Page 39 of Preferential Treatment

Kate stared at him. “You want me to be your kept woman?” Two conflicting feelings raged inside her. The abject fear of ever letting herself be dependent on somebody else’s care battled fiercely with the longing to be taken care of, to live in luxury without a single concern for money.

“No, no,” Mikhail said softly, and her heart sank. A second later, it rose again as he said, “You would keep me, knyazhna.”

* * *

Kate was at the bank of mailboxes in the lobby of her apartment building when her phone lit up with a call from Anna.

“Hello?” she answered, tucking her mail into her bag and locking her mailbox back up.

“Oh my god,” Anna breathed. “Remember last night I asked if you could donate anything to the women’s shelter that was going to be closed down?”

Kate went stone still. “Um… oh yeah. Sorry, I must’ve forgotten about it. I can come by with some money—”

“No need!” Anna crowed. “I just talked to Jasmine—she’s on the board—they just landed the biggest fucking whale of a donor, and you’ll never guess who it is!”

“Um…” Why was Kate sweating? There was nothing suspicious in Anna’s tone. “The Queen of England?”

“Make a real guess.”

“Uh…” Kate tried to think of some other rich Chicagoan, but her brain couldn’t come up with anyone but Mikhail.

“I’ll give you a hint—you know him.”

“How would you know?”

“What?”

“What? Nothing. Uh…”

Out of patience, Anna burst out excitedly, “Mikhail Volkov!”

“Oh my gosh! Whaaaat? That’s so crazy!”

Anna paused. “Why do you sound weird?”

“I don’t sound weird. I’m climbing the stairs to my apartment. I’m out of breath.” She wasn’t—she was so used to climbing four flights of stairs every day, she could practically levitate up them at this point.

“Well, anyway, what a small world, right? The guy who saves the shelter is my friend’s boss?”

“Well, he’s not really my boss. I mean, yeah, he’s the CEO, but like, my actual boss is the department head. It’s not like Mikhail Volkov is personally acquainted with every Domovoy employee.”

“Whatever.”

Anna clearly had no interest in the details, and Kate had to forcibly restrain herself from blurting out a defensive monologue about how little connection her job had to the CEO.

“Anyways, he donated five hundred thousand.”

“What?” Kate came to a standstill on the landing. She’d only told him sixty thousand.

“Yeah, it’s insane. His personal assistant reached out to the board with an inquiry about what was needed. When they told her they needed sixty grand to pay the mortgage for the year, she asked how much was remaining on the mortgage—and donated the lump sum, and then some!”

“Wow,” Kate said faintly.

“With the extra funding, they’ll be able to improve a bunch of stuff on the building, too. Jasmine nearly passed out with shock when she found out.”

“Wow,” Kate said again, at a loss.

“I mean, nobody needs to be that fucking rich,” Anna said, slightly aggrieved—and Kate couldn’t help but agree, “but at least he’s doing good things with his money, right?”

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