being a better opportunity to bring it up.

“A lot of the lieutenants are married,” I comment. He doesn’t respond because … why would he?

“Wasn’t Maksim’s wife a whore at one point?”

His lifted hand is his only response, and even then, it seems as if it means, “ who cares ?”.

“Why did you let that happen?” I ask, shifting to sit straighter. My hands on the steering wheel begin to slip. “I mean, you were Pakhan. You had to allow her freedom, right? He couldn’t just marry her without your consent.”

“I’m a roman-tic,” he says, bored. Crazy part is, I actually believe him.

“Must run in the family,” I say, just to steer his attention where I want him. His narrowed eyes find me as his head rolls. “I mean, Lucia was a witness to a crime, and Vitaly still let her live.”

“Luka is his brother-in-law.”

“Huh,” I say like I’m considering that. Like it matters at all. “So you don’t think he would let others make the same choice?”

“No. Vitaly is as by the book as it gets.”

I nod, my stomach turning, but when I look over at Nikita, he’s staring like he knows exactly what’s in my head.

“Of course…” I resist the urge to wipe my palms on my pants. “Vitaly doesn’t know everything. Who knows what people have gotten away with since he became Pakhan.”

“Too much, I’m sure,” Nikita agrees, his voice smooth. He’s enjoying this. “It was much more difficult to get things past me… Still is.”

This seems pointed.

I take a turn before shifting in my seat. “That must be why you excel at having secrets.”

“Do I?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah… Think of all the shit you’ve had me do that Vitaly knows nothing about.”

“Ah, so we have secrets.”

We .

As if anyone would ever dub me a mastermind. Anything I’ve done, I’ve done for Nikita. The Bratva knows that. It still won’t keep them from stringing me up by my toes, but no one will be disillusioned.

“Many…”

“What are you getting at, son?”

I shrug and open my mouth, but I don’t have any new words to say. I could run him around in a circle for the next twenty minutes, but every second that tics by is a second that my heart races too fast.

He knows what I want. At some point, he’ll get annoyed by me beating around it.

“If I hid a secret from the Bratva… Would you keep it?” I ask.

“A secret like … letting the whore go?”

I don’t say anything. Instead, I pull into a gas station and put the SUV in park.

My eyes stare out the windshield at a mother and son passing by. It’s a second before I find the courage to speak.

“She would never go to the police… I swear on my life.”

When he doesn’t answer, I turn toward him. He studies me with no sign of what he’s thinking.

“How can you swear on your life when you know I can’t kill you?”

I run my finger over the grooves of the steering wheel. “You could tell the rest of the Bratva. They’d do it for you.”

“Ah, and what would you do with our secrets then ?”

“Nothing.”

“ Nothing ?” His brows raise. He thinks I’m lying. I don’t know if I am or not.

I nod, my throat feeling unusually thick. “They’d die with me… But it’s a moot point. She’d never go to the police.”

“Because…?”

I open my mouth, searching for the reason. He seems to find it before I do.

“Because she loves you?”

My eyes constricting, I look away. “No… But she cares for me.”

“Do you love her?”

“No,” I say automatically. I sound too certain, too quick, too nervous. It makes us both think I’m not certain at all. “I care for her too...”

“I see…”

I clear my throat and peer at the radio, the title of a song we aren’t listening to moving across the screen. “I need you to do this for me, Nikita.” My voice is low. It almost sounds desperate. “You do this, and I’m yours. All my loyalty belongs to you.”

“I thought it already did.”

I nod vigorously. “ It does … It does. But you’re always talking about how important trust is. This solidifies it. We’ll both have secrets the other must keep, and we’ll go to our graves with them.”

“Hmmm.” He faces forward and takes a deep breath as he seems to consider it. Twenty seconds turns to thirty and maybe more. But finally, he gives a curt nod.

“Okay, Arseni. Set her free.”

What ?

My mouth doesn’t open. Relief doesn’t unwind my chest.

This feels too easy.

“As long as you can assure me she won’t go to the police, I don’t see what the problem is.”

What the problem is?

She could tell a friend. She could hold onto this for years before coming out with her story. If he lets her go, it’ll be him letting a witness go. The Bratva will kill him as easily as they’ll kill me.

And Luka has seen her… What happens if they run into each other? What happens if any person at last night’s party sees her, and they decide to talk?

This is too problematic for him to say yes right away.

“She won’t.”

“Good.” He lounges back in the seat, resting his arm on the door. He gestures toward the road. “Should we get on with it? I’m sure Margot is anxious to get home.”

Home. Now.

I tighten both hands around the steering wheel and pretend that didn’t just make my heart race. That the idea of her leaving brings me just as much remorse as it does relief.

I’m not ready for her to go.

“Tomorrow,” I say, putting the car in reverse. “You and I have other things to do today.”

He chuckles like he knows. After a sigh, he clicks the overhead bin for his sunglasses. “That’s what I figured… Tonight, I’m having dinner with Sophie. I’ll stay over so you can have the house to yourselves.”

He slides the glasses onto his face, a satisfied smile lingering.

It occurs to me that maybe he wants this as much as I do.

Maybe he wants to have something to hold over me.

He probably thinks all he’d have to do was threaten Margot’s life to get me to fall back in line.

I’d never be able to walk away from him, truly this time, and maybe that’s exactly what he wants.

But maybe not.

“Why?” I can’t help but ask.

He looks toward me with a smile that shows sharp canines. “I already told you… I’m a romantic.”