Page 119 of Wicked Proposal

Then a chill breaks the spell.

I have no idea where it comes from. Why goosebumps are spreading on my arms like wildfire. It should be desire, not terror—notthis.

But when I look up, I realize why.

At the other end of the hallway, a figure is staring. A man dressed in white, fists clenched at his sides like he wants to punch a hole in the nearest wall.

Brad.

“Mia?”

“He saw us,” I murmur. “He saw the kiss. He…”

Panic spreads in my heart. The same panic that gripped me whenever a guy friend dared say hi to me, whenever my dad’s buddies would hug me, whenever a man on the street would stop me because I dropped something.

“… He saw everything.”

37

YULIAN

That fuckingmudak.

I couldn’t care less that he saw us. I don’t give a fuck that he knows I’ve claimed his ex-girlfriend as more than arm candy, more than just a girl to show off.

But clearly, Mia does.

I grit my teeth. The Baldwin family is the second richest in New York, just a notch under my own empire. They have generational wealth, deals with prominent mobsters, hands in every cookie jar across the tri-state area. They pay off cops, feds, judges—everyone they need to keep raking in billions while keeping their hands clean of mafia activities.

They don’t scare me.

Fuck it. Let Baldwin come at me with all he has. I don’t give a shit what he does to me—I’ll repay it a hundredfold.

But Mia is a different matter.

Mia lives alone in Brownsville. She has a small kid his father must never find, a job where anyone and everyone can come waltzing through the door, a predictable schedule.

And right now, she’s scared.

So I gather her up in my arms, leave the investors to Tikhon, and tuck her into the backseat of my car.

“Drive,” I tell Maksim.

He doesn’t need to ask where we’re going. There’s only a place Mia would want to be after this ugly mess.

Home.

It’s a long drive from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Mia spends the first half of it in silence, squinting out the window, as if terrified that Brad’s car will appear right behind us. As if he could do anything to us that I couldn’t protect her from.

Why should you?that cold voice in me demands.She’s no one to you.

I clench my fists and don’t reply.

Instead, I keep replaying the scene in my head, over and over. Mia’s face when he appeared at the end of that hallway was pure dread. It was the way my enemies look at me. The way a prisoner faces their executioner.

Whatever went on between them wasn’t just a bad break-up. I’d known that before—it was far too obvious in the way Mia flinched away from him at the wedding.

But seeing it with my own two eyes? Feeling Mia gasp for air, clawing at her own throat, in the grip of the most vicious panic attack I’ve ever fucking seen?