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But she shook her head. It could be a delivery of some kind, or someone from the building asking after a lost pet or a child’s toy—something like that. It would be better to show up at least partially dressed, even if it was Victor. He’d make short work of stripping her naked again anyway, if it was him.
Danielle was glad indeed that she hadn’t given into the impulse to strip naked when she saw who was waiting on the other side of her door; Sam stood there, scowling, and for a moment Danielle could only stare at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” Sam said, and Danielle couldn’t have mistaken the anger on his face,
deepening as he looked at her, even if she hadn’t been fully awake for a few hours already. You know how to handle him, she reminded herself, even as she tried to slow the sudden racing of her heart.
“What’s going on? I just finished breakfast—but I still have some coffee,” Danielle said, keeping her voice as light and pleasant as possible. She let Sam into her apartment and closed the door behind him, trying to assemble her thoughts. If Sam was angry enough about something to come over unannounced, she was going to have to tread carefully.
“Is he here?” Danielle managed a confused look, raising an eyebrow and looking at her brother askance as she sat down at the kitchen table.
“What?”
“Your billionaire boy,” Sam said, not taking the other seat at the table and instead remaining standing. “Is he here?”
“Why would he be?” Danielle’s heart raced in her chest—she had hoped to either be able to delay her brother finding out about Victor for a few weeks, or, even better: keep him from finding out at all. She’d been so careful with the locations of their dates.
“You’re dating him now, right? So, I figured he’d be hanging around,” Sam said, pinning her down with his gaze.
“What are you talking about?” Danielle tried to keep the heat she could feel rising in her cheeks suppressed, but Sam saw it.
“You’re dating your boss. Everyone’s talking about it,” Sam said firmly.
“We went on one date last night,” Danielle said, rolling her eyes. “How could everyone be talking about it?”
“Someone saw you weeks ago at Punch Line with him,” Sam countered. “So it isn’t just last night—and anyway, why the hell are you dating that fucker anyway?”
“I’m dating him because I can—it’s my choice,” Danielle told her brother. “And the thing at Punch Line was to celebrate me working for him for a month. It wasn’t a date.”
“Bullshit,” Sam said. He threw his hands up. “What the hell are you doing, Dani?”
“I’m living my life,” Danielle said, as calmly as she could. “Why the hell are you so worried about what I’m doing with my life anyway?”
“You’re dating someone connected to my enemies,” Sam replied, his voice taking on a chilling note. “Of course I fucking care.”
“He occasionally does business with them, that’s all,” Danielle said, rolling her eyes again. “He got financing from the Sokolovs early on, and he’s had a few business dealings with them on legit things. That is literally it.”
It was more than she wanted to tell her brother, but Danielle knew that Sam would keep winding himself up if she didn’t give him some kind of information about the man she was seeing. He would start accusing her of working against him—and then where would either of them be?
“And you wouldn’t even agree to talk to him about working with my people,” Sam said, sitting down finally, with a sigh.
“I wouldn’t agree to spy on him either,” Danielle told him tartly. “It’s been hard keeping myself legit, and I’m not going to risk it.” Sam scowled at her, but it was a disappointed expression rather than an angry one.
“Do you think I don’t respect the fact that you’re not in the business?”
Danielle raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve done everything you can to try and keep me on the edges of your business for as long as I’ve been a grown woman,” she pointed out. “If you do respect me wanting to be legit so much, why would you keep trying to get me back onto your side?”
“I want you to have everything you deserve,” Sam said, calming down a little more. “I want you to be able to live in a nice place, have nice clothes—not be worried about bills.” Danielle folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“And with this job—and with Victor—I have that,” Danielle said quietly. “He’s paying me a hundred thousand a year, and a clothing stipend per month on top of that. I have great benefits.” She held her brother’s gaze. “If this is really what you want for me, then I’m begging you, don’t screw this up for me, Sam.”
“You know some of the higher-ups I work with would pay you even more money, if you could give us an ‘in’ to Andersson,” Sam told her quietly. “It wouldn’t be anything bad—I would make sure of it.”
“Just to let you get it off your chest, I’ll let you tell me what you’re thinking about,” Danielle said, knowing there was no way around it. If she gave him an unconditional ‘no’ again, it would just wind him up further. “But I’m not promising to agree to it or even tell Victor about it.”
“We’re looking into real estate,” Sam said. “Things are starting to get better in some of the neighborhoods, and we want to be in on that.” Danielle looked at her brother skeptically, but gestured for him to go on. “He could invest, and we’d be able to pay him back over time—with a high interest.”
