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)
"A sandwich."
"See? Was that so hard?" She swung her legs. "Morgan asked about you today."
The name struck his chest like a blade.
He didn't move. His face gave nothing away, because his face had been trained for twenty-two years to give nothing away, and the training held even when the blade was inside him.
"Did he?"
"Mm. He was at his session, and I was filing his notes, and he said the strangest thing." She pulled the pen from behind her ear, twirled it between her fingers the way she did when she was remembering. "He said he'd heard I'd just married the man who runs Ace Royale, and he was happy for me, and then he said—" She paused. Smiled at the memory. "He said, 'I understand what it's like to lose a father and find someone who fills the space. You and I have that in common, Mia.'"
The kitchen went cold.
Not the temperature. The air was the same, and the evening light was the same, and Mia was still on the counter with her swinging legs and her pen and her open face. But Alexei's blood had stopped moving.
I understand what it's like to lose a father.
Mia's parents were public enough. Anyone who worked with her, talked to her, earned her trust for thirty seconds would hear about Joshua and Carol Robertson. She gave that information freely, because that was who she was.
But "find someone who fills the space" wasn't about Mia's loss. It was about his. It was about a boy whose father died in a prison when he was fourteen. And that wasn't information you picked up in a rehabilitation clinic from a chatty intake coordinator. That was information you found because you went searching.
You and I have that in common.
Morgan had lost a father. Or claimed to. And was drawing a line between his loss and Mia's. Creating a bond. Building a bridge made of shared grief, which was the oldest manipulation in the world, and Mia had walked across it smiling because Mia walked across every bridge smiling because she didn't know that some bridges were traps.
"Alexei?"
Her voice. Uncertain now. The swinging legs had gone still. The pen had stopped twirling. She was reading him, the way she always read him, and whatever she was seeing on his face was something she'd never seen before.
"What just happened?" she asked. "Your face just—"
"Nothing."
The word came out controlled. The voice of the man who ran Ace Royale, not the man who held her in the kitchen at six AM. And she heard the difference. He could see it in the way her body went still on the counter, in the way her eyes narrowed, in the way her hands gripped the marble edge.
"That's not nothing. You went somewhere just now and I don't know where."
"It's nothing, Mia."
"Stop saying nothing. Your jaw is doing the thing it does when you're—"
"When I'm what?"
"When you're the other you." Her voice was gentle. Not afraid. Mia Robertson didn't do afraid. But gentle, the way you handle something you love and don't fully understand. "The one your brothers know. The one who makes rooms go cold. I've never been on this side of it before."
He held her gaze. And the thing inside him, the thing that wanted to tell her everything, to sit her down and say there's a man and he's playing a game and I read a letter and I'm marked and I married you because I love you and also because the Almazov name is a wall and the wall is the only thing between you and what's coming, that thing pressed against his ribs so hard he couldn't breathe.
He didn't tell her.
He crossed the kitchen. Put his hands on the counter on either side of her. His face was inches from hers and her eyes were wide and searching and she was trying to find him behind whatever she was seeing, and he kissed her forehead.
"Order dinner," he told her. "Your choice. I need to make a call."
He walked out of the kitchen.
He felt her eyes on his back. The same way she'd felt Morgan's eyes in the casino, except hers were the opposite of threat. Hers were the eyes of a woman who had just seen a door in her husband's house that she didn't know existed, and the door was closed, and Mia Robertson did not leave doors closed.
He went to his office. Closed the door. Pulled his phone out.
Not Kotov. Not this time. The other number. The one that connected to his head of security at Ace Royale.
"I need a full background on a client at the rehabilitation clinic. First name Morgan. Blond. Blue eyes. Mid-to-late twenties. Started coming in approximately four weeks ago. I want everything. Family, finances, travel history, known associates. And I want it tonight."