She’s not just playing the game anymore. She’senjoyingit.
And fuck me. I am too.
We head to the kitchen to make breakfast. She asks me questions about my routines, who works for me, and what I do for the Bratva.
“You know,” she says, after learning that I’m the one who manages cyber security and hacking, “our skills paired together would be straight-upfire.”
She’s not wrong. Cyber security and forgery? We could rewrite history. Dark, twisted history, but it would be history nonetheless.
“I want to know how you left things with the Irish.” I spread butter on toast and cut it into triangles before I push the plate to her. She eyes it thoughtfully and doesn’t eat it.
“If I were going to poison you, I wouldn’t do it intoast,” I mutter. Would’ve poisoned the vodka last night or just skipped formalities and jabbed her pretty little neck again.
Her bright blue eyes meet mine. “Wait, you thought I was afraid of being poisoned?” She takes a huge bite.
I shrug.
“Nah, I just read something somewhere about cutting toast that way, triangles instead of rectangles, and I—” She shakes her head as my phone rings. “Nothing.”
She’s perched on the barstool, happily munching toast as if she hasn’t spent the last month fighting for her life.
I answer the phone with a scowl. Rodion.
“Yeah?”
“You talked to the Irish?”
I scowl at the phone. Anissa chews her toast, but her focus is narrowed on me.
“No. Why?”
“O’Rourke’s in town. What the fuck does he want to do with us?”
I shake my head. “I thought we were allies now.”
“We are. Allies who have each other’s backs, but you don’t just show up unannounced. We’re allies, but we’re notfriends.”
“Where is he?”
“Sighted at the Wolf and Moon last night. Ruthie told us.”
And by us, he means Vadka, Rafail’s best friend. Ruthie’s his sister-in-law and bartends at the Wolf and Moon. It helps having an observant ally in the local bar. There’s a reason we know everything. Lips loosen over drinks.
“So he’s not hiding. Interesting.”
I canhearRodion’s smirk on the other end of the line. “Ask your girl,” he says.
I scowl. “She’s not my girl.”
Anissa feigns being affronted with an exaggerated open mouth, her hand splayed across her chest. She holds my gaze and shakes her head.
“Right.” I can hear the note of derision in his tone.
Just a girl I keep locked up, feed by hand, and growl at whenever another man so much as breathes on her.
Totally normal behavior.
I grit my teeth and growl.
