“Whiskey?”
“All I’ve got is beer and questionable orange juice.”
That earns the smallest laugh from him. “Beer is fine.”
“Well look at that. The mysterious billionaire drinks like a normal person after all.”
His eyes meet mine again. “I never claimed otherwise.”
The low roughness in his voice follows me all the way into the kitchen, leaving my stomach doing foolish little somersaults while I grab two beers from the fridge. A few minutes later, we sit across from each other on my sofa with cold bottles in our hands and tension stretched tightly through the room.
I notice the bruises again as he sips his beer. Alexei notices me noticing.
“You want answers.”
It’s not phrased like a question.
I pull my legs beneath me. “Yes.”
He studies me quietly. The lamp beside the sofa highlights the exhaustion beneath his composure tonight. Older grief lives there, too.
“You already know enough to suspect the truth,” he says finally.
A knot tightens low in my stomach. “The truth about what?”
“My family.”
The room suddenly feels smaller.
Alexei leans back against the sofa. “My brother, Roman, ispakhanof the Agapov bratva.”
The Russian word hangs there between us.
I swallow before repeating the word. “Pakhan.”
“The boss,” he clarifies.
Even though part of me already knew, hearing him say it aloud still knocks the air from my lungs. Suddenly, every instinct I’ve had around him clicks painfully into place. The bodyguards. The constant security. The tension that seems to follow him everywhere. Even the way he walks into a room already prepared for trouble before anybody else notices it coming.
And beneath all that polished billionaire charm sits the quieter truth I’ve been trying not to look at too closely.
Violence.
I stare down at the beer bottle between my hands before lifting my eyes back to him. “And you?”
Alexei drags a slow breath through his nose before answering. “I handle Black Tide Logistics.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I was raised inside that world,” he admits.
I study his bruised knuckles again. “Did you do that tonight?”
His expression doesn’t change. “Yes.”
Sitting there on my sofa with a beer in my hand and a dangerous man calmly admitting violence to my face, I realize the scariest part is that I still want him to stay.
12
