AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I blink up at him. “Do you really want to know?”
He unbuttons his jacket and pulls it off. “Yes.”
Not in the mood for small talk, I shrug. “Good.”
He drapes the jacket over the back of the sofa and walks to my chair. Towering over me, he asks, “What did you do?”
“Don’t tell me you’re interested in the meaningless actions that occupied my hours.”
“Just because you didn’t save lives today doesn’t mean what we’re doing here is meaningless.”
“What you’re doing here, you mean.”
He gives me a patient smile. “Is it wrong that I’m interested in how the woman I care about spent her day?”
There are so many things wrong with the way I spent my day that I don’t know where to begin.
Dragging a chair closer, he sits down next to me. “Joanne called.”
I sit up straighter. “What did she say?”
“Just that she wanted to talk to you.”
“What did you tell her?” I ask, holding my breath.
“That you were at the spa and unable to take the call.”
I clench my hands on my lap. “Lying comes easily for you, doesn’t it?”
“You can speak to her if you behave,” he says without missing a beat. “In fact, I think it will do you good.”
My mouth drops open. I don’t know if I should be grateful for the concession or upset that he’s bribing me with selective contact with my friends.
Taking my hand, he rubs a thumb over my pulse. “I need you to think back to the night outside Romanoff’s.”
“The night when I got mugged?” I ask with surprise.
The line of his jaw hardens. “Yes, but I don’t think it was a mugging.”
I pull free from his touch as shock washes away the warmth of the fire. “You think it was related to the stealing of my card?”
“Maybe,” he says with regret.
I gasp. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t put two and two together at the time. The more I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple of days, the more it seems like a possibility.”
Unfolding my legs from under me, I shift to the edge of the chair. “But why steal my handbag? Was that also some kind of warning, a message to you?”
When he only stares at me with violence brewing in his steely eyes, another truth hits me between the eyes.
“You don’t think he was after my bag,” I say, jumping to my feet.
“Katerina.” Alex follows my pacing with his gaze. “I need you to think. Tell me anything you can remember about that night.”
The memory isn’t pleasant, especially given what I’ve just learned. “You were there. You saw what happened.” More truths pierce me like arrows. “Did you even give a statement to the police?”
“My men do their job better than your police do theirs.”
“Your men.” Right. “What did they find?”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “Nothing. That means the police would’ve found even less. At the time, I thought like you, that maybe it was just an unfortunate mugging, but now I suspect differently.” Getting up, he walks over and grips my shoulders. “I didn’t want to put you through this, not then and not now, but you have to think back to that night. What did he look like?”
I dig into my memory, trying hard to give Alex something. “He was stocky and big with a bald head.”
“What else?”
“He…” I swallow when I remember the cruel smile he’d given me. “He had bad teeth—crooked and yellow.”
“Did he say anything to you? Could you make out an accent of any kind?”
A shiver of repulsion runs over me. “He just laughed in a creepy kind of way, like he enjoyed scaring me.”
Alex’s nostrils flare. “Did he have any discernable marks, like a scar or a birthmark?”
It suddenly hits me. I motion to the top of my scalp. “He had a tattoo here.”
“What was it?” he asks, urgency lacing his voice. “Can you recall if it was a word or a picture?”
“A picture.” Now that I think about it, I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye. “An eight-pointed star.”
He lets me go so suddenly I stumble.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his gaze drilling into mine. “Are you sure it was a star with eight points?”
“Yes,” I say through dry lips. “Why? What does it mean?”
“Nothing.” Grabbing his jacket, he presses a chaste kiss to my forehead. “Go to bed. Don’t wait up.”
And he’s gone, the door slamming behind him.
9
Alex
Rushing out the front door, I run into Igor.
“I parked the car,” he says. “Yuri locked up the garage. Do you need anything else before I head out?”
I pull on my gloves. “Where are the others?”
“Having dinner at the barracks.”
“Get them.” I make my way to the garage with long strides. “Take three armored cars and bring a dozen men. Yuri too.”
He doesn’t ask questions. He jogs around the mansion as I unlock the garage door by pressing my thumb on the wall-mounted fingerprint scanner. The roller door lifts. The garage houses the cars I use for the city as well as a motorbike and an off-road four-by-four.
