Page 43 of The Dancer and the Grumpy Billionaire

When she is gone, the door of her suite closed, Roman looks to me with a bit of an amused look on his face.

“I did not know you had such teeth,” he comments.

“I always have teeth when it comes to the people I care about,” I answer. “And I care about Gigi.”

“Galina Gusev is not for you, Ukrainian,” he says, sitting down in the chair Vera has just evacuated. “She is a kept woman.”

“Kept for whom?” I ask. “For what purpose?”

Roman gives me a look that tells me I must be very ignorant. “Sasha is a controlling man. A narcissistic man. A selfish man.”

“And?”

“And he lost his wife violently, and in his own home. It was an embarrassment to him.”

“Anembarrassment?” I ask, “A tragedy? A horror? Yes. An embarrassment? No.”

Roman lifts his shoulders. “Narcissistic.”

“Who was Gigi’s mother?” I ask.

“Nikola,” he says. “A dancer, like her daughter. They actually met after he first saw her perform, much like you and Galina.”

I make a distasteful face at the parallel. “Did he love her?”

“He coveted her,” Roman says. “I was very new to the organization when she died, so I have only heard these things secondhand, but I understand that she was very, very uninterested. He was much older than her and she declined his many, many overtures until he finally threatened her family.”

“Romantic,” I say.

“Galina’s conception was, by all accounts…accidental and unwanted.”

My stomach twists at the implication. “That poor woman.”

“It was a crime,” Roman says, “Though I would never say such things publicly.”

“Of course not,” I say. “Not unless you don’t value having your head attached to your shoulders.”

“Look, I believe you and Galina share feelings for one another, but Sasha is a dangerous man and he does not like it when people touch his things.”

“Is that how he views his daughter? As a thing he owns?”

“Yes,” Roman says. “He will likely marry her off to some fat fucker twice her age in order to get something else he covets someday.”

“Why do you keep working for him?” I ask. “If you speak so disdainfully of him?”

He looks at me and I do not even need him to say the words.

“You care for her, too.”

He looks at the floor.

“Not the way you do,” he says. “She was maybe ten or eleven when her mother died. Back then, I was just a low-level runner, but I felt bad for her. When he moved her, I applied for the job. She reminded me of my little sister. For me, the job was an upgrade.”

“That’s why you let her stay that night, after your partner kicked my ass in the alley.”

“I want her to be happy,” he says, and the look on his face is grim enough that I believe him. He is worried.

“Do you trust Vera?” I ask.

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