Page 76 of The Payback

That gets his attention. Quietly, Nik asks, “How did he die?”

Eleanor tenses on my lap, her thighs squeezing me like her fingers on my shoulders. It makes me feel cocooned and held as I disclose the secret I’ve been carrying for so long.

“He was murdered in his bed. Two days after you came home.” Never mind, I’d kept his death a secret for nearly a week to figure out who the murderer was and work from behind the scenes.

“Two—Fuck, Dimitri!” Nik stands up and paces next to the couch. “And because of the timing, you think I killed him?! Is that why you didn’t tell me you were teaming up with Interpol? Is that why you’ve been so goddamned distant and ornery with me, sending me all over the city for trade deals and negotiations? Oh, Christ. Am I supposed to go down for his murder when the arrests are made?”

His voice echoes around the room, his reaction seeming genuine, if not a little over the top. His composure has flown out the window, and Eleanor watches him pace and rake his hands through his hair.

“Why are you freaking out?” she asks.

Nik pulls on his strands and stops his incessant pacing, glaring at both of us. “Because I’d been away for ten fucking years and came home to a grand welcome for a job well done. Only then to lose the last remaining parental figure in my life, and now, the man I considered my fucking brother thinks I murdered him.”

“It was an ice pick to the temple and a knife to the heart, Nik,” I say.

The colour leeches from his face when I mention his usual method of killing. “I swear to God I didn’t do it, Dimitri. And you know I don’t make that promise lightly. I knew how much you didn’t want this role. Since we were teenagers and your dad took the role ofpakhan, you’d been pushing back against it. I would never thrust that on you when you didn’t want it.”

I nod. He’s known me for most of my life and was the only one I told I didn’t want the job.

“I don’t think it was Sergei,” I admit. “He and my dad were close, and while Sergei does things I don’t approve of, like shipping girls over, he’s never made a play forpakhanother than telling me I wasn’t ready when Dad died.”

“If not Nik or Sergei, then who?” Eleanor asks, finding her voice.

She shifts on my lap, drawing my attention to where her skirt is dangerously high and her seam lines up with my cock. I want to rock into her, grind against her and find that sweet release only she can provide, but not now. Not when so much is up in the air and revelations are happening left and right. I want to throw her down and remind her who she belongs to. Who owns her pussy. And it’s all the more infuriating when her eyes leave mine, and she returns her gaze to my jaw.

I grip her hips harder, stopping her from squirming on me even more. I might be a horrible man, but unless she enthusiastically consents to the depraved and filthy things I want to do to her, I’m stopping the temptation before it starts.

“That’s a good fucking question,” I say, tilting my head back and shifting my hips just a fraction. Because while I am a patient man, I am no saint. Pulling back, I put distance between us and curse myself for giving in, even if only for a moment.

CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE

Eleanor

If you’ve ever wonderedhow long it takes for a woman to survive in an apartment with two men she’s fucked while undercover and pretending to be a Bratva bride, the answer is a paltry two months.

I’m going out of my goddamn mind. Nik and Dimitri are still walking on eggshells around each other after my husband revealed his dad’s cause of death. Nik is pissed Dimitri would ever consider him a suspect; Dimitri is pissed that Nik keeps looking at me like he wants to fuck me; I keep looking at both of them like I want to fuck them, but I’m quick to avert my eyes when they turn in my direction.

Clearly, I’ve got my priorities in the right place.

The tension is at an all-time high, made more so because Dimitri doesn’t know what Nik and I got up to in the gym. I feel the weight of the secrets wrapping around my throat like a noose, and it’s becoming too much to bear. I told Dimitri he didn’t make choices for me, and my business is indeedmy business, so why is it eating away at me?

Neither dictates a thing in my life despite them hovering in the periphery of my brain like annoying ghosts. The only thing I need them for is evidence, and I’m up to my eyeballs in footage to comb through.

They’ve both been wearing cameras and filming meetings and other dealings the Bratva are involved in, forming a tentative truce to collect evidence.

Due to all the nonsense and a desperate need to see anything other than the four walls of my closet-turned-office, when my phone rang yesterday and Oksana asked me to tea—because, of course, that was her suggestion—I was eager to accept. Especially when she told me Ana and a few other wives would accompany us.

I would have declined if it had been just the two of us. The fear that she knew of Sergei’s proposition was real. I was half afraid she would spike my tea or something before stabbing me with a knife—the proper one, most certainly, because from what I’ve read and noted at our dinner a few weeks ago, she’s indeed a stickler for etiquette.

So here I am again, walking into the Ritz, desperate to get some separation from the apartment and the men I share it with. But alas, it’s never that easy.

Nik walks me to the tearoom with a measured distance between us at all times, greets the women gathered, pulls out my chair for me, and leaves us to it. He sits at a table nearby to watch over me with a few other burly men, who I assume are the other bodyguards.

Doubtful there will be anything to guard against. All I see is some weak tea and gossiping ladies. How riveting for them.

“Elsa, so good to have you join us,” Oksana greets once I’m settled in my tufted seat.

“Thank you for inviting me. I feel like I haven’t been outside in days.”

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