Page 141 of Sinful Bride

When she arrives, she doesn’t pester me with questions she knows I can’t give the answers to. She just gives me a hug, tells me to be careful, and beelines for the nursery to watch over her goddaughter.

I meet a very apprehensive Lev in the elevator. “Are you sure about this?” he grumbles.

“As sure as I’ll ever be.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either. But this needs to stop.”

“The Boss will be pissed.”

“The Boss will take it up with me.” I glance at my guard-turned-friend. “And I think he’ll be more understanding, since I’m not going alone.”

Lev tries to hide the upturn tick in the corner of his mouth.

“Plus, I may have left him a note already. So it’s not like he doesn’t know.”

He sighs. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. But can you blame me for trying?”

The elevator doors ding open. Lev holds them for me, but he grabs my sleeve before I fully step off.

“It’s my job to protect you, Daphne,” he says. “I’m not doing my job if I’m helping you do something dangerous.”

I touch his forearm and give him the biggest, most reassuring smile I can muster up. It’s not much, but it’s something. “Think of it as… you’re protecting me from worse things. You can’t stop me from doing something stupid, but you can make sure I don’t die from it.”

“I can certainly try,” he says with a weary sigh. “I can certainly try.”

50

PASHA

I eye the empty stretcher next to Makari and wonder if anyone would blame me for lying down on it. Just for a few minutes. Just a few moments to rest.

“Leave it to you,” I mutter at my little brother. I may or may not be a little envious of his ability to sleep through what nearly killed him. “Leave it to you to be the one who gets hurt and needs babying. Fucking typical.”

Mak groans without opening his eyes. “Oh, shut the hell up.”

I’d jump to my feet if I had any energy left. The fact that he even got stabbed in the first place stole ten years off my life.

“You’re awake. Fucking hell, you’re awake.”

He sighs and his face twists into a grimace, though his eyes remain closed. His voice, when he speaks, is a hollow rasp. “What even happened? I thought we had… friends. Watching.”

Translation: Where the fuck were our guards?

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to get answers.” I pass a hand over my face. “You need to focus on recovering.”

An awkward silence passes between us. It’s heavy with things I don’t know how to say.

For one horrifying minute, we weren’t sure he was ever going to wake up again.

I think he knows that. I’m not going to press him for answers, but I see the lines on his face that make me wonder if he looked death in the eye.

“So.” He licks his lips and cracks one eye open, prompting me to hand him a small plastic cup of water. “How are things?”

“Moving in a new direction. The knife in your side did you a favor, actually. The lawyers just got you released on bond. Now, you get to come home and be a pain in my side.”

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