Page 118 of Taken By My Grumpy Pakhan

Still in the tight grip of curiosity and something I refused to name, I began walking around the floor under the guise of looking for Nikolai.

I’d get my head checked later, but right now, I needed to get to the bottom of whatever the problem was.

I found her an hour later in the small makeshift kitchen off the east wing, standing at the counter with a mug of tea she wasn’t drinking, staring at nothing the way she’d been staring at everything lately.

“You skipped lunch.”

She startled, almost like she hadn’t heard me come in, which told me exactly how far away her head was. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“You’re never not hungry.” I leaned next to the counter, folding my arms in front of me. “Last week you ate an entire tray of pastries meant for a board meeting.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, but the smile disappeared before it took shape. “I guess I’m just tired.”

“Tired.” I studied her face, the shadows under her eyes she’d tried and failed to cover. She wasn’t lying, but it felt like a tiredness that had very little to do with stress, and I would know because I had cut down her workload by a questionable margin. “Genevieve.”

“I’m fine, Kazimir.”

“You’ve said that every day this week, and every day you’ve looked less fine saying it.”

She set the mug down harder than she needed to. “It’s just family stuff. I don’t want to talk about it.”

So I was right.

I straightened. “Is it your brother?”

Something flickered across her face, too fast for me to read clearly. “No. It’s not him. Can we please drop this?”

I wanted to push. Every instinct told me to keep pressing until she cracked and gave me the truth, because that was how I handled every other problem in my life. But something about the way she was holding herself, arms wrapped tight across her middle like she was protecting something, made me stop.

“Fine,” I said. “But if you need something, you tell me.”

She looked up at that, surprised, like she hadn’t expected such from me. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

I left before I did something stupid like reach for her in the middle of the kitchen where anyone could walk in. Back in my office, I found Nikolai already waiting with a thin folder in his hand.

“Nothing,” he said, before I could ask. “No debts, no threats, no contact with the men from before. Her brother’s clean. Whatever this is, it isn’t him.”

That should have made me feel better. It didn’t. It only indicated she was lying, which was far worse.

Genevieve didn’t lie, and if she felt the need to, I couldn’t help the feeling that the problem was worse than I thought.

“Then what is it?” I said, more to myself than to him.

Nikolai studied me for a long moment, the kind of look he only gave me when he was choosing his next words carefully. “Maybe it’s not our business to know yet. Maybe she’ll tell you when she’s ready.”

“I don’t like waiting.”

“Good thing it’s not about you, then.” I ignored the eye roll in his voice as he walked out.

I sat back down at my desk and stared at the same contract I hadn’t managed to read all morning.

When I came to work, I had three priorities: take care of the construction mishaps, wire money for shipments, and review the inventory on the ammunition.

I’d only succeeded in checking one item off the list, and now, somehow, I had an entirely different item of urgency.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, work was the last thing on my mind.