I don’t need his words to hear his promise. He doesn’t pretend to be brave; he is brave. He doesn’t talk a big game; he hits the ball out of the park. Just like he’d never makes a promise he has no intention of keeping.
Some may say I’m stupid to believe the word of a mobster, but they don’t see the man I do. People with good intentions make promises, but only those with good character keep them.
Asher is the latter.
Chapter 30
Asher
“Straight to our room, Zariah. Don’t test me.”
I should walk her to our room, then no man would be game to look her way, but I was in the process of an extremely important call when I detected her presence. My call could wait; Zariah couldn’t. But now that she is satisfied, I have no excuse not to return to the matter I was attending to before the scent of insatiably greedy cunt got the better of me.
Once Zariah closes my office door behind her, I dial a number scratched on a sheet of paper on my desk, the same paper holding evidence of Zariah’s climax. While sinking into my chair, I think back to our exchange. My sweet, innocent Zariah is in love—with me.
A mobster.
A man who has killed more people than all of my foot soldiers combined.
A man who loves her too, but doesn’t know how to say it back.
This is arrogant of me to admit, but I knew Zariah loved me long before she declared it. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions, so I’ve seen it in her eyes for a few weeks now. Call me cocky, but I’m fairly certain it is the same glint her eyes held the first time they landed on me after over a decade of absence. It’s the same, groggy, hazy look she gives me every morning when I wake her by eating her for breakfast. It’s edged with lust, but the core of it is love.
I stop smiling like a smug prick when a deep, accented voice comes down the line. Usually, Bahrain handles all logistics for my empire, but since this is more a personal matter than business, I’ve outsourced a few tasks. Nikolai swears by this man, and since he trusts him, I can as well.
“Back so soon?”
I hear Hunter drag his hand across his thick beard as he struggles to stifle his chuckle. Hunter Kane is a security genius. His equipment is unsurpassed by anything I’ve seen, and it fills every corner of my compound, but I don’t want him for that. I want his hacking skills. Skills that will help him bypass a program he designed not to be bypassed.
“It was brunch. They never take as long to consume since it’s a snack between breakfast and lunch.”
He laughs again—the fucking prick. Anyone would swear I hung up on him twenty minutes ago, not the hour and half that’s ticked by.
I work my jaw side to side to ease the agitation in my voice. It does me no good when I spit out, “Keep the jokes coming, and we’ll see how many you can tell when your intestines are hanging out of your stomach.”
He laughs again. He must have a death wish.
“Calm down, big boy. I know it’s fucking cold in Russia, but there’s no need to get snappy.”
I’m going to get snappy—when I snap his fucking neck.
I flatten the palm not clutching my phone on my trousers, abandoning the clench and unclench routine when Hunter tells me our time apart served me well in more ways than I realize.
“It wasn’t fucking pretty, but I’m in.”
My chair creaks when I sit forward. “And?”
“You were right. Vyesniy Volkov wasn’t the payee for Dominique’s procurement.” Anger. Hate. Vengeance so fucking thick I can barely breathe through it hits me at once when he murmurs, “Vaughn Volkov was. He inherited a nice chunk of the Volkov fortune when he turned eighteen. Half of it went toward purchasing Dominique.”
I knew that fucker couldn’t be trusted. Zariah doesn’t see in his eyes what I do because she’s conditioned to ignore it. She always sees the good in people until she’s proven wrong. I’m the opposite. You don’t gain my trust until you deserve it.
Wanting as much evidence as I can, I devote my attention back to my cell. “What did he spend the other half of his inheritance on?”
Hunter chuckles again, the sound nowhere near as humorous as his earlier laughter. “That’s the real kicker.” I’d give anything to be able to reach through the phone and strangle him when he pauses to suck down a quick breath. “He used it to bankrupt his father’s corporation.”
“What?”
“Shady investments. Hijacking his own shipments. If it had the Volkov named attached to it, Vaughn was fucking with it. He even returned a shipment of guns to the Popov crew at the cost of thirty K. I’m no expert, but it’s like he has that condition, you know the one I’m referring to, where they like seeing others suffer—?”
