Page 58 of The Brutal Arrangement

I shook my head.

“What have you questioned her about?” He watched me, curious.

I shook my head again. “I haven’t questioned her at all. I’ve been trying other methods of getting her to submit.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Maxim groused. “You’ve just been fucking her? And not even trying to interrogate her?”

I scowled. “It’s all part of the plan.” They didn’t seem convinced, so I tried again. “She was a virgin before I married her. She’s docile and innocent. She knew nothing, all right? And I can tell every time that I… push her, she’s about to crack and cave under my control.”

Maxim narrowed his eyes while Saul shrugged. “Okay…” he drawled.

“It’s great that you’re clearly getting some,” Maxim said, “but have you forgotten that we’re hoping she’ll tell us something about what Anton or Katerina are doing?”

I hadn’t forgotten about that. I could never forget my duty. But I had let myself get carried away with the gift of my submissive wife who could take everything I gave her.

Saul chuckled. “I never thought I’d see the day whenyouare smitten over a piece of ass.” He laughed harder, even making Maxim smile. “I mean, Brother. Do you hear yourself?”

I only scowled again.

“Hell, I doubt she’d know anything,” Maxim admitted, laughing a bit. “Just a maid. We ran a preliminary background check on her, and nothing really came up.”

Saul nodded. “And the one time she was on her phone, it was not to make a call but to listen to an old voicemail from a debt place.”

I frowned. “She’s got debt?” I suddenly hated how I knew nothing about my wife. That wasn’t true. I knew her body very well. I was versed in how she liked to come on my dick.

I had avoided taking the time to get to know her, though, keeping everything strictly physical. I hadn’t wanted to let heraffect me and make me too connected to her because that would give her more power to hurt me or use me.

Dammit.I rubbed my face. I hated how jaded and twisted I was, assumingeverywoman would end up wanting to hurt me or see me suffer. That was how deeply my mother’s betrayals ran in my psyche.

“I didn’t follow up with it,” Saul said, “but she doesn’t seem to be a threat like a spy.” He made awhateverface, indifferent about it. “Because she hasn’t even turned her phone on much since she’s been here.”

No. I’m not doing this. I’m not going there.I refused to entertain the idea that when Lucy told me she wouldn’t lie to me or trick me, she meant it. Maxim lucked out in finding Sloane. She was a good woman and a good person forhim. I trusted my future sister-in-law, not only because Maxim trusted her enough to fall for her, but because I had a good feeling about her too.

But whenever I wanted to trust Lucy with more than being my submissive wife in bed, I locked up and got nervous about being gullible.

Distance seemed critical between us. But the more that she stayed in my bed, the more I was tempted to linger and treat her as more than literally just a pussy to fuck when I was home.

“She seems obedient,” Maxim remarked. “When Sloane took her to the salon earlier, Lucy almost turned her down so she could askyoufor permission to go.”

I frowned. “She went to the salon?”

Maxim rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Sloane’s been curious about her.”

Well, shit. They were making it sound like Lucy was going to be part of thewholefamily now. Not just a woman forced into marrying me.

I didn’t want to admit how nervous I was to trust Lucy. Not to my brothers. It was too vulnerable of a topic to touch on with them, and I’d hate it if they thought I was being too paranoid to let Lucy into my life.

“Anyway,” I said, eager to change the subject, “based on what John told me before I came here, the Romanos don’t seem to have Nik. He’s been following those leads the most.”

Saul shook his head. “The fucker’s staying hidden. I can tell.”

Maxim agreed. “He’s still sending those daily messages that we can see on his computer.”

“All right. So let’s say he’s alive and trying to stay captive for information. That doesn’t change the fact that someone took him and they need to pay.”

They didn’t argue with me on that point, but we left it at that. We would treat Nik’s disappearance with caution.

Now that I knew that Lucy had gone to a salon, I was very curious about what she had done.

---