Page 63 of Taken By My Grumpy Pakhan

I dragged a palm through my face, hissing in self-disgust. The fuck was wrong with me?

“The jet will be ready in thirty,” Nikolai said, sitting next to me. “You sure you don’t want to stick around to monitor things a little?”

“We already took care of the bastard responsible for the chaos. Enzo is keeping an eye on things. What’s there to monitor?”

“And the women?” He wiggled his brows. “You always loved your Scandinavian models.”

I stretched in my seat, willing a bit of tension off my body. “You’re welcome to stay back and indulge. I have things to take care of.”

His lips curled. “And do these things have hazel eyes and nice legs?”

I didn’t waste another breath on him. It was 10:00 a.m. and if we left in thirty minutes, I should make it back to New York at 7 in the evening.

Hopefully, she would be working late like she did most Fridays.

I sounded like a fucking stalker, but I had long given up fixing it. It all narrowed down to one thing, and it was that I wanted her and I wanted her bad. Everything else was secondary.

“So about Dallas.” Nikolai surprisingly applied wisdom for the first time in his life. “Svet coming alone or with her family?”

“Family,” I replied, relieved by the change of topic. “Everything is sorted and on track, and with what happened, it’ll be wise to recheck agreements.”

“So we review terms and conditions,” he noted. “Anything you’d like to change?”

“None I can think of, but have the lawyer send me the revised copy tomorrow.”

Nikolai pulled out his phone, tapping furiously at his screen while I diverted my attention to the city outside.

Moscow held lots of bittersweet memories for me. It was the city I grew up in, the city that gave me everything, and the city that took it all from me.

If I reached back enough, I could hear my father’s voice cautioning me and my mother’s softer voice telling him to go easy on me.

He was one of the few men in the Bratva who actually loved and respected his wife, and I had seen firsthand what it did to him.

“All set,” Nico announced. “You’ll have everything on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.”

I sent him a nod of appreciation. I was largely independent but sometimes—actually more times than I’d love to admit—I’ve found myself wondering what I would do without the idiot.

We both didn’t need each other. He did very great for himself, came from an upstanding family of aristocrats, but we had somehow formed the most unlikely friendship.

But I guess that’s why we worked so well together. The knowledge that we didn’t need to stick together, no one was dependent on the other, and no one was forced to stay with the other.

It was all choice. One we’d made on a random Thursday morning when he told me he wanted to be a part of my family, one I’d made when I fought with the men to make him my Sovetnik, and one we’ve kept making every day since then.

I never had to watch my back around him and he need not glance over his shoulder when I stood next to him.

Finally, the jet was ready sooner than we were told and we boarded for New York, something in me stirring with anticipation.

It took almost ten hours to get to New York and another thirty minutes to get to the office.

Nikolai stuck around, insisting he had a couple of things to take care of.

To my disappointment, Genevieve was not working late. The entire floor was almost empty.

“Sir.” A man I couldn’t recognize greeted me. “We didn’t realize you would be back so soon.”

“We?”

He whipped out his phone. “I could call everyone back if you want.”