Page 18 of Lethal Legacy

I tune her out and stare through the windshield at the city lights, trying to work out what the fuck to do about this particular disaster.

We’re almost at the Hale offices, and Lucia’s café is coming up on my left. She wasn’t lying about her hours. Since our encounter I’ve been discreetly watching Lucia Lopez. She works more hours than even I do.

What I don’t understand is why.

What drives a beautiful young woman to work every available hour in a job she’s clearly far too intelligent for?

It’s just one of the mysteries about Lucia Lopez I’d very much like to solve.

Preferably while she’s naked and impaled on my cock.

Christ.

I drag my thoughts back to the problem at hand with no small effort.

“Mrs. Laidlaw.” I start again, this time in the icy tone that has reduced countless criminals to shaking wrecks. “Stefania was contracted to stay for the next school term and the entire summer holidays. Your agency has been paid a three-month advance. All the security checks have been completed. And now you tell me that after less than a week, she’s quit? What, exactly, do you expect me to do on such short notice?”

“Cope, Mr. Stevanovsky,” she says, in a tone even more arctic than my own. “People do, you know. You could try spending more time at home, perhaps.”

I stare at the phone in astonishment. Across the car, Dimitry is shaking with silent laughter. I send him a death stare, which only makes him laugh harder.

“If you are unable to fulfill my requirements,” I say coldly in an attempt to regain ascendancy, “then perhaps your agency doesn’t deserve its reputation.”

“And if you insist on completely ignoring your three children, not to mention setting impossible standards for their nanny,” snaps back the haughty English voice through my car speakers, “then I suggest you find yourself a new agency. Although given that you’ve gone through five in as many months, Mr. Stevanovsky, I don’t like your chances. Good day—and good luck.”

The line turns into a series of long beeps.

“I think,” Dimitry says, barely containing his laughter, “that the good Mrs. Laidlaw hung up on you.”

5

ROMAN

Following a much needed and exceedingly satisfying session in the boxing ring with Dimitry, I head back to my penthouse. It’s been strangely quiet the past two days, which has, to my surprise, felt a bit odd. As much as I’ve done everything humanly possible to resist having Mikhail’s three children thrust into my life, during the five months they’ve been living here permanently, I’ve become strangely accustomed to hearing their chatter drift up from the floor below.

I don’t allow them into my penthouse, of course. And beyond taking down delivery cartons on the nights the chef is off, I rarely visit their apartment on the floor below.

No matter the instructions in Mikhail’s will, bequeathing care of his children to me, their godfather, this situation is definitely temporary. I’m not cut out for parenthood any more than I am for relationships. Besides, children need a mother. And just as soon as Mikhail’s nightmare of an ex-wife finishes her modeling contract in the USA, I’ll be forcibly impressing that fact on her.

I push away the unwelcome knowledge that Inger is hardly perfect mother material. She’s going to have to change. Or at least find enough nannies to do her job for her. I can’t raise three children, particularly when one of them is a very angry fifteen-year-old girl who hates my guts.

What the fuck do I know about teenage girls? Or five-year-old ones, for that matter, like the youngest. Let alone thirteen-year-old Mickey, who doesn’t play sports and has more in common with my tech geeks than the bratva he was born into.

I could kill that damn nanny.

How am I supposed to find a replacement by tomorrow? Bitter experience has taught me not to try using my assistants in the interim.

I throw my bag down in the corridor, trying not to think about Lucia Lopez standing right here, only days ago. Part of the reason I lost it so badly that day was because for once, I was expecting the children for a late meal before driving them to the airport for their flight to London, where they’re currently staying with Yuri’s wife, Vera, their paternal grandmother.

Thank God the kids weren’t in the apartment when Lucia turned up. The thought of Ofelia’s sharp teenage eyes watching me with Lucia Lopez doesn’t appeal at all.

Which brings me neatly back to the other problem I’m currently facing: Miss Lopez’s undelivered tip.

Oh, sure. It’s the tip that’s bothering you.

I shower and sit down at the wide dining table with my laptop. I have cameras in my office, of course. I’m the only person with access to them.

For the past three days, I’ve been resisting the urge to watch the footage they captured that morning in my office.

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