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“Smart man.”
“Anyway,” he says, setting his drink down, “it shouldn’t be too hard to do. How urgently do you need this done?”
“A few hours. I want to put it back so that she doesn’t suspect anything.”
Aleksandr’s eyebrows lift. “Okay—now, I’m asking questions. Why? What’s the purpose here?”
Leaning back in my seat, I let shadows fall across my face, not by accident. Aleksandr knows me well enough to read my microexpressions, and the last thing I’m interested in is him poking and prying into my feelings.
“I want to make sure she keeps her mouth shut,” is all I offer. It’s partially true.
“So you want more than just texts?”
“I want everything. As much as you can get. I want it recording every last keystroke and piece of data that goes in and out of this device.”
Aleks purses his lips. “It’s gonna die on her more often. She might get suspicious.”
I shrug. “I can deal with that. Put a tracker on it, too. I want to make sure I can find her just in case she decides to go waltzing off on her own.”
“Do I even want to know who this chick is?”
I sigh. “No. Probably not.”
10
WREN
I wake up to the rumble of my own stomach.
I’m not sure if it’s a side effect of pregnancy brain or what, but it feels as though my whole body is no longer on my team. I woke up in the middle of the night, parched as hell, but when I went to get water, I could swear I saw Dmitri standing in the doorway and my knees buckled like a newborn baby deer’s.
My stomach is just the latest traitor, robbing me of more precious seconds of dreamless sleep just to demand that I feed it.
I groan and spend a full ten minutes trying to ignore this inside-out mutiny, just so that I can stay in the room and not have to deal with whatever shitstorm is waiting for me outside the door of my citrus-scented refuge.
But when I can’t ignore my hunger anymore, I tug on the leggings Bee gave me last night and peek into the hallway.
Everything’s quiet. There’s no sign of life. Which gives me the courage to tiptoe down the hall towards what I think is the living room.
I keep going past it until I hit the kitchen. It’s just as impressive as the rest of this penthouse. The ceilings are high, the fittings sleek and modern, and I can see my own reflection in the gleaming black marble countertops.
I’m hunting for a glass, but all of the low drawers are a no-go, so I start to look higher, only to realize that the shelving in this place is set at a height more suitable for giants than for little old me. Even on tiptoes, I’m nowhere close.
I suppose that makes sense, though. Dmitri is a mountain of a man and his gazelle-like fiancée is probably close to six feet herself.
Lovely—just one more reminder that I do not belong here.
Gritting my teeth, I look around for something I can climb. I find a stool tucked under the bar and drag it toward the closest cupboard. Either it’s absurdly heavy or my muscles are rebelling against me, too, though, because by the time I get it in place, I’m out of breath.
I take a moment to recuperate, then get back on track. I haul myself up onto the stool and lean forward, trying to find a groove in the side of the cupboard to pull since it’s seamless and there are no knobs anywhere that I can see.
“My God, why do rich people make things so complica—ahh!”
The chair starts shaking as my weight pushes it off center. I reach out, but there’s nothing to grab but empty air. My hands pinwheel wildly through space as I go, go, go…
Then something stops me.
No, not something—someone.
