Page 40 of Forbidden Boss

“I’m not hungry,” I try to argue, although my stomach chooses that exact moment to growl. I realize that it’s already dinnertime and lunch was a long time ago. Still, I hate when he’s right, and he seems to always be right.

“I’m trying to remember what pregnant women can’t eat,” he says, tapping his chin in intense thought. “No cold cuts, right? And no fish.”

“My two favorite food groups,” I joke.

“Nice try,” he says sternly. “I can have the cook make you some soup, or . . .”

“I’m really craving tamales,” I tell him, my mouth suddenly watering. “My grandma used to make a big batch and then freeze them. Any time I was sick, she would heat a couple up and serve them with pozole.”

“I literally don’t know what either of those things are,” he says, looking completely out of his depth and desperate.

I’ve never seen him like this, and I’m enjoying it.

“She also used to rub my back and sing a Spanish lullaby,” I say, making myself look extra pathetic. “It’s so easy, it goes like this.”

I sing the very complicated lullaby to him, with words I know he would never be able to pronounce without a tutor. The helpless look on his face is just too good to pass up.

“She also used to lather me in vapor rub and have a priest come bless me,” I tell him with sad eyes.

The penny finally drops and his helpless expression turns cold. His eyes narrow and he frowns.

“The priest was a degree too far,” he says. “You almost had me. But I will have the cook make… what was it again?”

“Tamales and pozole,” I say pathetically, not ready to completely give up the act. “But seriously, Lev, they both take hours to make. You’d do better just to order them in.”

“Fine.” He shrugs, handing me his phone. “Order whatever you want and I’ll bring it to you.”

I stare at his phone like it’s a gold bar. This is unfettered access to his world, his lifeline, the keys to his entire empire. If I were cruel, I could really screw with him right now. But when I meet his eyes, I don’t miss the warning. It’s like he’s saying, “I trust you, but don’t push it.”

So, I don’t. I quickly order food from a local Mexican restaurant and hand his phone back to him without so much as snooping through his photos. Not that he strikes me as someone who takes a lot of photos.

He tells me to rest while we wait for the food, and I realize that I actually am exhausted. He leaves for a few minutes, and the next thing I know, he’s shaking me gently awake, two huge bags of food on the nightstand next to him.

“I think you bought enough tamales to feed my entire workforce,” he jokes.

I smirk and sit up carefully. He pulls out a tray for me and hands me the bags. I neatly arrange as many plates as will fit and watchsmugly as his eyes go wide again. It is a lot of food. I grab two forks out of one of the bags and hand him one, encouraging him to dig in too. He does without argument.

We eat together in companionable silence until we’re both stuffed. I don’t even feel insecure eating so much in front of him. I’m growing a baby inside me, after all. When we’re done, he clears away the tray and slides into the bed next to me, holding me until I fall asleep.

18

LEV

Ileave Mari at the penthouse with orders to work from there. This morning, she doesn’t even put up a fight. Either our feast from last night is catching up with her or the morning sickness is. Either way, she doesn’t seem too sad about staying home. At least for now.

By noon, I’m in the war room at Levcon with Yuri, Marcus, and Pavel. I’ve got the banking documents pulled up on the projector, and we go over them together. All three work for Levcon and the Bratva, so I can trust them to look at these figures and give it to me straight. If we do have a mole in our camp, we need as much evidence as possible to weed them out.

“Walk me through it again,” I ask Pavel, who’s shockingly good with numbers.

Pavel taps on one of the accounts.

“The siphon started about three years ago. Ten to twenty grand at a time, buried in vendor batches. The pattern changed about six months ago. Bigger pulls, timed to quarter close. The total missing now sits at five point six million.”

“Where does it land?” I ask.

“Three layers through cutouts,” he says. “We thought Kozlov at first, but it doesn’t fit their footprint. The last hop pings to a trust that buys heavy equipment in Newark. That trust is managed by a boutique firm in Brooklyn that reports advisory work for a Petrov holding.”

“Which Petrov?” I ask.