Page 101 of Shattered Cradle (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“I know that.”

He frowns. “How could you possibly know that?”

“I think she’d set herself on fire first.”

He growls something unflattering under his breath as we enter one of the sitting rooms that adjoins the gardens. Demyan goes to the sliding glass doors and opens them to let the breeze in.

I sit down just as my mother walks into the room.

“What have you got for me?” I ask her.

“I spoke to Donald,” she says, sitting in the seat next to me. Her eyes drift up and notice Demyan for the first time. “Oh. I haven’t seen you in a while, Demyan.”

He looks confused. “I’m always around.”

“Like a loyal little puppy,” she remarks.

His face turns dark. I have to bite back a laugh. My mother doesn’t notice a thing, of course. She just looks back at me.

“Is this not a good time to talk?” she asks.

“Of course it is,” I tell her. “Anything you want to say, you can say in front of Demyan. He is my little sidekick, after all. The Robin to my Batman.”

Demyan flips me the bird behind Yulia’s shoulder, and I have to swallow another laugh. “Go on. You spoke to Donald?”

“He was very surprised to hear from me at all. He figured I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him once I found out about his mission against you.”

“How did you play it off?”

“Conflicting loyalties. I defended you a little, but also made it obvious to him that I was afraid.”

“Afraid of…?”

“You, of course,” she says. “He needed to believe that I could be manipulated into giving him information about you. Once he knew that I was afraid of what you might do to me, he thought he had an in.”

“Very smart.”

Her expression turns smug. “I can be of use to you, Aleksandr. I told you there’s no need to shut me out.”

“You’ll have to keep proving that point until I believe it,” I say. “What else did you tell him?”

“That you told me he was the one responsible for the crimes he was trying to palm off on you. But I told him that I didn’t believe that for a second. That I knew him and I knew he would never do something like that.”

“You didn’t have to lie about that part, did you?”

She sighs. “It’s complicated.”

I snort. “Name something that isn’t.”

“We’re going to be meeting soon,” she adds. “Donald and I.”

I sit upright. “When?”

“Two days from now. For lunch.”

I nod, mind whirling with possibilities already. “That’s a good first step.”

“Actually,” she says, hedging a little, “it could be the last step.”

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