Page 58 of Emerald Malice

The windows are too high for her to see anything. In any case, my desk blocks the bottom half of my body from view. There’s no way she knows. She can’t possibly fucking know.

But something flickers across her face.

Abruptly, she gathers up her water bottle and her yoga mat and speed walks towards the pool house.

Blyat’.

Grabbing a handful of tissues, I wipe myself clean and duck to the bathroom to rinse off. When I return to the office, the door is wide open and a pair of nervous eyes are aimed directly at me.

Not the eyes I was hoping for, though. Or was it “dreading”? I can’t quite decide.

“Mila,” I greet without revealing my surprise at seeing her here. My new sister-in-law doesn’t usually venture out of her wing of the house. “What brings you here?”

She slips into the room and closes the door, eyes downcast. “I need to speak to you.”

Considering this evening has been a bust anyway—no pun intended—I gesture her in. “Take a seat. What can I do for you?”

She wrings her hands as she approaches. But the moment she sits, the nervous twitching stops. She takes a deep breath and makes eye contact for perhaps the first time since I met her.

“I need to discuss Viktor.” She’s still as soft-spoken as ever, but there’s a grit to her words that I don’t recognize.

“What about him?”

“I just caught him in our bedroom—with another woman.”

I can’t say I’m surprised. But I am annoyed. Any regular fool would have had the sense to keep his affairs outside of the marital bed.

Viktor is no regular fool, though. He’s turned that shit into an art form.

“It’s not the first time, either,” she continues. “He didn’t come to our bedroom on our wedding night. When I went looking for him, I found him in a guest room with one of the singers.”

One can always count on my brother to do the classy thing.

“I am sorry, Mila,” I say evenly. “I’ll speak to him.”

Her eyebrows arch and something remarkably close to defiance flashes across her face.

I’m fast getting the feeling that the delicate little wallflower Viktor thought he was marrying is anything but. Honestly, part of me is rooting for exactly that.

Give him hell, Mila. The devil knows he deserves it.

“Actually, I was hoping for more than that.”

I’ll admit, I’m intrigued. “This conversation might be a lot more productive if you just tell me what you want.”

“Freedom,” she blurts immediately.

I wince. “I’m afraid it’s a little late for that, Mila.”

“I’m not asking for a divorce or a separation,” she hastens to clarify. “I’m happy to play my part—happy, submissive wife—just as long as I get to have my fun, too.”

My own eyebrow drifts upward. This is definitely not what I was expecting. “You want to be free to have affairs of your own. Is that right?”

She shrugs. “Why should the men get to have all the fun?”

“You could just do it. Why tell me?”

“Because you are the pakhan. Because I’m living in your house. And because if, one day, Viktor happens to walk in on me and my paramour… I’ll have a big shield to hold in front of me.”

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