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“I want to enroll in college,” she exclaimed out.
“What?” I was surprised to hear her request. I had had a workup done on Sasha, and I hadn’t been able to find a great deal about her. I did know that she had been homeschooled her entire life, I assumed because her family had thought her too delicate for school with everyone else.
“I want to go to college,” she said. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a piece of paper. “I was accepted into Columbia.”
She slid the piece of paper towards me. “My father wouldn’t allow me to attend. He’s old-fashioned. He doesn’t think a girl needs so much education.”
I said nothing, but I wanted to punch Isaac in the face. I barely knew Sasha, but I couldn’t imagine the type of father who would tell his daughter that she wasn’t good enough to attend college simply because of her gender.
“I won’t be able to attend as a student, but I can audit and reapply in the spring. It’ll give me something to do and keep me from snooping.”
I couldn’t stop the smile from forming on my face at the apparent jab.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.
The surprise on Sasha’s face nearly made me laugh.
“You don’t need to go through any trouble,” she told me.
“I have contacts at Columbia. If you want to attend, it’s fine by me,” I told her, and it was. Unlike Isaac Petrov, I didn’t think that a woman was inherently lesser than a man. I knew a great many women who were formidable as hell.
Knowing a little more about Isaac made Sasha’s behavior more understandable. It also made me want nothing more than to correct the innocent Sasha her father had created.
“Thank you,” Sasha said.
I said nothing. I hadn’t expected to have a semi-cordial conversation with my wife. I’d hoped to tell her to keep her fucking hands out of my things.
“I’m going out,” I told Sasha.
“Okay,” she said. She was wringing her hands above the table.
I got up from the table. “And stay away from my office,” I told her.
Sasha said nothing, but I could practically feel her anger following me. I chuckled to myself as I walked out of the house. Sasha was proving to be much more enjoyable than I thought, and while I knew that I couldn’t trust her, considering that she was the daughter of my greatest enemy.
Sasha Petrov might appear to be meek and mild-mannered, but I wasn’t so sure that she was as innocent as she pretended to be, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to be caught unaware.
* * *
“Shouldn’t you be with your new wife?” my brother Marco asked.
“Sasha is fine,” I told him. “She’s at the house getting settled.”
“I’m surprised that you left her alone,” Marco said.
“Gio is with her,” I said.
Marco laughed. “I’m surprised you would subject her to that.”
I rolled my eyes at my brother. Gio had been particularly hard on him when they were growing up. I suspected it was because Marco was always getting into things that he shouldn’t have been sticking his nose in. As the youngest son, Marco didn’t have the same amount of responsibility as the rest of them.
“Did you have a chance to go through all of the paperwork Petrov dropped off? I don’t want us taking any of the property on until we know what we are getting ourselves into. I wouldn’t put it past Petrov to screw us over.”
Marco raised a brow. “You aren’t wrong,” he said.
I sighed. I knew that dealing with Petrov wasn’t going to be easy. His wife had come to me three years ago, shortly after her son’s death, and after I became a don, and begged me to ally with them. Somehow, she’d convinced both her husband and me to enter into an agreement neither of us were happy about.
“What did you find?” I asked.
