Page 3 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

I lift my glass a little. “Improperly sounds faster.”

For one second, nothing moves. Then Dmitri laughs, and it changes his whole face for half a breath, and I hate how much I want to see it again.

Patrick notices too. “This is Cara,” he says, like I’m a minor accounting inconvenience. “She works in cybersecurity.”

“I break things first,” I say. “The security part comes later.”

Dmitri’s mouth curves. “Useful.”

“Only if you’re not the thing I’m breaking.”

Patrick makes a warning sound under his breath. “Cara.”

Dmitri doesn’t look away from me. “No, let her talk.”

My eyebrows go up. “Let me?”

He inclines his head. “Poor word choice.”

I raise a brow at him. “That’s almost self-awareness. You must be dangerous.”

“Must be?”

“I’m still collecting evidence.”

Patrick laughs again, but the sound has a brittle edge now. “My sister collects many things. Evidence, grudges, stray opinions no one asked for.”

“Older brothers,” I tell Dmitri, “are nature’s way of making women learn sarcasm before puberty.”

Dmitri looks at Patrick. “Then he has been useful.”

“Accidentally,” I say. “His favorite kind of contribution.”

Patrick clears his throat. “Dmitri is here on behalf of some freight interests.”

“Freight,” I say. “That’s a soothing word.”

Dmitri watches me over the rim of his glass. “You dislike freight?”

“I dislike words men use when they mean guns, dirty money, or both.”

Patrick’s smile thins. “She jokes.”

“She tells the truth and makes it smaller so men can survive hearing it,” Dmitri says.

Well. That is annoying.

No one is supposed to understand me at Patrick’s parties. The whole point of these events is to stand around eating canapés while men explain obvious concepts to me until I fantasize about setting their cloud storage on fire.

I take another sip to cover the tiny spark of pleasure Dmitri’s words put in my chest. “You’re going to make me sound interesting, and then I’ll have to live up to it.”

“I don’t think that’s your problem.”

Patrick steps between us by half an inch. Pathetic. “Cara was just leaving soon.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. You said you had work.”