Page 118 of Sinful Bride

I touch a hand to his face. “There are never any strings attached when I’m with you. You know that, right?”

“I know.” He kisses me again. Reassurance. Love. “But feel free to negotiate with your… assets. I’ll never turn down a bargain.”

42

PASHA

“What’s going on?” asks Daphne.

“Nothing.” I pull a folder on top of the paperwork Mak and I were just peering at.

Sofi, however, has no shame. “Paris is going to be a problem if we don’t take her out first,” she explains. “Before your parents circle back around.”

Mak and I glare at our sister, who merely shrugs. “What? She’s your wife. She needs to know. And besides, Daph is my bestie now. I’m always gonna loop her in when it involves bitches she hates.”

Daphne blushes. “I don’t hate people!”

Sofi arches a brow. “You sure? This is Paris we’re talking about. Pasha’s former fuck buddy.”

“Okay. Fine. Maybe I hate her.” She leans into me and squints at the mess of papers on my desk. “So, fill me in. Where are we hiding the body?”

“There’s no ‘we’ in this,” I warn. “If you think I’m?—”

“I think I’m coming,” snarls my wife with a sudden ferocity that actually gives me pause. “I think I don’t even have to ask you a question like that, as a matter of fact. Because I think that you know that I belong there. And I think that you wouldn’t dare tell me otherwise. I think that we’re all going to get in the car right now, I think that we’re going to take a little trip to visit this ‘old friend’ of yours, and I think that you’re not going to say one more word about how it’s safer for me to stay home and twiddle my fucking thumbs. That’s what I think. Am I more or less on the money?”

I blink.

Sofi blinks.

Mak blinks.

Then, with a grimace, I just rest my forehead on the table. Mak, as usually, is happy to provide the color commentary. “You know something, Pasha? I like her.”

Fifteen minutes later, we’re stepping through Paris’s broken door and into her house.

As soon as I see the interior, however, I change my descriptor.

This isn’t a house we’ve just broken into. It’s a fucking temple.

To me.

These walls are covered in paparazzi prints, newspaper articles, candids I never approved or knew of. It’s my face gleaming from every flat surface. And they keep going. It’s not just the office, it’s the hallways and stairway…

And in half of them or more, Paris’s face is pasted or Photoshopped right alongside mine. Me with anonymous dates I barely remember—ballerinas, movie stars, that kind of thing, the kind of women I used to waste my time with—and in each and every one of them, Paris has Frankensteined herself into the image.

I shudder. The level of effort, the amount of time this must have taken…

“You two…” Mak shakes his head and mutters under his breath as he takes in the sight of my face plastered everywhere. “You sure know how to attract the crazies.”

Daphne, for all her fire back in my office, is staying close to my side as we creep through the foyer. Her eyes are wide and horrified. “Holy shit. Pasha…”

“I know.” I grip her hand in mine a bit tighter. “I swear to you, I had no idea.”

Ewing was very open about his increasing instability. It was easy to see him spiral from vindictive to desperate. From rejection to obsession.

But Paris? She may have taken it hard when I moved on, but I couldn’t blame her for it. I did, after all, cross a few professional lines.

This is a whole other thing.

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