Page 22 of The Brutal Arrangement

Because she belongs to the fucking Mafia.

She wasn’t just a peer, a fellow stressed woman around my age.

She wasn’t a mere ordinary woman I’d been duped to befriend.

So desperate as I was for a connection like a friend, I’d so stupidly ignored that shewasa member of a Mafia family. Of course, she’d be skillful at capturing me.

“Lucy.” She grunted as I almost wrestled my way to freedom. “Stop. And please listen to me.”

Shrugging out of her hold, I panted and stared her down. I wasn’t so naïve as to think I could outrun her again. Hell, she might sic some of those burly guards after me the next time. Stalling and glaring at her, I tried to understand why this was even happening to me. I was amaid, a nobody. I was supposed to be invisible so I could work and earn my pay. That was it. But I’d messed that all up in this delusion that she could almost be like a friend.

“I did listen to you,” I shot back. “I heard you. I heard you say that you expect me to marry your fiancé and?—”

“No.” She shook her head, keeping her hands out as if she had to either ward me back like a wild animal or grab me again. “He’s not my fiancé.”

I growled. “Whoever he is, he’s not going to be mine either!”

“Please. Look, I know this sounds bizarre.”

“No. This isn’tbizarre, Katerina. This isinsane. What kind of a world—” I held my hand up. That wasn’t an argument we’d ever settle. We came from two different worlds. In her reality, this kind of criminal shit was the norm! “I don’t want to get involved. Not with you. Not with anything your family does. I want no part in any of this.”

“Even if it would cover your mom’s bills?” She furrowed her brow, determined and not discouraged by my heated words.

“Bills that you had no right to snoop and look for, dammit!”

“But I did. I’m desperate, Lucy,” she admitted, unafraid to let me know that. “I’m desperate to avoid this arrangement, and you seem like a good person to ask this favor.”

“Marrying some Mafia monster you want to avoid is not a fucking favor!” Talking back to a client—even worse, cursing at one—was a big, bad no-no I never dared to do before. At this moment, though, Katerina wasn’t a client, an almost-friend, or a stranger. She was my adversary, expecting me to marry someone against my will.

“Please.” She shoved her hair back off her face, looking as wild as I felt. “Marry this man, and I’ll handle all of your expenses for your mother. I’ll get her into the Dream Garden facility where you said yourself that she’d do better under their more skilled care.”

I regretted ever opening up to her. She was using all of it against me now in the cruelest way possible.

“I cannotmarry him.” Her admission was a genuine one, shared with a wretched tone of fear.

“Why?” I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t interested. Nothing she would say could sway me from the deep-seated need to avoid getting involved with the damn Mafia.

She blinked, perhaps surprised that I’d asked that. But she recovered quickly, saying, “Because I belong with another.”

“Tough shit.” I held my hands up again. “This isyourproblem, not mine.”

“My uncle wants me to marry this man so he can use me.”

A ludicrous laugh burst from me. “Oh, like you want to useme, as your pawn?”

She wasn’t undeterred, pressing her case. “He only wants me to fulfill this arrangement so I can spy on this other family. I won’t do it.”

“Again, not my problem!” I failed to see how she could even think like this. That I could be a pawn, a thing, to use to her advantage.

“It wouldn’t be a problem at all if I don’t leave and marry that man,” she insisted. “I refuse to help my uncle. I won’t do it. I hate everything he stands for, and I will never help him.”

“Not my?—”

She stepped forward once, fury glinting in her eyes. It didn’t seem that she was mad at me, per se, but the topic of her uncle. I didn’t like Anton either, but that was irrelevant. I wasn’t paid to like any of these Kozlovs. I was only paid to be their maid and help with the housekeeping.

“You underestimate what I’m saying, Lucy. I hate him. I hate my uncle with every fiber of my being, and if I have a chance to thwart him, to bring him down, to pay him back for daring to have my father killed, I will take it.”

“He killed your father?”

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