Page 170 of Ruthless Rustanovs

SAN FRANCISCO

But in that moment, on this particular Christmas Day, he knew one thing for sure. He did not like his sister-in-law.

Alexei stood with his fellow losers in the living room of his brother’s Georgian mansion.

Glaring at his sister-in-law as she waved his baby niece in the air and crowed over Boris’s victory as if it were her own.

A nicer man would have appreciated how far his tortured younger brother had come with this woman’s love.

A nicer man would have been happy for Boris, who now held up the trophy that had been Alexei’s until five minutes ago.

But Alexei was not a nice man, and he was already plotting his brother’s downfall in the next round of diaper changing dominance—

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!.... Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

His scheming thoughts were interrupted by the electronic chirping of the phone in his pocket. He pulled it out, and smiled when he saw the name on the screen.

“It’s Ivan,” he announced, and a hush fell over the formerly noisy room.

Because Ivan—the young cousin who’d become a recluse after his horrible accident and made a habit of not returning his calls—was calling Alexei on Christmas. It seemed to Alexei, and probably to everyone else in the room, like nothing less than a Christmas miracle.

A sentimental string tugged at his heart as he answered the phone, preparing to say, “Schastlivogo Rozhdestva”–Russian for “Merry Christmas.”

However, Ivan started talking in a blur of Russian before Alexei could so much as get the first syllable out.

Of course he responded to his young cousin’s requests as best he could. But by the time they got off the phone, Alexei was even more agitated than he’d been when he’d merely been plotting the takedown of his brother and sister-in-law.

But family was family…

He turned to Suro, the head of his American security force, a man who’d become one of his most trusted friends over the years, and said, “Ivan needs a helicopter sent to his home in Idaho.”

“That can easily be arranged,” Suro assured him with a small bow.

“Is he coming here?” Boris asked, hope lighting his normally stern face.

“No, I don’t think so,” Alexei answered, not bothering to keep the bafflement out of his tone. “He wants it for…a girl.”

The whole room went silent with shock. The Ivan Boris and Alexei had known before the accident had been so spoiled and pampered, he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help a woman out of a car, much less with something as big as what he’d described to Alexei on the phone.

And the Ivan they all knew now was more likely to callously insult a woman than go through such great lengths to help her.

Which was why it felt like his sister-in-law was speaking for the entire room of when she said, “Girl? What girl?!?!”