Page 51 of Beautiful Secrets

“So how does it work? These arranged marriages?”

“Why do you care?” she shoots back. When she looks up at me, her eyes are blazing.

“Curious.”

She snorts, looks away, wraps her fingers around her cup. “It is only paperwork. But some turn into true marriages.” She shrugs. “My two older sisters were both given away. Tonya say she is in love—but I think is all about money. She married a very rich man.”

“And Aleksandr? Is he rich?”

Another snort, this one far more bemused than the first. “Aleksandr Barisova is a sniveling, cowardly excuse of a man.”

I chuckle, and she turns wide eyes to me as if she’s only just heard what she said. “I mean—”

“Oh, I know what you mean, trust me.”

She frowns. “Does that ever happen here?”

It feels like such a loaded question. Is she talking about arranged marriages, or men pawning off women left, right, and center like fucking cattle in the days of yore?

Exactly like I’m planning on doing tomorrow. Giving Dimitri back his daughter for a cool five mill, leaving him to hand her off to whatever guy he wants.

Tit for tat.

Guess I couldn’t have expected coming out of this not smelling like shit. There’s a reason crimes are against the law—most of them violate basic human rights. By kidnapping Mika, I’m no better than her father. I can’t even see how she did anything wrong—if anything, her sister should have been the one punished—but as soon as I send her back, I have no doubt Dimitri will be packing her off to life imprisonment with a guy she obviously loathes.

“Nah,” I tell her, grinning. “We’re a civilized bunch.”

Mika blinks, and then her expression hardens. “Oh,” she says, and so imperiously it makes my jaw bunch. “I see.”

She looks away, pushes her half-finished coffee aside. “So you are happy with only kidnapping and rape.”

When I growl, she stiffens and red spots appear on her cheeks. But she doesn’t look at me. Not until I reach over and take her coffee cup.

“Are you done?”

I’m not sure if I’m talking about the coffee or her accusations, but either way, she gives me a curt nod. I snatch the cup off the countertop and go to put it in the sink, my head swimming.

Rape? Is she fucking kidding me?

My chest starts closing up. I ignore her thrust out chin and pursed lips as I head back past her again. My phone and smokes are on the coffee table—I grab them as I pass and head onto the balcony to light one up. My phone vibrates in my hand, and I give the lock screen a disinterested glance as I suck in a lungful of warm smoke.

Kill.

Is it done?

Slowly, I turn around and lean my hip against the railing. Mika is facing me, but as soon as we lock eyes through the glass separating inside from out, she hurriedly straightens in her seat.

How the fuck am I supposed to last twenty-four hours with this girl and her vicious little mouth? One minute she’s hot, the next she’s a fucking ice-queen?

I stroke my jaw. Why the fuck haven’t I shaved? Oh yeah—too busy thinking about Mika.

That’s gotta stop.

Why haven’t I tied her up and left her in the closet? Easiest way to get through the day.

I scan the inside of the suite until my eyes land on the shopping bags I abandoned near the bedroom door yesterday.

I smile.