His smirk turns malicious when I say, “Promise me if I bring back the coke untouched, you won’t prosecute the person who took it.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t her.”
“It wasn’t.”
He watches me for a handful of seconds, silently reading me, before he asks, “But you think you know who it is?”
It kills me, but I jerk up my chin.
The coke was stolen from Clark’s. Only those privileged know of its whereabouts. That’s why I took Miranda there. I wanted her to know this isn’t just a rebound thing for me, and if she’s willing to look past the stigma of my life, I’m just as willing to pretend she isn’t too good for me.
Nikolai leans forward, balancing his elbows on his desk. “Is she close to you as believed?”
Again, I nod. “That’s why I need your word.” When he doesn’t look close to agreeing to my terms, I say, “I’ll bring back the coke and pay the loss of revenue for it not being distributed over the past six days.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the money. It is the respect?—”
“That’s also what this is about,” I interrupt, talking fast. “The sanctity of marriage and the consequences when you break your vows.”
It takes Nikolai not even a second to click to the cause of my panic. “Your ma.”
He isn’t asking a question, but I nod as if he is.
His eyes bounce between mine as he asks, “Why would she throw Miranda under the bus like this?”
“Because to her, Miranda is the one at fault here.” I wet my lips before delivering a confession I’d planned to take to the ground. “For decades, she has blamed herself for my father’s betrayal. She said if she had asked the right questions, he wouldn’t have strayed.”
Nikolai looks lost. I understand. I’ve kept quiet about my family’s dramas because it isn’t my burden to share.
“My father was married when he met my mother. She was wife number three.”
“So?” Nikolai murmurs, still confused. “Having more than one wife is the norm in the bratva.” Suddenly, his cheeks whiten. “Just don’t tell myahrenthat.”
His hand itches to trek his knife across my throat when a singsong voice asks, “Don’t tell me what?”
Justine waddles into his office.
No, you didn’t hear me wrong. Her stomach is the size of a beach ball.
“Hey, Nero,” she greets before she accepts the chair Nikolai is offering her. It doesn’t have legs like the ones Nikolai and I are seated on—unless you include the one about to rise to attention when Nikolai buries his nose into her neck and breathes in deeply. “What aren’t you allowed to tell me?”
Nikolai doesn’t bother lying. You lose interest in being deceitful when you’re strung out on a drug stronger than any on the market.
“That having more than one wife is the norm in the bratva.” He pops his head up and stares straight into her eyes. “Something you’ll never have to worry about. I have enough troubles keeping up with the needs of your insatiable cunt,Ahren. I don’t want or need more.”
Justine mutters something about him being crude before she flicks her eyes to me. There isn’t an ounce of worry in them, proving she believes she is more than enough for Nikolai.
How do I know this? It is the same gleam Miranda’s eyes got when I told Nikolai I’d walk from the millions he’s lining my pockets with before I would ever place Miranda in the firing line for a crime she didn’t commit.
“Why are you discussing sister wives? Is that something you’re considering?”
I gag. “No. I refuse to share Miranda. Point blank. I don’t care if it is with a woman or a man. She is mine and no one else’s.”
Justine’s cheeks inflame over the rant I should have stopped after the first word.
Nikolai looks like he wants to be sick. He faces no issues pushing through the clump of vomit in his throat, though.
“Nero thinks his mother stole our missing coke.”
