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Katerina turns to me, her eyes wide and full of anxiety. I like the way she looks at me. I am the man with all the answers, and that makes her dependent on me. And I definitely like that.
“I’ll bring your bag up in a moment,” I tell her, and she nods, although her face is still clouded in confusion and uncertainty, which I guess is understandable.
She follows Sophia along the hallway and up the stairs. A few seconds later, Maximo joins me.
“You sure you know what you’re doing, D?” he asks, giving me a look that suggests he knows my motives aren’t entirely motivated by my need to recoup the money that Leo Evanson stole from us.
“Nope.”
“What exactly is she gonna be doing while she’s here?” he asks with a grin.
“I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I ignore his innuendo. “She was a nurse, right?” I remind him. “Surely, she has skills that will be useful to us?”
“Sure,” he says, but he’s still looking at me like he knows I’m thinking about another set of skills she might have. “You haven’t forgotten your pop is coming for dinner later, have you?”
“Fuck!”
“You did forget?”
“I do my best to forget any things related to him.”
“Good thing one of us is on the ball though, eh?” He nudges me, and I roll my eyes at him.
Anyone else tried to ride my ass like he does and I’d put a bullet in them. But Maximo is like a brother to me. He’s a year older than I am and we grew up together. Our fathers were best friends until his was murdered when he was fourteen. He lived with us after that. There was no official adoption — it just was. I would die for him and he’d do the same for me in a heartbeat. Loyalty like that is hard to come by.
“Why do you think I keep you around here?” I say as I take Katerina’s bag from him and head to the stairs.
“Because you couldn’t fucking function without me.” He whistles, heading off to my study, while I prepare to welcome our guest.
Sophia is leavingthe room when I reach it, and when I walk inside, Katerina is staring out of the window, looking at the courtyard below. She’s taken off her coat at least, so I figure she’s accepted she won’t be leaving any time soon.
“Kind of a nice room for a prison cell,” she says, full of snark.
Goddamn it, I want to throw her on the bed and fuck that attitude out of her.Perhaps, later.
“It has a lock too,” I tell her. “Not that you’ll need it.”
“Won’t I?”
“Well, nobody lives here, except me. And Sophia of course, but she lives downstairs.”
She arches an eyebrow at me and how much I would love to fuck that look off her face.
“It would take more than a lock to keep me out if I wanted in here, kitten.”
She hugs her arms to her chest, shivering as she rubs her bare arms as though she’s cold despite the warm room. Is that from fear or something else? “What exactly do you want with me? You planning on just keeping me here forever, or am I only supposed to stay here until I pay off this debt?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what? You’re keeping me here forever or until I work off Leo’s debt?”
How about both?“You’ll work off your brother’s substantial debt and then you can leave,” I say instead.
“And just how do I do that? And how long will it take? What about my actual job? My house?” she fires off the questions, arms still crossed over her chest.
