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With money from your hit-man jobs?
I nodded. “Very interesting. How did you get into that? Was it an unmanageable childhood thirst for enriching yourself on the back of the poor and middle-class?”
For a moment, it was dead silent at the table. Mila swallowed a gulp of her wine, but then, out of nowhere, Andrei started to laugh. He slapped his thigh. “Fair enough,” he said between laughs, then grabbed the food menu. “I’ll stop for the sake of my sister. Let’s enjoy this dinner.”
I raised my glass. “Cheers to that.”
“For a little while, that is,” Andrei added with a grin.
“You’re impossible,” Mila said, smiling in relief. It was good to see her relax a bit. So far, this whole birthday had been quite tense. I couldn’t help but watch Andrei’s every move and every look. I couldn’t quite tell if he was simply giving me a hard time as his sister’s boyfriend or questioning my very identity—in which case, I might end up dead before the night was over.
The evening continued, unfolding somewhat well considering it was Andrei we were sitting across from. He controlled every aspect of the dinner, from what we ordered to the wine we drank and, of course, the topics of our conversations. His desire to be in control at all times was disturbing, to put it mildly. I only had to endure it for a few hours but, still, I felt interrogated. How had Mila survived all these years without slowly going insane?
We were halfway through our dinners—salmon with mango flakes and white truffles— when Andrei looked at his phone with a darkness in his eyes. He patiently waited for Mila to finish a story she was telling about a cat that had gotten loose at the clinic and clawed its way to the ceiling before he stood and wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin.
“I hate to be rude, but I’m afraid I have to make an important phone call.”
Mila nodded awkwardly and looked down at her plate. I nodded as well.
“Is everything okay?” I asked her, gently placing my hand on hers.
She smiled at me. “Yeah, of course. Whatever it is, it’s Andrei’s problem, not mine.” She sounded exhausted.
I was about to pull her in for a quick kiss to give the fancy folks at this restaurant something to gawk at—these weren’t my kind of people and, from what I could tell, they weren’t Mila’s either—but right when I locked in on her beautiful, blue eyes, the most annoying voice I knew startled me from behind.
“Noah?” Annabel’s drunk holler caused some heads to turn our way.
I twisted in my chair to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating from some poison Andrei might have slipped into my wine. But, by God, as real as the air I was breathing, there was Annabel, waving at me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Noah!” she said again, this time making her way from the bar over to me, leaving some dude, who was definitely not her husband, behind her. He watched her leave, checking out her ass before returning to his drink.
Good God, she must have just met him.
As usual, Annabel looked pretty hot, much as I hated to admit it. She was wearing a red evening dress; her makeup was a bit over the top but still pretty flattering. I felt the usual cold feeling I always did when she approached me—after all she’d put me through, I couldn’t help it. I just really disliked her.
Mila scanned her head to toe, then looked over at me. I almost threw my head into my hands. What were the chances Annabel had to be here on this day? At least Andrei wasn’t at the table.
“And who is this interesting young lady?” I heard his icy voice ask from right behind Annabel.
Goddamn it!
I rose to my feet and turned toward my real-life nightmare. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Any word this woman might spit out had the power to not only wipe this investigation off the face of the earth in a matter of seconds but also get me killed before the night was over.
“Who am I?” Annabel slurred, playfully slapping Andrei on his arm as she tried to steady her drunken feet.
Shit. She’s drunk too!
“You mean, who areyou,” she blinked seductively at Andrei, “handsome stranger.”
“Annabel,” I said in a kind tone with a fake smile and stepped beside her. I tried to gently put my arms around hers, to drag her away, but she pulled out of my grip and smiled.
“Oh, so now you finally want me to come with you?” she blurted out with a nasty laugh.
Andrei passed her and pulled out one of the empty chairs at our table. “Yes, why would this beautiful lady leave before we got to know her a bit?”
“I think her company is waiting for her,” I said, nodding at the man at the bar who was throwing us looks. “We don’t want to be rude, do we?”
