Page 60 of XV (Fifteen) (War of Roses 1)

The way he stresses that word sends a ripple of unease throughout the room. Through one man in particular. My eyes go to him automatically, though I’m not sure why at first. He is standing just beyond the table, his face partially hidden by shadow. But his shape is familiar.

“Should I explain?” Mischa’s fingers trail my cheek, turning my face toward him. The look in his eyes takes my breath away: hot, molten anger. For me? No… For once, his ire has a new target. “Show them, Little One,” he goads. “You think there are any traitors in our midst?”

With his thumb pressing forcefully against my bottom lip, I sense what he doesn’t say out loud once again:Here’s your chance. So, gamble.

“Is this a game to you?” Nikolaus demands, his irritation visibly echoed by at least six of the other seated men. “Just who are you trying to accuse,Pakhan—”

“I don’t know,” Mischa says, his voice deceptively soft. “Just who among us would dare betray our families. Our blood. Our lives?”

With each word, his volume rises while a hush simultaneously falls over the assembled crowd. Out of shock. Disbelief.

“I suppose that you have more than some ‘lucky’ whore to bring charges against someone,Pakhan,” the calmer man wonders.

“What do you think?” Mischa tilts my chin down toward him. “Do you sense a fucking liar, Little One?”

Slowly, my gaze drifts across the room to the man in Nikolaus’s section. He’s moved deeper into the ranks, almost as if attempting to stay out of view. But I can smell him even from here; there is no escaping memory.

“Kostas!” Mischa declares warmly, zoning in on the same shadowed figure. “Come closer, brother.”

“Mischa—” Nikolaus rises to his feet with both hands braced against the table. “You wouldn’t dare accuse my son.”

Several murmurs of concern rise, creating a chorus.You’re crossing a dangerous line.

Mischa smiles, revealing nothing. “Let’s hear it from the man himself,” he declares, beckoning Kostas closer with a wave of his hand. “You wouldn’t dare consort with an enemy, now would you, brother?”

Gradually, Kostas comes forward to stand behind his father, and I can’t fight the instinctive tensing of my muscles. He hasn’t changed much since his last meeting with Robert. Except for the fact that he’s lost his mocking smile.

“You have a pretty little bitch,” he mused once about me, his accent crisp and American. “She’s almost as sexy as that sister of yours.”

Robert, ever the businessman, laughed at the insult to me. Right before he formed a fist and punched the younger man’s jaw for the insult to his sister. Blood was everything to a Winthorp. The blood they deemed worth protecting, anyway.

Mischa’s words keep echoing through my thoughts.You don’t know a damn thing about your fucking Winthorp.

“What is the reason for this, Mischa?” Kostas wonders, drawing me back to the present. His scowl betrays the same apparent lack of respect his father has. But, as his eyes flicker across me, they widen ever so slightly.

“Have you seen this whore before?” Mischa wonders, tilting my face in the other man’s direction.

Kostas scoffs dismissively. “I don’t remember every bitch I’ve fucked,Pakhan.”

Mischa just chuckles. “This one remembersyou.” He casually flicks a strand of hair behind my ear, exposing more of my face. “She was a particular favorite of Robert Winthorp, the younger. Do you remember now?”

Chaos erupts.

Reddening with rage, Nikolaus nearly lunges across the table. “You’ve crossed a line,Mal’chik.”

“Have I?” Mischa wonders.

This close to him, I feel the subtle changes in his body before they unfold across his face. The dangerous tensing. The faint flames of rage prickling against my skin.

“Then let me ask him directly. Kostas…have you been selling to Robert Winthorp?”

Redness blossoms over the younger man’s cheeks. “You even have to ask?” But his eyes cut in my direction again, slower this time. In recognition. His throat bobs slightly as he swallows. “I’d never—”

“I assume you have your personal accountant on call,” Mischa says over him, directing the question to his father. “Have him run these numbers through your accounts. See if any holes match.” He fishes the crumpled notebook page out of his pocket and shoves it toward Nikolaus.

The older man sneers and then spits at the table. “How fucking dare you.”

Mischa doesn’t display any hint of regret. Instead, his smile turns feral around the edges, his eyes less mocking than before. “If you don’t want your son’s treason to reflect badly on you, Nikolaus, then I suggest you run the goddamn numbers.”

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