Yet, she couldn’t even lift her gaze off the ground.
She was obviously a great actress for successfully fooling me this whole time. But the guilt on her face that night was not part of the performance. It was real. Blair didn’t seem to have enjoyed the scene.
Maybe her time at the mansion changed how she saw me. I might not have known her well enough, since it was all just an act. Still, I knew for sure that she wasn’t the type to make false accusations about people.
She knew that I was innocent of these allegations. I’d told her before that my organization and I had nothing to do with human trafficking. I couldn’t take the credit for ending Kane’s life either.
Until this day, though, I still marveled at the way she hurled that steel spike like a fuckin’ javelin. That was one of the greatest throws I’d ever witnessed.
The turmoil within me was real. One minute, I was angry with her, and the next, I was intrigued by her. Most nights, before going to bed, I would reminisce on our time together, and somehow, I always found comfort in those memories.
A few times, those memories appeared as dreams where I saw myself making love to her. I had almost forgotten what her lips tasted like and how it felt to be enveloped in her warmth.
I snapped out of my thoughts when I heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching my cell.
“Tarasov,” a guard called, his voice deep and raucous. “You’ve got visitors.”
I rose from the bed, my face devoid of emotion, and locked eyes with him. There were two of them, tall and huge, with blank expressions.
One of them unlocked my cell, and I stepped out quietly, dressed in my prison uniform. They cuffed my wrists, the cold steel biting into my flesh, but I didn’t flinch.
These men led me through a long, empty hallway illuminated by flickering pale lights, humming like dying bees. We reached the visitor’s room, and one of them opened the door while the other escorted me inside.
“You have five minutes,” he said.
The two guards stepped outside and closed the door behind them. My eyes caught the camera in one corner of the room, but the most important people here were my lawyer and my older brother.
“You don’t look so bad for a prisoner,” Roman said to me, a hand buried in his pocket.
“Nice to see you too, brother,” I replied, a faint smirk tugging at my lips as I took a seat at a small table.
There were two other chairs across from me—Colton and Roman occupied them.
“How’s the business going?” I asked, my eyes darting between the two of them.
“You should be more concerned about your situation,” Colton said to me, his voice low and even.
“It’s a false allegation against me—we all know that,” I answered.
“We do,” said Roman. “But the rest of the world doesn’t.”
“The case is not looking good, Nik,” Colton added, flipping a file open in front of me. “They’ve tied your name to Richard Kane’s trafficking operations—”
“Like I said, false accusations,” I cut him off.
“Will you just listen?” Roman blurted out, displeased by my interruption.
Colton continued, “Whether or not you’re involved in such activities, they made it look airtight. Off-shore accounts, wired transfers, shipment manifests—they’re all under alliances connected to your company.”
I was quiet, my jaw tightening to accent the frown on my face.
“That Blair girl did you dirty, brother,” Roman said, brows furrowing.
My fingers curled into fists on both hands. “Now what?”
Colton glanced at Roman, then cleared his throat. “They’re saying you’ll be held indefinitely until trial.”
“The Bureau’s pushing harder than we thought. They wanna make an example out of you.”
