Page 112 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

It takes some looking to find the drawer with all the cutlery and another few minutes for me to locate the microwave. I scrounge up a fork, but when I finally stumble across the microwave, I realize that there isn’t a button in sight. It looks like it was stolen off the set of The Jetsons, all black glass and smooth titanium.

Hm. I’m too hungry to crack this code right now. So I abort the microwave mission, pop myself up on one of the barstools, grab a fork, and start shoveling cold lasagna into my mouth like a hungover Garfield.

“So freaking good,” I moan with my mouth stuffed.

I power through half the lasagna before I start craving something to drink. I swivel around on my stool, but like everything else in this kitchen, the glasses are probably hidden somewhere out of sight.

“If I were a glass, where would I be?” I muse out loud. My words come out muffled because there’s still so much food in my mouth.

“Top cabinet.”

I nearly choke on my lasagna as I turn to see the one person I was really, really trying not to see.

“Aleks,” I try to say, but that just makes the choking worse. It’s taking full effort not to spray chunks of cheese and tomato across the room.

Smirking with amusement, he glides into the kitchen and pulls out a glass from a cabinet so high up that I’d never have been able to reach it on my own. After filling it with water from a pitcher in the refrigerator, he slides it across the counter towards me. It’s a thoughtless, effortless flick, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it cruises to a dead stop right in front of me.

Everything always works out perfectly for Aleksandr Makarova.

Rolling my eyes, I reach for the glass—and promptly knock it over.

Jesus Christ, not this again. The man must think I don’t understand the concept of cups.

I pick up the glass hurriedly as I swallow the massive meteor of food in my mouth and dab up the spilled water with a nearby dish towel.

Aleks, meanwhile, is snorting with laughter at the far end of the island. “I forgot who I was dealing with.”

“Shut up,” I mumble. “It’s your fault. You can’t just sneak up on people like that.”

“I wasn’t sneaking up on anyone; I was walking into the kitchen in my own home,” he says, still amused. “You were just so deep throating your food that you failed to notice me.”

I flush with color. “Imprisonment makes a girl hungry, I guess.”

“That’s no one’s fault but your own.”

“Right, of course,” I snap, rolling my eyes. “You had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“As I’ve told you before, Olivia, we all have choices. But don’t let me stop you. You and that lasagna seem to be getting along really well.”

I pick up the fork like a hatchet, even though I have no real interest in continuing to eat. But I also don’t want him to think that I’m so self-conscious that I’m going to stop eating just because he walked in here. It’s a Catch-22, as always with him.

“You have maids and a personal chef,” I say, mostly to fill the silence. “Spoiled much?”

His gaze is always so much more intense when it’s quiet. “You think I have the time to cook and clean?”

“You wouldn’t do it even if you did have the time.”

“No, probably not.”

“What’s it like?” I ask. “To have other people manage your life for you?”

He scoffs. “They manage my house. I manage my life. There’s a difference.”

“Feels like you’re splitting hairs, but I digress. Do all your slaves live here?”

“My employees,” he enunciates, “have quarters in the back.” He points through the open window to an elegant longhouse-type structure past the pool. “There’s room enough for twenty, though only twelve are occupied at the moment.”

I gulp, realizing how far out of my league I am right now. One housekeeper is an unfathomable luxury. Twelve is… I don’t even know the word for it. A lot, to say the least.

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