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“Right. Who brought the tray in?”
“Aria.”
Aria says one of the staff members gave it to her and points out a pale, thin woman with blonde hair.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she says, her eyes wide at the look on Aleks’s face. “I was instructed to bring it up. That’s all I know. I came inlate for a shift and one of the headwaiters said you asked for it to be sent up.”
The poor girl quakes under his furious look. “Which waiter?”
On and on the questioning goes until Aleks has interrogated everyone on staff. Mikhail oversees the questioning with concern, his brow knitted, but he mostly appears like he’s trying to prevent Aleks from singlehandedly murdering everyone.
“Aria could’ve eaten from that tray,” I say in a whisper. “She had the food in her hand but got distracted.”
The thought of Aria being poisoned…
Now Mikhail joins Aleks with the murderous looks.
“I want every one of the staff dismissed,” Aleks says to Mikhail. “Fired. No one but my wife stays here.”
My heart stalls at those words, two words that are foreign to my ears.
My wife.
Within an hour, his cat’s been sent to an emergency vet and declared poisoned but fine, and now there’s no one but the two of us left in the house. Not a single member of staff. Not one bodyguard.
I have no doubt Mikhail and his men are doing whatever Bratva men do about a potential threat against their loved ones.
Aleks sits brooding, a bottle of beer in front of him. His tie’s long gone, his hair a little tousled. He’s broody as fuck, and no help for it.
I try to think of him asmy husbandbut somehow the vision of him in front of me and the words don’t quite jive together.
I nurse a glass of wine and try to make the dots connect.
“We were all adopted, you know,” he says thoughtfully, running his thumb along the rim of the beer bottle.
“Oh? I didn’t know. I mean, I know hardly anything about you.”
“Each of us, in turn, came from nothing. My uncle told me it was a favorite strategy of his father’s. My grandfather’s.”
I take another sip of wine, welcoming the slightly fruity tang and burn. “What strategy?”
“To start fresh. Start anew. He said whenever he took over a business, the first thing he did was fire everyone so he could handpick who worked for him. It was his method of ensuring loyalty.” He talks in a low, dangerous growl that makes me shiver. “Burn it all to the ground and start fresh.”
“An interesting strategy.”
Does that apply to me?
Oooooh.
“You told me to bring nothing with me,” I say in a little voice as it dawns on me. “You wanted to start fresh withme.”
He nods. “It’s how my father established his family. One by one, he chose us. He ensured our loyalty by providing for our needs, taking care of us, fathering us. By giving us a mother that took care of us.”
“I see.”
He takes another sip from the bottle. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down while he swallows.
“Did you fire everyone?”
