Page 9 of Mile High Ruin

He’s seated across from me with a file open on the table, walking through numbers that should have my full attention. The men waiting for us in Paris have changed the terms again, and one of our shipping routes is now exposed because someone on the inside has begun speaking too freely. Usually, that would be enough to keep my mind occupied.

Instead, I’m thinking about the flight attendant.

Sloane Mercer. Her name has been sitting in my head ever since I first heard it.

She’s not my type. That fact should make the problem disappear.

It does not.

I’ve always preferred tall women. Blonde, usually. Elegant, polished, and accustomed to being looked at. Models, actresses, women who understand the arrangement before I have to explain it. They know what they want from me, and I know what I want from them. There’s no confusion, no sentiment, and no expectation that the evening should become anything more than what it is.

Sloane Mercer is none of those things.

She’s not short, exactly, but she is smaller than the women I usually notice. Her hair is dark and drawn into a severe knot at the back of her head, though several strands have already begun to work themselves loose near her face. Her uniform is conservative, her makeup restrained, and there is nothing deliberately seductive about her.

Yet I noticed every detail the moment I stepped aboard.

The straight line of her spine when the captain stood too close to her. The way she told him to move without raising her voice. The expression in her eyes when she looked at me after I sent him back to the cockpit.

For three seconds, she had been grateful.

Then I mentioned the bag, and the gratitude vanished.

I shouldn’t find that amusing.

I shouldn’t still be thinking about it.

“Vadim.”

I lift my gaze.

Iosef has stopped speaking. He sits opposite me in his charcoal suit, one hand resting on the documents spread across the table. He has worked for me for eleven years and is one of the few men who can interrupt me without first considering whether it will cost him a finger.

“What?” I ask.

“The revised percentage.”

“I heard you.”

His expression says he doesn’t believe me.

Marek is seated beside the window with a glass of water he has not touched. Anton occupies the chair nearest the front of the cabin, positioned where he can see the cockpit door and the main entrance even though we are already in the air.

Marek leans back. “Then what did he say?”

I look at him. He smiles.

Marek has survived this long because he knows precisely how far he can push before I stop tolerating it. He has also known me since we were boys, which has given him an unfortunate confidence in his own immunity.

Iosef closes the file. “He said they want twelve percent more and control over the eastern terminals.”

“They can have neither.”

“That’s what I told them,” Iosef says. “They believe the delay puts them in a stronger position.”

“They are mistaken.”

“I agree.”