Page 105 of Sinner's Secret

Yvgeny left without saying anything else.

“Shower please,” Nika whispered as soon as the door was closed.

“I really think you should see a doctor,” Baz told her. “Your neck looks...” Like someone tried to strangle you. “You need a doctor.”

“There’s not much anyone can do. If I stop breathing, well that’s going to be a problem, but I haven’t yet, so...shower.”

With a sigh, he set her down in front of the bathroom door.

She went inside and shut the door in his face. The sound of the lock engaging seemed overly loud.

Shit. It was never a good sign when a woman shuts a door in a man’s face.

He heard the shower turn on and decided this was a battle he couldn’t win.

Someone knocked on the hotel room door. Baz looked through the peep hole to find his cousin, smiling like a benevolent pope.

Irritating shit. Now what?

He opened the door and Yvgeny walked in with an armload of clothing.

“Sure, come on in,” Baz said.

“Where’s...ah,” Yvgeny tilted his head toward the bathroom. “That’s probably just as well.”

There was a guilty tone in his cousin’s voice Baz didn’t like at all. “Why, what did you do now?”

“I didn’t really want her to hear how I chopped the heads off of those vampires so they’d stay dead.”

“Just how many of them were there?”

“Ten. Not all of them made it up to the penthouse.”

Baz winced. Ten out of two hundred was quite a few.

“I also called the council to let them know what the Ruiz vampires were trying to do.”

“Really?” Baz asked with all the sarcasm he could find slathered on the word. “Could you let me in on that secret, because nothing Antonio said made any sense.”

Yvgeny waved Baz’s attitude off. “It’s the oldest play in the books. World domination.”

“Seriously?” So, Antonio hadn’t been speaking out of his armpit. “I guess we’re not the only morons around.”

“They wiped out the Long family about six months ago according to my dear aunt.”

Baz did some math in his head and didn’t like the answer at all. “So, we’re actually down twenty-two people?”

“Yes, well, we always were an endangered species.” Yvgeny’s smile dissolved and he glanced toward the bathroom. “How is she?”

“Tired, irritated, in pain. I’d like for her to see a doctor. Her neck looks...bad.”

“She refused?”

“She says she’s peopled out.”

“I have a paramedic in-house. I’ll send her up, just in case it’s men who she’s tired of.”

Baz’s eyebrows rose. “Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “What did my mother say?”

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