Page 85 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

“Is it safe to be here?”

Again, I notice Dima’s body tense. Something happened that he isn’t telling me.

He sets my bag aside in one of the many rooms and then leads me further down the hall to an office.

“This is an office conversation?” I ask.

He sits down behind a wide, wooden desk. “If we went into the bedroom, I was afraid I’d get… distracted.”

What we did on the phone last night flashes in my mind. I can feel the memory burning in my cheeks. I push the thought away and sit down opposite him, hands folded in my lap.

“What’s going on, Dima? You’re frightening me.”

“I’m glad you’re back,” he murmurs again. “You were gone forever.”

“It was only a couple days.”

“Well, it felt like forever.”

I laugh nervously. “For a change, I agree with you. But going was useful. We have someone in Chicago looking out for Lukas, which makes me feel better. Still, it feels good to be together again. Safer.”

His smile tenses around the edges. I’ve had enough of the secrets. “Okay, come on, Dima. What in the hell is going on? What happened?”

If it had something to do with Lukas, he would have told me. I know that. Still, the gears of my imagination begin to turn.

“It’s not Lukas,” he says as though reading my mind. “I still don’t know where he is and we haven’t heard anything.”

“Okay, so what is it?”

He sighs. “Ilyasov was here last night.”

If it was possible for my eyes to shoot out of my head the way they do in cartoons, they would have. I’m stunned. I don’t even know what to say.

“He walked in like he owned the place. I had security change all of the locks and alarm systems this morning.” He leans back in his chair and shakes his head. “He was listening in on our phone call.”

“Fucking pervert,” I seethe. “What did he want? What did he say?”

Dima shrugs. “He wanted to rattle me. He wanted to show me that he can get in this house, that he knows where I am, that he is already one Trial ahead of me.”

I frown. “He already finished Trial Two?”

“No. He claims the people I’ve already killed don’t count because the Romanoff Trials hadn’t been initiated yet. I have to kill another don.”

My shoulders sag forward under the weight of all of this shit. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a frustrated pause between us.

And then Dima’s fist slams down on the table. The lamp on the corner rattles off and explodes on the ground. Dima doesn’t even seem to notice the damage. He shoves himself up out of his chair and paces across the room.

“I know this is all him fucking showboating. If Ilyasov was truly confident he’d win, he wouldn’t bother trying to get in my head. We both grew up in this house. He and I learned all of the secret passageways in and out. All of the windows that can be shimmied loose, all of the trellises that can be scaled. My parents never thought one of our own would betray us this way, so how am I supposed to keep him out?”

“Let him in,” I say, throwing up my hands. “Let him walk through the front door—and when he gets here, put a bullet between his eyes. Done.”

Dima shakes his head. “The men who remained loyal to me are shaky at best. They need to see me as a genuine leader. They need to know I’m strong enough to defend my family name and them. I can’t just kill Ilyasov. I have to destroy him.”

He makes a sickening amount of sense. But God, I wish he didn’t.

---