Page 20 of Corruption

Maybe we still—

No. Not that far. Alik and I are already treading on thin ice when it comes to his brother as it is. The last thing we need to do is make her our unicorn.

“Trust me. Alik takes nothing from me that I’m not willing to give and gives nothing to me that I can’t take.”

Kiya still looks skeptical. Concerned even. There’s something behind that concern. There’s a reason she waited until Alik was gone to ask me all this despite her arguing with him earlier. She may be innocent in the ways of physical pleasure but this girl is far from completely innocent.

She’s very guarded, though. Cautious. Good at reading people too. I’ll have to get her a little less cautious to uncover more without her picking up on it.

I smile at Kiya and say, “Come on. I know exactly what you and I are going to do today.”

“If it involves going in that… that room, I’d rather not.”

I roll my eyes and grab Kiya by the hand to tug her away from the table. She follows with little resistance despite her apprehensions.

“Unfortunately, I’m not taking you there. We’re going to get my laptop to begin your education.”

8

Alik

The electronic locking mechanisms on the front door of my brother’s home—our father’s old home—instantly click and unlock the door as soon as I approach because of the security watching the feed.

I enter the house and immediately go to the elevator to take me to the third floor of the mansion and the floor where Vaughn conducts all his business when he works from home. I don’t bother to knock when I get to his office. I just open the door and let myself in.

I find him at his desk wearing a pair of glasses and diligently looking over some paperwork.

For all my brother’s faults, I have to give it to him. He does his job and runs our family business well for the most part. He may dump problems he doesn’t want to deal with on me, and I may disagree on how he’s handled this entire thing with the Fantonis, but he hasn’t steered our family wrong yet since he took over. If my father thought that would happen, he would have let me stay his heir despite my treachery against him that made him disinherit me. At least, disinherit me as far as being the next leader of our family.

“Brother,” he says.

“I hope whatever the hell that is, it was important enough for you to ignore my calls this morning,” I say trying to be as civil as possible.

“You called?” he says and then reaches into his drawer to look at his phone. “You did. I was so engrossed in my work, I didn’t notice.”

“Bullshit.”

“What do you want, Alik?”

“You know exactly why I’m here. The girl.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he says.

Fuck not putting my hands on him. Before Vaughn can process it, I cross the room, snatch him out his chair, and hoist him against the wall.

“Assaulting yourpakhan? I could order you executed.”

“You may be my fucking boss, but I’m still your older brother. And you’re going to explain to me what the hell you were thinking last night when you threw Adrian Fantoni’s daughter out your house naked. Something that could get usallkilled.”

“She wasn’t naked. She still had her panties. If I’d really wanted to humiliate her, I would have ripped those off her before I dumped her in the car.”

“Vaughn,” I growl.

“You’ve clearly forgotten the reason we’re all in this position to begin with. This shouldn’t have been my mess to clean up, and yet I’m the one solving it.”

“It wouldn’t have needed to be solved if you hadn’t blamed Addy.”

“And do you have any suggestions on anyone better to blame?”

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