Her eyes narrow. “Get married.”
“Yes.”
She rises and takes a step back. “Why are you not telling me this right away? To trick me to get married and then tell me?”
“No. There’s something I wanted to do first before I told you everything.” I study her as she paces. “All I have to do to protect you is to take away Egorov’s ability to ever get your money by hurting you. But I don’t want you to think I’m marrying you to get access to it myself.”
“I do not understand.”
“You have no next of kin to inherit from you. I do. Once we’re married, killing us won’t help Egorov. Whatever we have won’t go to him then, it’ll go to my mother and my niece. Or later, to our children.”
“If you marry me, you get money. How much?”
“It would have been a lot, but I’m not going to take it. I’m going to sign a prenuptial agreement that says that if you divorce me, the money that would’ve come to me from marrying you will all go to you. All the Kalashnik money will be in your name, except what Mikhail left for me if no one ever found you.”
“How much money do you get for just you?”
“A million dollars and the two restaurants I was managing for him. I stand to make about two hundred thousand per year from them.”
“And if you marry me?”
“It would have been hundreds of millions.”
Her jaw drops.
“You stand to inherit more if you marry me, too. That’s a condition Egorov’s trying to prevent.”
“If I don’t marry you, what do I get?”
“It’s hundreds of millions, either way. If you don’t get married, you’ll get fifty percent of Mikhail’s estate. If you do marry me, you get seventy-five percent.”
She pales, and I grab her and sit her on the bed.
“If you don’t marry me though, Egorov gets the extra share of the money that would’ve come to you. That twenty-five percent goes to him,” I say.
“Why?” she demands sharply.
“Because his wife is dead, and he’s her heir.”
“He killed her! You know he arranges this. She does not drown by accident. I will never believe it.”
“I agree. He had her murdered.”
“Egorov is gangster. My grandfather…?”
“Yeah. Russian Mafia.”
“My God.” Her hand covers her mouth for a moment, and she shakes her head.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I say, watching her. “Egorov is seizing control of Mikhail’s businesses. If we inherit the majority of the Kalashnik assets instead, we can strip Egorov of power.”
“We—how can we do this?” she exclaims, then she draws in a breath and her eyes turn to stare at the door.
“We can sell the illegal operations to my brother and his partners.”
“You and I… we won’t run the bad businesses? Or keep them?”
“No.”
