Ending the engagement would cut unnecessary weight and leave me with cleaner hands to work with.
Grandma always said I took after her husband. A man I never met but somehow still carried. I used to think she said it as a warning. But the way she folded into my decision without another word said more than she intended. She never said it out loud, but I was her favorite grandson.
Good looks included, of course.
“Then your fake wife and son should be at that dinner,” she declared and got up. “The dinner will happen after the auction.”
She left, and I let my mind settle on the auction.
Everything was arranged. I already knew that Inna would not bring her parents. She just had enough defiance in her to believe she still had a choice. It made it easy to move her without her realizing it. The first step was to present her at the auction as my wife. And there was no better room for it than the one Iker Perez would sit in.
I needed this man in my trap. And the cleanest way to walk him into it was through the woman he couldn’t seem to leave alone.
I picked up my phone and dialed Akim. He answered before the second ring. “Boss.”
“Are the documents ready?”
“Yes,” he responded.
“Good. She knows your face, so stay out of sight. Send Ivan tomorrow. Make sure he understands exactly what needs to be done.”
“Yes, boss.”
I hung up and let a smile settle on my mouth. Inna called me sick while she had seen nothing yet. She started this, and she would keep dancing until I decided the music was over.
Chapter Eight
Inna Grace
I desperately wanted to hitCole for disrupting my sleep. I had just gotten some sleep after an entire night of turning, twisting, and arguing with my own thoughts. It was all because of one dangerously good-looking psychopath whose voice made a home in my head.
The worst was that he knew where we lived. That part sat in my chest and stayed there. I kept waiting to hear a knock at the door all night until sleep came in fragments. By the time I actually drifted off, it was past six in the morning.
Cole gave me an hour. One generous, gracious hour before he decided that was enough rest for a lifetime.
“I swear to God, Cole,” I muttered into my pillow, my voice still rough at the edges. “If you don’t stop, I will throw you out the window.”
I yanked the blanket over my head and gripped it with both hands.
“Then you’d go straight to jail,” he said, still pulling at me. “And the police officer would be my witness.”
“Oh, really.” I peeled the blanket back just enough to look at him. “Because I would gladly take that jail cell if it comes with five minutes of silence away from you.” I pulled the blanket back over my face. “Go eat cereal. You are nine years old, remember?”
“Should I offer them cereal too?”
That made me pause. I pulled the blanket down and squinted at him. “Offer to who?”
He stepped off the bed. “The police officer,” he said. “And the guy in the black suit. Didn’t I mention we have visitors at the door?”
I shot upright so fast that the room tilted. The blanket slid off and pooled around my waist as my heart dropped somewhere near my stomach.
“What do you mean?”
Cole didn’t have to say anything else. I moved toward the door, stepping on the books he had scattered across the floor as if he were building an obstacle course. My mind was already ahead of me, running through every possibility I didn’t want to land on.
I stopped at the door for a second.
Please don’t be him.
