Page 11 of The Payback

On the landing, I pause and listen to the rumble of male voices downstairs. They’re busy with whatever they’re discussing, giving me a few more minutes to accept I’m sharing the suite with Dimitri instead of having my own room as I’d thought.

I head back into thesharedsuite and look for my bag the agency promised would be in the apartment when I arrived. After a few minutes of searching, I find it haphazardly tossed into a corner of the closet, buried beneath a stack of the softest scarves I’ve ever touched.

Rifling through the contents, I note it’s all disorganised and conclude that Dimitri must have gone through this at some point. He doesn’t seem the type to leave it all up to his security.

I grab my burner phone from the bag’s depths and check in with Agent Kim, my handler, that all is well by sending a coded message.

Me:Please make sure Omma is comfortable at the hotel.

Unknown:Will do. Let me know if I need to check on anyone else.

With the proper response and the assurance of support, I delete the exchange and carry the phone out of the closet with the charger. Nik and Dimitri are still talking downstairs, and one shouts at the other in Russian. I don’t understand it fluently, but I know enough to discern that someone just called someone else a pussy.

I enter the bedroom and stare down at the king-sized mattress. Which side does Dimitri sleep on?

Neither pillow is indented, and the bed is expertly made, not giving me any clues. I pull open the drawer to the nightstand on one side, finding a historical nonfiction book with a bookmark stuffed between the pages. I cross the room and check the other nightstand, finding nothing but condoms.

Well, this is a toss-up.

I take the condom side because a book feels more personal.

I pull a second burner phone from the discreet strap on my thigh, and its reassuring weight all night has kept me feeling at least a little connected to my girl, even if she’s thousands of miles away.

Turning around, I check that I’m still alone and fire up the mobile as I sit on the bed, my ass sinking into it and appreciating the quality mattress. If Dimitri were to be murdered on the other side of this thing, I doubt I’d even feel the jostling of the struggle.

O:All good here

O:She doesn’t like peas. Noted. But she’s eating her other veg.

O:How long does the biting thing last?

O:Ignore that last message. Zach answered it for me after he bandaged his arm.

O:This is like the longest we haven’t spoken, and I hate it

O:Sending the cutest video in existence

The thumbnail under the text is a still of Bella’s smiling face as she hovers mid-air. I click play on the video and watch as my angel bounces up and down in the massive princess castle with Max jumping beside her, controlling his jumps so he doesn’t launch her too high.

A throat clears from over my shoulder, and I spin to face Dimitri, who’s sitting on the bed behind me.Stupid fucking memory foam mattress.

“You have a child.”

CHAPTERFIVE

Dimitri

I watchthe screen from over Elsa’s shoulder as a child jumps up and down on a pink-and-purple-inflatable monstrosity while a man heedfully jumps next to her. Her father, no doubt.

After arguing with Nik, I came upstairs and found Elsa sitting on the bed, her head bent over her phone. Her scent reaches me, and despite the yelling downstairs and the time that’s passed since our kiss in the lift, my cock stirs at her mere presence. I clear my throat, more to tell my cock to stand down than to alert Elsa of my arrival, but it only works partially. My dick grows harder under my trousers despite the fact she’s probably with someone else and has a child.

Her head whips around, almost clocking me in the nose. Her eyes are wide, and her lips parted in a gasp.

“You have a child.”

My gaze drops to those lips again, and I swallow roughly. Why does the idea of her already being committed to another man bother me this much?

“I...” she starts. “No. It’s a friend’s kid.”

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