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“Pain’s a part of life.”
His eyes brighten dangerously. It makes me afraid I’ve said something to piss him off. Then he leans in, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his gray eyes. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
I’ve never felt this before. This sense of security, of safety. Ironic, considering how much pain I’ve endured purely because I fell into Dmitri’s world. But it’s not really about how much he’s capable of protecting me—it’s about the fact that he wants to.
No one has ever wanted that responsibility before.
Until him.
16
DMITRI
“Your vors are here.”
Aleks’s voice has an anxious edge to it. Or maybe I’m projecting because I’d rather be at home with Wren than handling business at Egorov Industries. “All of them?”
He nods. “All of them. Including Gennady and Ira.”
Scowling, I leave my papers on the desk and get to my feet. “I’m shocked that mudak hasn’t jumped ship yet.”
“The underworld doesn’t take kindly to traitors.”
“No, but it certainly makes use of them.”
He pulls his eyebrows together. “I think you’re getting paranoid, man.”
“‘Paranoid’? We have two fucking mafias on our backs and you’re calling me paranoid?”
Sighing, he scrubs his face clean. “It’s one thing to be suspicious of your enemies. It’s a totally different story to be suspicious of your friends.”
“They’re not my friends; they’re my fucking employees,” I retort. “And they’re talking entirely too loudly for my liking.”
His frown returns as he goes still. “What does that mean?”
“Locksmith,” I say shortly; our hacker’s name is all the explanation required. “Apparently, some of my men have been disgruntled with the action—or lack thereof—in the last few weeks. Money’s been moved from accounts. It seems not all my men think I’m going to win this war.”
“You haven’t exactly kept them in the loop,” Aleks suggests.
My fists clench. “I don’t have to tell them a goddamn thing if I don’t want to. I’m the pakhan; they swore allegiance to follow without question.”
He holds up his hands in self-defense. “I’m just keeping you informed. That’s my job.”
I sweep past him and out of my office. My new assistant is a sour-faced, bottle-dyed redhead in her mid-forties. She came highly recommended and, so far, she’s proven to be halfway competent. She’s also smart enough not to say a word as I storm past.
But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s not Wren.
I check my phone as I step into the elevator and hit the special access button that will take us to the bowels of Egorov Industries. My screen is empty. No calls or messages from Wren all day. She was sleeping this morning when I left, so I sent her a text message letting her know I’d be at work, to call if she needed anything. Her answering text had been short and succinct.
Thanks but I’ll be fine.
I’ll be fine. It’s annoying how much that bothers me. The fact that she doesn’t really need me. It makes me wonder if part of my attraction to Elena was fueled by this weird god complex. It served my ego to have Elena look at me as though I was the center of her universe.
Wren doesn’t look at me as though I’m the center of anything.
More often than not, she looks at me as though I’m a nightmare monster she wishes she could run from.
The elevator doors spit me out into the dark basement. The corridors are lit up with recessed light fixtures that do little to ward away the oppressive darkness. It looks like exactly what it is: a playground for death and pain. I hate to play into sinister stereotypes, but if this part of the building is ever discovered, it needs to look like an abandoned plan for a parking lot.
