Page 46 of Malicious Claim (Dark Inheritance #1)

A Game of Precision

MAKROS'S POV

The moment I stepped out of the plane, I felt it.

Something was off.

The air contained a ripple, a barely perceptible change in the power balance. Years of cautious living had refined my senses, attuned me to the slightest deviation. This wasn't paranoia—it was experience.

I adjusted cufflinks, my hands tightening into a fist before I relaxed them. My men remained by the car, standing up straight, their faces unreadable. It all looked like everything was supposed to be the way it was, but that didn't mean anything.

I climbed into the back of the car. Nicolai sat beside me. The door closed with a gentle thump.

"How was Moscow?" he asked.

I didn't answer immediately. I simply let the city slide by outside the window, my mind already figuring it out.

"The Orel Bratva has been taken care of," I said finally.

Nicolai curtly nodded, but his jaw was clenched. Something was amiss in his demeanor.

I tangled my head by a fraction of an inch. "What did you do when I was away?"

He hesitated for a split second.

That was all I needed to know whatever he had to say was no good.

"Stefanos got too friendly to Leila when you were gone," he admitted. "And he made it impossible for me to keep an eye on her as much as you would've had me have control over her.

My jaw ticked but I said nothing.

Leila.

It always came back to her.

By the time we arrived at the estate, I already had a sense of something being wrong.

Stefanos was behaving differently, too hyper, too fidgety. He laughed a little too hard, talked a little too much, looked away from me for a moment too long.

Weak men believed that they could conceal guilt. They could not.

I sat at the head of the long table, stretching out my fingers against the cold of the wood. Leila sat directly across from me, calm as a stone. If she was playing innocent, she was doing a good job of staying cool.

Stefanos came in, shrugging his shoulders, trying too hard to be normal.

I did not turn to him right away.

Instead, I kept my gaze fixed at Leila. She met my gaze unblinking, but something had shifted.

She had always gazed at me with defiant helplessness, resentful but with nowhere to go. But this time the defiance was different. It was weighted. It was purposeful.

I shifted my head by a fraction. "Stefanos."

His body contracted very slightly. "Yeah?"

"Tell me. What did you and Leila do when I was gone?" I said, trying to be careless.

He smiled, touched the back of his neck. "Nothing. Just watched over her and entertained her."

I tapped my fingers on the table slowly and without rhythm. "Entertained her?"

Stefanos smiled. "Yeah. You know how she gets when she's left alone too long."

I let the fake suggestion slide. "And what did you do to entertain her?"

He shrugged, his tone not nearly as concerned as it ought to. "I gave her a ride around the city. We ate dinner together at a restaurant."

"You did what?" My voice rose to a bellow.

"I did not think that it was such a big thing. I thought that she would be able to have some fun while you were away so she wouldn't be bored. We had dinner, and returned. I mean she's here now, is she not?"

Stefanos was not brave enough to make eye contact with me as he uttered these words. He glanced towards the table, waiting for my reaction.

I settled into my seat slightly, curled my fingers around the arms of my chair. Outside, I appeared composed. But on the inside, my brain was already pondering on the implication of dumbass Stefanos actions.

Leila had been let out of the estate. Unsupervised.

She was a resourceful woman. If she wanted to establish communication with someone, if she was waiting for such a chance to receive help to take me down or to get out of here that was her moment.

I wasn't upset at the outing itself, but at what Leila may have done. Nicolai ought to have been watching over her. That was my order. Stefanos had deliberately kept him at arm's length so that he could be with my wife freely.

Stefanos would not have been watching her so vigilantly. Which meant that I had no idea what she did when she went out no matter what rubbish my idiot cousin says.

Leila did not seem bothered at all by the exchange.

"Get up both of you," I said to them. "We're leaving."

Stefanos blinked. "Where?"

"The restaurant where you had your dinner."

Leila became stiff next to me.

Stefanos' fingers twitched next to his glass.

They had expected me to let this go.

They were wrong.