Page 85 of Ivory Ashes

I forget all about it, though, when I take a bite.

“Holy shit,” I moan. “This is incredible.”

“I told you.”

I wave my empanada in the air between us. “Is this how you apologize for three days of silent treatment? If so, feel free to ignore me more often.”

“I could never ignore you,” he rasps around a bite. Then Mikhail lowers his empanada and looks me in the eyes until my knees feel a little shaky. “This is how I apologize: I’m sorry.”

I push through the shock and give him a silent golf clap. “That was very evolved of you. Night and day from the brute I was just in the car with.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m not sorry about what happened with your neighbor; I’m sorry about Dante. I shouldn’t have disappeared on him. It was wrong. I can own that.”

“Oh.” I breathe quietly. “Why did you?”

“You two come as one. It’s hard to ignore you and still see Dante.”

“So you were ignoring me! I knew it.”

“Trying,” he admits, eyes narrowed. “Next time it happens, I’d suggest getting my attention in a way that doesn’t endanger the lives of innocent civilians. I was about to burn that coffee shop to the ground.”

Why? Is this about his pride? Maybe Mikhail only cares if I’m out with Tommy because of how it would make him look if his wife was openly dating other men.

Or maybe… Mikhail can’t handle the idea of me being with another man because he is desperately in love with me.

Might as well go look for that universe tucked inside Mary Poppins’ bag because, once again, that is more likely.

As much as I don’t want to confront this particular ache in my chest, I can’t stop myself from toeing close to the line. “You accused me of liking this possessive side of you, but I think you might get off on being possessive.” I take a bite of empanada. With Mikhail’s eyes on me, it tastes like sawdust. “I wasn’t even your fiancée the night you burst into my bridal suite to save me.”

“I wasn’t there to save you,” Mikhail corrects sternly.

“Right, right. I forgot. You just so happened to show up the night before my wedding to overthrow your brother, even though you could have beat him down and stripped the signet ring off of his hand at any point in the prior six months. He spent more than enough nights drunk off his ass and defenseless, believe me. You had plenty of opportunities.”

He sighs like an exasperated parent. I should know—I’m fluent. “At the risk of you throwing yourself at me in gratitude for saving you?—”

“No risk of that,” I lie.

“—I will admit that one of the many reasons I chose to eliminate Trofim on that night in particular was because I didn’t want to damn you to a life tethered to him.”

Okay, I might be more grateful for that than I’ll ever be able to fully express. So I don’t bother.

“I’m just glad you can be honest. You were there to save me that night.”

“I wanted to stop my brother from making an alliance with a powerful mafia family before I could take control from him,” Mikhail explains haltingly. “And… I also thought it might be nice of me to do it before the wedding so you wouldn’t feel obligated to follow him into his likely exile.”

I wince. “I didn’t even think of that… My father definitely would have tried to force me to go.”

“Then you’d be dead, too.” Mikhail says it under his breath, but I still hear him.

My heart jolts. “Dead?”

He studies me for a second, making a decision. Then he nods. “Trofim is dead. Has been for a while, apparently.”

I can’t even pretend to enjoy my food now. I drop the other half of my empanada on my plate and wipe my mouth with shaking hands. “Do—do you know what happened to him? Who—How it happened?”

“Nothing definitive yet. Raoul and Anatoly are working on it, but he was cremated before there was even an autopsy.”

“So there’s no way to figure out what happened?”

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