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I was afraid to ask what happened to his other three.
Matthias told me he terminated things with her after that night, but that she’d been trying to get him alone since she found out he’d returned, telling him that their deal wasn’t fulfilled.
Bitch didn’t know how to take a hint.
“Get me everything you have on her and send it to my tablet,” I ordered her, my voice slightly rougher than I wanted it to be. “Please,” I amended softly. Clove nodded, her fingers flying across the keyboard lightning fast.
Snarling, I stalked toward the door and waited for Maksim to open it since I didn’t have a passcode yet.
“Where are you going?” he asked with a frown as I stormed down the hallway toward the elevator.
“To skin a bitch.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Serena clung to me like a second skin as we stepped off the elevator and headed to my office. Her big brown eyes stared up at me and she fluttered her eyelashes flirtatiously, thinking it might endear me to her. The only thing it made me want to do is rip the fake eyelashes off and shove her out the nearest windows.
Unfortunately, that would be a PR nightmare.
“You owe me that information, Serena,” I reminded her coldly, peeling her off my arm. “I did exactly as you asked, and I compensated your father to keep him from arranging any future marriage deals.”
Serena sneered as I led her into my office. I went straight for the top-shelf whiskey and filled one of the crystal glasses from the bar with as much of the amber liquid as it could handle. “You honestly think that is going to stop my father from going behind your back and trying to do it again?” She ran a hand through her lengthy black hair and sighed, leaning her frame against the side of my desk. “We both know that he will burn through that cash by the end of the year, and I will be back where I started.”
“That is not my problem.” And it wasn’t. I’d been generous with the money I gave her father. He was a leading power player in corporate politics. He’d been trying to sell Serena to the highest bidder, who happened to be Augustu La Rosa. She’d been begging Leon for help, but he’d refused, directing her my way instead. He knew I needed something from her father, and she was the only one who would be able to get it.
My mother’s gravesite back in Russia.
Edrik Mickelson had been a low-level thug for Kirill before he came to the states. I remembered his face and the times he paid Kirill so he could fuck my mother and make her scream. It was a running tally I had in my head on how I was going to make him pay. It was why I went with Serena to the gala and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Serena had the time I was away to collect the information I needed, and now she was trying to bleed me for more.
It wasn’t going to happen.
She was a means to an end, and if she proved to be difficult, I would make her life a living hell.
Or Ava would.
“It is if you want the information on where your mother is buried,” she threatened me. I growled.
“Do not make idle threats, Serena,” I warned her, my lips curled into a snarl, teeth bared. “I am not a man you want to cross.”
Serena laughed, oblivious to the hole she was digging for herself twice over. “You think I don’t know that?” She tilted her head slightly and batted her eyes at me. It was something that would have been cute on Ava, but on her, it was just desperate. “I have something you want, and there is only one way you’re going to get it.”
“And how is that?”
Serena grinned up at me like the cat that ate the canary. “You and I are going to get married.”
The laugh that rumbled out of me pissed her off. Her dark eyes looked at me askance. She did not like being mocked.
“I am serious, Matthias,” she hissed. “We get married, or I don’t give you the information you’re looking for, and I tell my father who you are.”
I shrugged a shoulder. Killing Edrik was at the top of my list of things to do anyway, so if she told him, it would not be such a loss. Kirill was dead, so Edrik finding out my identity was not of any consequence anymore.
“Go ahead.” My gaze met hers calmly. “Then I kill him and you. Win-win.”
Her face paled for a moment, eyes wide as the cogs in her mind turned, wondering if my threat was real.
“You—you wouldn’t,” she sputtered. “You don’t kill women.”
“Eh.” I tipped my hand back and forth slightly. “There are exceptions to every rule.” The ding of the elevator caught my attention, and I bit back a broad smile. I’d wondered how long it would take my wife to find her way up here. She’d been on the ops floor for the last half an hour, and she was bound to see me getting off the elevator with Serena and come find us, claws bared.
