Page 22 of Corruption

“Nadia.”

“She had a misunderstanding about what she walked in on us doing last night. I was just disabusing her mind of the notion.”

“I’m sure there were other ways to do that.”

“But none of them would have been as entertaining.”

I decide not to answer Nadia.

“Here, Kitten,” I say, handing the girl her phone and charger. “Vaughn says he had the rest of your stuff sent over with you last night, but I think we all know that’s not true. Nadia will have to take you shopping later.”

“Thank you,” Kiya says, taking the phone from me.

“See,” Nadia says. “Alik may seem all tough and scary, but he’s just a big softie. He doesn’t bite… unless you beg him to.”

“Nadia.”

I’m not the only one who says it, though. Kiya says the woman’s name in the same exact longsuffering tone as I do. She looks at me at the same time as I look at her, and rather than looking away, she gives me a sympathetic smile that clearly says,“I’ve only been dealing with her for the morning. I can’t imagine how you’ve dealt with her so much longer.”

“If you go look in our closet, I’m sure you’ll find a coat and shoes you can more or less fit so we can go shopping, Pretty Girl.”

Kiya rolls her eyes, and as she gets up to do as Nadia suggests, she says over her shoulder, “My name is Kiya. Not Pretty Girl.” She keeps going. Pauses. Adds, “Not Kitten either.”

Then she disappears into the hall.

I sit next to Nadia, and I’m not sure Kiya is out of earshot when Nadia picks up her half-drunk glass of wine and casually says, “I want to keep her.”

“How much of that wine have you had?”

“Not too much. Why?”

“Because you’re talking nonsense that will get us both killed. She’s a mafia princess engaged to my brother. Ourpakhan. We can’t make her our fucking unicorn.”

“So what I’m hearing is that you like her too. Just that she’s off limits.”

“Nadia. Vaughn.”

“Who gives a fuck about Vaughn?” Nadia asks, switching off the playful and mischievous façade she uses to make people underestimate her and tell her information that they normally wouldn’t. “You saw what he did to her. You heard what he tried to do to her. He doesn’t want her.”

“It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t want her. It matters that Adrian Fantoni gave his daughter to him. Not to us.”

“And what about what she wants?”

“What she wants doesn’t matter. Besides, she’s still on board. Didn’t go running to call daddy, so it’s a done deal.”

“It’s not done. She’s not doing this for the same reasons as everyone else. She gets something out of this or was coerced into it by her dad somehow.”

“Maybe she was. But it’s irrelevant.”

Nadia opens her mouth to argue. I cut her off before she can and point my finger in her face.

“Listen, Nadezhda. That girl’s father, whether he’s lying about it or not, is the man who killed a hundred men with his bare hands when they assaulted the woman he loved and they weren’t evenfuckingat the time. The man who turned on the most dangerous man in the country and gave her a mafia empire when he wasfuckingher. That’s the wrath we just narrowly avoided.”

“If we go to Adrian and Addy, if we tell them everything—”

“And then what? They declare war on us for lying and making a deal in bad faith?”

“No. He helps us, you get back the inheritance that your brother stole from you, and then we absolve them of any blame in your father’s death.”

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