Page 27 of Corruption

No one told me. But I caught the tail-end of Nadia and Alik’s conversation earlier before walking back into the room. I don’t know what they were talking about, but it’s clear that it has something to do with how I ended up here. Engaged to a Russian mob boss and in the care of his brother and sister-in-law. It’s clear that there’s a lot more to this entire story than I understand. Especially if I’m the second woman that was forced into this family because the mob threatened her.

Isaak looks at me contemplatively, and I wonder if any good will I’d built is now gone. If I shouldn’t have played my hand and told him what I knew so early.

Finally, he smiles and says, “I was worried about what would happen to you when you marry my dad. But I change my mind. You’re going to fit right in with this family, Aunt Kiya.”

He makes his way into the house while I contemplate whether I should be comforted by his assessment or concerned.

11

Alik

Kitten turns out to be even more of an apt nickname for Kiya Fantoni than I thought it was when I gave it to her.

As the days go by, she loses some of her skittishness and guardedness. Not all of it. She always seems to have a very keen awareness of when someone enters a room, not letting the stiffness drop out her shoulders until she’s either figured out what they’re doing coming into her vicinity or she seems to trust them. So far, after a week, the only ones she seems to trust are Nadia and Isaak, who’s been finding an excuse to come to the house every day, not to just spend time with Nadia but also with Kiya. Other than that, the servants and I are still suspect to her.

But for the most part, her extreme anxiety is instead replaced with an extreme curiosity. Security footage has shown her enter every room of the house that’s not locked when Nadia and I aren’t home. Our bedroom. The other guest bedrooms. My office. Nadia’s office.

One day, she spends a few hours at Nadia’s vanity trying on lipstick and lip gloss of all things. Another day she spends time trying on all Nadia’s and my jewelry. Another day, she bakes cookies.

She is meticulous about putting things back in their place. If it weren’t for my security notifying me and seeing the footage, I wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been in the places she’s been. She does the exact same thing in the kitchen. Makes the cookies and meticulously cleans it and puts everything else back the exact same way she found it.

The only peculiar thing there that she does is carefully wrap and put the cookies in a glass container with a lid before taking them to her room after she’s done. The inside of her room being the only place the cameras are disabled during the day when we’re not home. Speaking of that, it only took her three days to figure out my and Nadia’s coming and going patterns and to do her exploring accordingly.

I’d wonder if Adrian Fantoni sent a spy to our family if not for the fact that Kiya never takes anything. She never takes pictures on her phone and never tries to unlock any doors or places that are locked. She goes into my and Nadia’s offices, but the first time she only looked around to ascertain what they were. She only goes back to my office. And when she does that, it’s to sit in front of the floor-to-ceiling window that gets the majority of the sun during the day with her baked goods. Sometimes she reads. Most of the time she draws. Every time, she makes sure to be long gone before she knows Nadia and I will return home.

She’s not doing anything wrong. I doubt she’s a spy. But my paranoia won’t allow me to just allow her to slink around the house like she’s doing without knowing why she’s sneaking around.

So one day, I come home early—much earlier than Kiya expects me to. When I open my office door when she’s still sitting in her favorite corner, she startles so badly that she knocks over her water bottle and a glass of juice she had sitting next to her in the process.

“I’m sorry,” she immediately blurts out. “I know I shouldn’t be in here. But this window—”

“Gets most of the sun during the day. It’s the reason I asked for my office to be here when we had it built. There are two rooms like this, actually. But Nadia says it gets too warm for her liking in the summer.”

“The room a door down. One of the locked ones.”

“Yes.”

Kiya doesn’t meet my eyes and looks down at the ground. Her gaze catches where she knocked over the juice and she panics all over again.

“I’m sorry about the spill. You just… startled me is all. Not to say it was your fault. I was being—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have the maid come get it.”

The maid comes in short order, and in just a few minutes, the carpet is left looking as pristine as it did before Kiya spilled her drink. When the woman is gone, Kiya bends down to gather her things and says, “I’ll just go. I didn’t expect you to be back so early.”

She puts it all away in a tote bag she uses to carry her things between rooms before heading past me to leave the room.

I grab her wrist before she can.

“First, Kitten,” I say, pulling her back to face me, “You’re going to tell mepreciselywhy you’ve been sneaking around my home when Nadia and I are gone.”

“I haven’t been—”

“Don’t lie. My security showed me the camera footage.”

She bites her lip and then says, “I wondered if there were cameras. But when you didn’t say anything after the first day—”

“So you have been sneaking around?”

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