Page 104 of Inked Adonis

The phone is surprisingly small in the palm of my hand. Such an insignificant thing for all the trouble it’s causing me. Something this little shouldn’t be able to wreck my world.

“It would’ve ruined your plans to fuck me over if you’d confessed right away.”

She flinches like I slapped her. “There isn’t a plan, Sam. I don’t have one. I never have.”

“Thisis the plan,” I rasp. “You became part of it the second you let Katerina talk you into keeping it.”

“She didn’t talk me into—” Nova presses her hands to her temples and rubs like the headache might kill her. “I wanted totell you the moment I got home that day, but you weren’t here. And then you left. There wasn’t a good time.”

“Of course. You’re so innocent in all of this. I disappeared, so you decided to become pen pals with my ex-wife, and it’smyfault?” I growl. “Sounds like a fitting punishment for me. I’m sure she had plenty of poison to pour in your ear.”

Her eyes snap to mine, but she doesn’t deny it. “I wasn’t punishing you. I didn’t seek her out.Shecame tome. She showed up and started tossing around all these crazy accusations about you being violent and your childhood and?—”

“And you trusted her over me. Because why wouldn’t you?” I ask sarcastically. “Why not?”

“You don’t exactly make it easy to trust you!” She lifts her shoulders with a gut-wrenching hiccup. “You don’t tell me anything, Sam.”

“Good thing, too, if you’ve got Katerina in your ear.” I remember her “accidental” visit to Ilya at the Litvinov Group offices, and I can’t stop the bitter laugh that rumbles out of me. “Ilya, too, right? That’s why you were in his office.”

Horror washes over her face. “I was at the office looking foryou!”

“Sure you were. It’s a great alibi. Hell, I bought it.” I offer her a few slow claps. “Tell me: did you fuck him before or after you organized this plan?”

“Fuck you!” Her hand flexes like she wants to slap me. Hot, angry tears stream down her cheeks. “I want nothing to do with any of this—your brother, your ex, none of it.”

Or your world. The words are hovering there, unspoken but no less true.

“And yet you kept the phone. You could’ve told Myles. You could’ve tossed it in the lake on a walk. Anything, Nova. But you kept it.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You want to know the truth?”

I laugh in her face. “As if you’re capable of telling it.”

She raises her chin defiantly, her red-rimmed eyes meeting mine. “I kept it because I was scared. I was scared that, maybe, Katerina was right about you. That one day, I might need that phone to call for help.”

A kind of rage I usually keep tethered down flashes through me, and I lift the phone between us and crush it in my palm.

The plastic cracks and splinters, and then I throw it to the floor where it shatters once and for all.

“If you thought for even a second you could rely on Katerina Alekseeva if you were ever in trouble, then you’re even more of a fool than I realized.” My voice trembles with anger I have no other outlet for. “Even if you are telling me the truth, the risk you took by letting that venomous bitch inside your head, Nova… You were careless with your own life and the lives of countless others.”

I swore I’d never be responsible for her tears again, but she’s sobbing now. She wraps her arms around her body like a shield. “I was alone, and I… I didn’t know. You weren’t here. You weren’t fucking here.”

“Because I had a mess to clean up. Little did I know you were busy making an even bigger one.”

“Samuil—”

I turn back, and the sight of her—tear-streaked and shattered but still standing—nearly undoes me. “What? The floor is fucking yours, Nova. Make me understand.”

She shudders. Says nothing.

I grit my teeth. “That’s what I thought.” I pivot and start to march for the door.

But just as my hand is closing on the knob, she speaks.

“You’re right.”

That freezes me in tracks. I don’t turn, but I listen.

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