Page 166 of Rise of the Queen

Trino was laughing with Oscar. “She ripped me a new one. I think she might’ve bruised my sternum from her finger poking me as she cursed me and pretty much my entire family in Spanish.”

I raised my eyebrow, glancing around the room quickly. I could see that everyone else shared in my so-far favorable impression of Emilia. I looked between Oscar and Gus, asking, “And what did he do in response?”

They both laughed. “He didn’t say anything at first, then he asked her to dinner. We were sure she was going to smack him, but she accepted instead,” Gus said.

I looked to Trino, unable to hide my smile. “I like her,” I said, in Italian.

“Me too,” he said, his smile stretching across his face.

“Bubba, did you find anything?”I asked. He glanced at me, shocked that I knew he’d been looking. I laughed, internally.“You were very discreet. I can feel you looking now, apparently.”

He exhaled, visibly relaxing. He shared what he could see of her aura, as he said,“Nothing out of the ordinary. She actually really likes Trino. He told her everything right away. She knows who he is. She doesn’t know the extent of what we’re facing, but she’s fine with who he is. Sorry, Misha.”

“She needs Viktor though. I can see that,”I said, looking at what Andrei could see.

Ivan looked to Viktor, asking him in Russian, “How long does it take Kostya to fix someone? Like could you do it from a handshake?”

Viktor thought for a moment, then said, “It’s possible that’s all it would take. Unless there’s extensive damage. It takes longer in that case.”

“Judging by the others we’ve seen, I would not call this extensive damage,”Andrei said.

“Can Kostya be ready to help you tonight? Headlights off this time,” Ivan asked.

Viktor simply nodded.“I say we look at everyone. Viktor can fix as many as possible tonight without drawing too much attention to it. We can come up with a plan on how to tell Trino everything later,”Ivan told us all.

Adrik steered the normal conversation toward Trino’s security team, giving the rest of us time and space to go through everyone else in the room. Everyone checked out, much to my relief. I was beginning to get slightly paranoid at the constant betrayals we couldn’t seem to get away from.

The longer we talked, the more relaxed Emilia got too. She laughed along with everyone, she gave Trino a hard time a few times, and she seemed to be more at ease than when she firstarrived. She whispered something to Trino at one point. He looked to me, asking where the bathroom is.

I stood up, along with Ivan and Andrei. “I can show her,” I said. While she had been relaxing, she was once again petrified that Ivan and Andrei had stood up with me. I laughed. “Don’t worry. They’re just very protective of me. They’re much nicer than they look.”

As we walked across the floor to the bathroom, Emilia very shyly asked me, “How long have you known Trino?”

I thought for a few minutes, glancing at Ivan and Andrei. “I actually don’t know the answer to that question. I’m terrible about keeping up with information like that. Like six months or so? Sure, that seems right,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

She laughed. “We’ll go with that,” she said as she walked into the bathroom. I waited outside with Ivan and Andrei. Almost everyone in the office had gone home for the day, but there were still a few overachievers still working. Ivan and Andrei both put themselves between me and anyone left in the office without me having to say anything.

Ivan said, in Russian, “I haven’t seen anything on her. I also don’t have my usual murderous rage when it comes to chicks around her.”

“If ever there was a glowing endorsement, that should be it,” I said, laughing.

“She needs Viktor, but otherwise, I think she checks out. So far, everyone in the office has checked out from what I can see. Although I think we need to have a discussion about how much Keith hearts Stephen,” Andrei said.

I giggled. “I caught that too. Like maybe a little stalkery, even. Does Stephen still hang out with him?”

“When would he have time? He’s always with us now,” Ivan said, his sly grin curling up one side of his mouth.

“And this is how Keith came to hate us all so he decided to revenge move to Colombia,” I said as Emilia walked out of the bathroom. Her eyes were a little wide when she heard us speaking Russian. “Don’t worry about that either. We were actually making jokes. Russian is just such a coarse language that anything sounds like a threat.”

“You could say the same for Spanish and Italian, honestly. My neighbor is Arabic though. They win the prize for harshest language ever,” she said as we walked back to the office.

“You might have a point there,” I said. Adrik’s eyes landed on mine as we walked back through the door. Since he couldn’t see that my eyes changed, I pushed my warmth to him.

We heard Ivan laughing in our heads.“I can feel you two being fucking adorable right now,”he told us. I glanced at Ivan, completely surprised he could feel that and also apologetic he could feel that.“Don’t apologize, princess. I think I’m just extra sensitive to you both right now. It’s not a normal occurrence,”he told us.

I climbed in Adrik’s lap, wrapping his arms around me as Ivan sat down on the couch with us. I did catch Trino kissing Emilia’s hand as she sat down next to him. It was a very sweet moment.

One that was short-lived, as Adrik asked, “Have you heard anything on Martin?”

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