That earns the faintest smile, though it does not last. “Can I come?”
“No.” The answer is immediate.
Her chin lifts. “You didn’t even think about it.”
“I did not need to.”
“I spent the entire day with you in Moscow, and now you’re going to vanish to some dangerous meeting while I sit here with your terrifying secretary glaring at me through walls?”
“Elena does not glare through walls.”
“She absolutely does.”
I button my shirt and say nothing.
Katerina swings her legs off the bed. The sheet slides, exposing the curve of her thigh. My gaze follows despite my better judgment.
“I won’t get in the way,” she says.
“You do not know what the way is.”
“Then explain it.”
“No.”
She stands, dragging the sheet with her like a queen wearing stolen linen. “I’m not asking because I want entertainment,” she says. “I’m asking because I don’t want to sit here imagining ten different terrible things.”
That’s fair.
It’s also exactly why she should not come.
Oleg is not a friend. The club is controlled, but no location in Moscow is truly safe, especially one tainted in my world.
I should leave her here.
I should call Elena, tell her to keep Katerina inside, take Mikhail and two cars, meet Oleg, get what I came for, and return before midnight.
The pout disappears. The stubbornness remains, but beneath it there’s something else. She’s trying not to show me that she wants to be chosen again, even for something as foolish as coming along to a meeting she does not understand.
That’s what decides it.
I’m going to regret this.
I know it before I speak.
“You will stay beside me,” I say.
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“You will not wander. You will not ask questions in front of anyone. You will not speak unless I tell you it’s safe to.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No. You’re a woman who walked into my life with no sense of self-preservation.”
“Very romantic.”
“This isnotromance.”
