Page 197 of Sinful Blaze

I hardly bother listening. Men who think they have a lot to prove tend to not have anything at all. It’s all smoke and mirrors meant to make me crack, to give me enough rope to hang myself with.

In reality, it’s Stewart Hamish who’s tying his own noose.

I knew it had to be someone from the inside. Chekhov International’s public-facing front is too clean for anyone to have enough to blow the whistle.

But Hamish? He ran with my father back in the day. He had the inside track on both realms of business, the corporation as well as the Bratva. The coward couldn’t handle a gun to save his life, but he knew how to keep the realms separate from each other just in case.

I could almost laugh at the irony. Just in case this exact thing were to happen.

Is Daphne in on this? The moment the question enters my mind, it crumbles.

She wouldn’t.

She loves me.

Fuck. Daphne. She couldn’t have known I was trying to come home tonight. Trying to make things right. My heart aches at the thought of her alone, in our bed, probably crying herself to sleep for yet another lonely night.

I’ll wake her up with a kiss. Just enough for her to feel me crawl into bed beside her. I’ll wrap my arms around her and whisper every apology I can think of until I fall asleep, a shield between her and the world.

“We’re expecting.”

Smithson pauses mid-rant. “Excuse me?”

“My wife and I. We’re expecting our first child. She’s actually due any day, now.” I swallow hard. It’s no effort at all to fake the emotion clogging my throat—because I’m not faking. “I need to get back to her. She needs me.”

For a moment, it almost seems like it works. It almost looks like he’s actually considering it.

But then he chuckles under his breath and shakes his head. “Nice try, Chekhov. You’re not married. Sure, we’ve seen you around with that pregnant woman, but who is she? How are we to know she’s not your recently fired assistant?”

Two things run through my mind at the same time:

When I get the chance, I am going to smash my fist into this mudak’s face until his teeth fall out.

He doesn’t know who Daphne is. They don’t know who she is. Which means she’s definitely not involved in this at all.

I fold my arms. That’s all he’s going to get from me. If he wants another word, he’ll start playing by my rules.

Otherwise, Special Agent Smithson can go fuck himself.

Mak’s grinning face is not exactly what I want to see. Solemn, yes. Pissed off, definitely.

But grinning to the point of almost laughing? He can fuck right the hell off.

“Sorry,” he says when he sees me glaring at him. He clears his throat and attempts to be more somber. “I just never thought I’d see you in a drunk tank.”

Sofi side-eyes him but focuses on the updates she’s brought me. “The lawyers are currently lobbying a slew of complaints and filings at the district court,” she says as they both approach the bars of what is, unfortunately, the station’s “drunk tank.”

I’m sure there are more private holdings somewhere in this building, but Smithson seems to have a personal bone to pick with me. I make a mental note to have someone look into that later on, after I’m released.

Smithson made an enemy today.

---