Page 8 of Nine Months to Bear

Stefan laughs. It stops me dead in my tracks. “Cute, but pointless.” He dips me suddenly, his breath hot against my ear, the movement bringing our bodies flush together. “You don’t need a pitch. You need a villain.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I manage to stutter.

He rights me, then slips a black cardstock rectangle between my fingers.Safonov Holdings.A Back Bay address embossed in gold. “I’ll explain more when you come to my office. Tomorrow, noon. Wear something flammable.”

My laugh is half-panic, half-defiance. “You’re insane if you think I’ll?—”

“Oh, you’ll come.” He releases me and my body cringes at the sudden absence. “Because you’re smart. And I’m the only donor here who doesn’t want to fuck youoryour business plan.”

Before I can recover, the crowd swallows him whole, leaving me clutching his card, my cheeks scorched with heat that has nothing to do with embarrassment.

Across the room, Frederick stumbles in through the double doors, leaking dark blood from his busted nose and moaning like a whale.

I tuck the card into my clutch. He was right: I’ll go. Because he’s my last hope, even if it’s a hope with all kinds of traps nested inside of it.

Tomorrow, I’ll walk into Stefan Safonov’s lair. And if I’m lucky, I’ll walk out with a deal… or my soul intact.

Everyone knows I won’t get both.

5

STEFAN

The Glock comes apart easily, same as it always has. Pin. Slide. Spring. The familiar click and settle of metal against my palm.

It’s a ritual that should quiet my mind the way it has hundreds of times before. It ought to burn away thoughts of soft skin and bright eyes filled with too much pride.

It doesn’t.

Fucking pathetic.

For four hours, I’ve been down here in the basement range beneath my Beacon Hill brownstone, trying to shoot the memory of Olivia Aster out of my head. All I have to show for it is a cloud of gunsmoke.

Every single one of those four hours has been spent smelling Olivia’s perfume on every breeze, in my shirt collar, my fingertips.

She’s in my fucking skin.

You’re insane if you think I’ll?—

Oh, you’ll come.

It wasn’t a line; it was the truth. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. I felt it in her. When my finger brushed across the delicate inside of her wrist, her pulse jumped. Dead giveaway.

Snarling, I reassemble the gun at light speed, muscle memory doing what it does, and fire downrange.

The target’s head explodes into paper confetti. The bullet buries itself in the back wall, the sound like bones snapping.

This should calm me. It should be fucking relaxing.

It isn’t.

“You missed the left ventricle,” drawls the shadow materializing at my side. “Very unlike you. Distracted,pakhan?”

I don’t turn to look. I don’t need to. No one else would be brave enough to surprise me when I have a gun in my hand. That’s why Mikayla Santos is my head of security and resident sociopath. She moves like a cat and dresses like a funeral. Which is fitting, considering how many she’s caused.

I found her years ago in a Vladivostok fighting pit. She was a filthy slip of a girl breaking arms and necks for pocket change. There was a brief moment where I considered a different relationship, where I thought the violence in her eyes could be a fun night of bloody bed making.

Then I saw her stop an assassination attempt by garroting the hitman with her own hair ribbon, and I realized she could be of more use to me than one night of entertainment.