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“Evelina, I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. You forget I know you as well as you know me.”
His shoulders slumped, and his hands fell to his sides. He’d been holding onto me in anger, but I still missed his touch once it was gone.
“That’s the problem,” he said. “The fact that we know each other. I watched you grow up, for God’s sake.”
“You need to fuck off with that nonsense,” I said, laughing at his shocked reaction. “What? I can say the word when I'm begging you to do it to me, but not when you’re acting like an ass?”
“Evelina,” he groaned. I was getting to him. Good.
“I’m a grown woman,” I reminded him, making him roll his eyes. “Not the little girl you used to pick up from school. Do you think I’m incapable of making my own decisions? Or too stupid to know what I want?”
He closed his eyes and muttered under his breath as if he was praying for guidance. “I don’t think you’re incapable or stupid,” he sighed. “Far from either.”
“Then what is it?”
He was still maddeningly closed off, and yet, all I wanted was for him to gather me back into his arms.
“It’s nothing,” he said, backing out the door again. “I’m tired. I put things off to help you with your setup. Things I need to get finished.”
Well, that was a whole lot of excuses. It was clear he was done talking to me.
“Mikhail,” I pleaded. One last ditch effort to salvage our beautiful moment together.
“Good night,” he said, turning away.
I stepped out into the hall and silently watched him go up the stairs and then round the corner. He never once looked back. Ruined. Over. I’d finally gotten what I wanted from him, and it had been better than all my dreams, but I almost wished it never happened.
Because it hurt like a son of a bitch. I was born into a mafia family. I could take a punch. I’d even had a minor stab wound once by some lowlife I tracked down and brought in for the bounty. This was every blow, every insult, every heartbreak rolled into a ball. Then it inflated until it popped, littering pain all over me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
I refused to cry.
I turned back and shut myself into the room that was supposed to be my office. I might as well get back to work. Work never betrayed me or let me down. If something went wrong with a camera or a glitch in a program, I figured it out and fixed it. Why couldn’t things with Mikhail be as simple as setting up my monitors?
Once everything was hooked up properly and firing up, I was a little less shell-shocked. But I knew I didn’t want to stay here any longer. My father still hadn’t come to get me for some unknown reason, which had been fine because I didn’t want to go back to Moscow until now. Now I’d go anywhere as long as it wasn’t here. All I had to do was get a message out to Leo, and he’d find a way to pick me up. Yes, I still had my brother, and while he wanted to keep me safe, if I told him I was truly miserable here, he’d get me out.
There had to be other places I could hide out until the heat with the Novikoffs was off. One of my cousins’ places or their many secret safe houses. Or they could let me figure it out and solve my own problems for once. I was still wallowing in pain, which made me laugh since it would never happen.
Not until I proved somehow that I was more than just their surveillance expert. And having my computer back was the first step in the right direction. I loaded up all my programs, fiddling with settings, and became increasingly irritated. Why couldn’t I connect to the internet?
After twenty fruitless minutes of running diagnostics, I had to accept I wasn’t able to connect. Something was wrong, and I blamed Mikhail. It would be just like him to dangle a carrot like my equipment, all the while knowing he wasn’t going to let me take a bite.
I stormed upstairs, realizing I still had the blanket on, tied like a toga over my shoulder. That happened when I got in the zone and completely lost track of reality. Swearing, I switched directions to my room and pulled on a pair of the hated sweatpants and my own t-shirt, which had been magically laundered and returned to me.
Crashing back to his room, I pounded on the door until he swung it open. He had his phone in his hand and was clearly distracted, barely glancing at me except to raise a questioning eyebrow before turning his attention right back to his phone. He was freshly out of a shower, with slicked-back wet hair that still dripped a bit on his bare shoulders and track pants slung low on his lean hips. I tore my interest from his rippling abs, remembering what I was there for.
“I can’t do anything without the internet,” I said. He nodded absently, his brows drawn together as he scrolled through a long message. “Hello, Mikhail? All that equipment downstairs might as well be paperweights without internet access.”
He finally looked up at me, holding out his phone. “Ivan’s house was raided an hour ago.”
Stricken by that news, my thoughts swiveled to my cousin, his wife, and their precious little daughter. “Are they okay? What happened?” My heart sank. Was it the Novikoffs? Was the attack because of me?
“Read for yourself.”
I grabbed his phone and scrolled through the message, skipping over words in my haste to assure myself I hadn’t caused any harm to my family. They’d been nothing but welcoming and kind to me, and I’d brought havoc to them because of my ambitions and greed. I felt my knees giving out, and Mikhail grabbed my elbow to keep me upright. After a calming breath, I reread the message.
Someone had breached the perimeter of their mansion on the waterway, probably coming in by boat. They’d set off an explosive device at the outer wall and then started a fire as a distraction so someone could get into the house. Thankfully they hadn’t succeeded, but the intruders managed to get away, so no punishments could be meted out, and no one knew for sure who it was who’d tried such a thing. Everyone was okay, and they were heading to their holiday home in the Keys until things settled down.
