Page 32 of Dance of Madness

She smirks, rolling her eyes. “I can’t keep up with him.”

I giggle. “I don't even try.”

Just as we both laugh again, movement in the corner of my eye pulls my attention.

Goddammit.

My smile fades as Alicia saunters toward us from another VIP booth,alsowith a glass of champagne in her hand, eyeing me like a shark who's smelled blood in the water.

“Milena…” she says, smiling like poison.

“Oh, fuck, I remember you!” Val says loudly, pulling himself away from Kylie’s neck and smiling predatorily at Alicia. “Aren’t you that wannabe that couldn’t hack it and quit? Or did you get kicked out? I honestly forget.”

Alicia shoots him a cold look. “Iresigned, actually. I had other endeavors that I wished to pursue besides following Kuzmina’s orders.”

“Couldn’t hack it.” Val nods wisely. “That’s all you had to say.”

Her gaze runs over Kyle and Kylie. “Still the company slut, I see.”

Val grins and loops his arms over their shoulders. “Guilty as charged, baby.”

Alicia rolls her eyes, then drags them back to me.

“Did you have fun the other night?” she says with saccharine sweetness.

My skin prickles.

Maybe.

Yes.

I shrug. “It was just a creepy old house.”

“No monsters in the dark?”

Her voice is mocking. I look her dead in the eye.

“Nope.”

Her expression flickers with—annoyance? Disappointment?

I mean, Alicia and I have never gotten along. But there’s a huge difference between “not being friends” and “sending someone to a dark mansion where you know there’s a masked man waiting to chase them and then try tofuckthem.”

That’s just psychotic. And again, I’mnotgoing to give her the satisfaction.

Alicia flutters her eyelashes, switching gears. “I hear Leo Debolsky’s back in the city,” she says, a pointed sharpness to her tone.

I shrug. “Is he?”

Her smile hardens. “I also hear he and your father had averyproductive conversation.”

She lets that hang. I just blink mildly at her. “Did you really?”

“Indeed. Irina and I are very close.”

Shit. I always forget that Irina Lenkov, Alicia’s sidekick, is Leo’s cousin. Or second cousin or something like that.

“Who knows,” she says, stepping closer, voice lower. “If you’re still looking for monsters, maybe you’ll get to be Mrs. Debolsky after all.”

---