“Stay,” he said again, leaning down to whisper a little too close in my ear. “I’m leaving anyway.”
And just as my heart started to race, he slowly brushed past me, his shoulder grazing against mine, even though there was plenty of room to leave a gap. “Work calls. The dining room is all yours.”
I stood there, trying not to tremble from how good that touch felt.
Was I going crazy?
No, I told myself. While I remembered how things ended, my body only remembered what it missed.
Traitorous little thing.
I took a seat at the table, and my hands still trembled when I poured myself a coffee. I grabbed a croissant and chewedslowly, scolding myself for forgetting why I’d agreed to this shebang in the first place.
Protection, my ass.
My father was the goddamn Federal Prosecutor. If I’d gone back to him and told him I’d been kidnapped and sold, I knew he would’ve found a way to protect me. And could anyone blame me for wanting to do the same for my father?
I couldn’t stop replaying that conversation in his office, the one where I overheard him cutting deals with criminals. There had to be a reason.
Maybe they were threatening him.
Maybe they had something on him.
Whatever it was, I needed to find out how this world worked and find something useful to help my father. I knew being married to Dante Lebedev, as insane as it was, might be my only chance to gather enough information to help my father break free.
Hopefully, I’d find something to help Papa put those dirty men he’d been forced to negotiate with exactly where they belonged: behind bars.
I was running out of time here. Was Papa looking for me? Did he even know I was missing? He must be worried sick. Three days in this house, and I was no closer to helping my father than when I started.
By now, I’d figured out my way around the house and had a decent grasp of Dante’s schedule. He’d be gone for hours at a time, and that day felt as good as any to finally start digging.
By the time I finished breakfast, the house was empty except for the kitchen staff, who rarely ventured out of their area.
This was my chance.
I went up to Dante’s home office first. I knew this was dangerous because if anyone caught me there, I couldn’t exactly say I got lost on the way to the bathroom.
But it was also the one place where I knew I’d learn the most, so it was a risk well-taken.
I tried the door, and holy moly, it actually opened. I glanced left and right one last time to make sure I was truly alone, then stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind me.
For a moment, I just stopped to take the room in. His office was the most office-like office I’d ever seen; Tasteful, beautiful, and rich in its entirety.
There was wall-to-wall carpeting, a small bar and lounge area in one corner, deep red maroon on all the leather couches, and the largest, most beautiful mahogany desk I’d ever seen. And the best part was the rows upon rows of books lining the walls. Some leather-bound. Most not.
I ran my fingers along the spines, hoping for a clue. In the movies, books conceal things. I lifted a few off the shelf, but found nothing in or behind.
I moved on, checking drawers, cabinets, and any other potential storage areas. In a cabinet beneath a window, I found photo albums. One was filled with family pictures. Dante as a child with his parents and siblings.
I felt a chill go down my spine at how normal they looked as a family. Run-of-the-mill. Nothing screamed criminal empire.
Behind the photo albums was a stack of folders.Bingo.
I pulled them out and started sifting through. Most were in Russian, but some had English translations. I saworganizational charts, business plans, and even some financial reports for a couple of casinos.
What struck me first was how… legitimate it all looked, like any corporation’s paperwork, ranging from information on construction companies to nightclubs to import businesses.
These had to be fronts, right? Nothing about these businesses seemed illegal.
