Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“Hello, Mia. Now speak.”
She laughed, and the sound filled the car, and the nothing in his chest cracked just a little. Just enough to let the warmth in. Just enough to piss him off.
“So, please don’t be mad.”
Those five words had never once in the history of their relationship preceded anything that didn’t make him exactly that. “What did you do this time?”
“I’ve already informed Whitmore—”
Her college. The one he had personally selected. The one with the best security infrastructure of any university in Europe, which he had verified himself before signing the tuition check.
“—that I’m taking a year off, and they’ve already given my slot to someone else.”
Alexei took a breath. Then another one.
“There’s more,” she added cheerfully.
There was always more with Mia.
“I’m already here.”
“Here,” he repeated.
“In Monaco.”
He didn’t speak.
“As in your home.” He could hear her smiling. He could always hear her smiling, and it drove him out of his mind that he could. “Surprise?”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. Whatever he saw in his employer’s face made him look away immediately.
“Mia.”
“Before you say anything—”
“Mia.”
“—I already have a plan, okay? You know the program at Ace Royale? The one Artem told me about, where you help people with gambling problems? I want to work there. Gap year. I’ve thought about this, Alexei, I’ve really, really thought about it, and I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say it isn’t safe, or it isn’t appropriate, or I need to be in school, and I get it, I do, but I’m eighteen, and I’ve already given up my slot, so you can’t send me back even if you wanted to, which means—”
“Breathe.”
She stopped. And in the silence that followed, the bravado fell away, and what was left was the voice he heard in his head at 3 AM when he couldn’t sleep. The voice of the girl who had shown up in his office at sixteen with a suitcase and a bruised chin because she’d tripped getting out of the taxi, and eyes so bright with unshed tears that he’d had to leave the room for a full minute before he trusted himself to speak.
“I’m asking you to let me stay,” she whispered.
The car hummed. The wipers beat against the windshield. Two thousand miles of airspace between them, and she might as well have been sitting next to him for how hard those words hit.
Joshua Robertson had gripped his hand in a hospital bed three days before he died and asked Alexei to take care of his daughter. And Alexei had said yes, because Joshua and Carol Robertson had been the only people in the world kind enough to help Daniil Almazov when kindness was something that cost you, and saying no to a dying man who loved his daughter more than breathing was not something Alexei was capable of.
He had kept that promise. He had given her the best schools, the best security, the safest distance he could manage.
The distance was the important part. Because somewhere between Mia’s sixteenth birthday and the day he put her on the plane to Whitmore, the girl he had agreed to protect had turned into the single most dangerous person in his life. Not because she threatened him.
Because she made him want things he had no business wanting.
And now she was in his home. With her bags unpacked. And her slot at Whitmore gone. And nowhere else to go.
“Stay where you are,” he told her. His voice gave away nothing. “I’ll be there tonight.”
“That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no.”
“That’s what you told me when I asked for a puppy at sixteen.”
“And you didn’t get a puppy.”
“I got a Rottweiler named Biscuit and you pretended not to notice for three weeks.”
His mouth twitched. He killed it immediately, but the damage was done. The driver kept his eyes on the road.
“Stay where you are, Mia.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice dropped. Not to a whisper. To something honest. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Alexei. I’m not going anywhere.”
The line went dead. She didn’t say goodbye. She’d learned that from him.
He lowered the phone. The screen went dark. The grey outskirts of Saint Petersburg scrolled past the window, and Alexei saw none of it.
Pavlov was dead. The purpose was gone. The empire was pointless. And a girl he hadn’t seen in two years was sitting in his penthouse, waiting for him to come home.
“Faster,” he told the driver.
Chapter 2
MIA
She had changed outfits four times.
Four. In the span of three hours. Which was pathetic, because this was Alexei, and Alexei didn’t notice what women wore. Alexei noticed security vulnerabilities and financial irregularities and the exact moment someone was lying to him, but he did not notice dresses.
Probably.
Mia threw the fourth outfit on the bed, grabbed the first one off the floor, and put it back on. A white sundress. Simple. Nothing special. A dress a girl wore when she absolutely, definitely, was not trying to impress anyone.