“You don’t need one,” he says, smoothly turning the car onto the strip.
“Don’t need one what?” I counter, spinning to face him.
“A job or an income. If you want one, then fine, but it won’t be as a cocktail waitress in a casino. I cannot have other men looking at you.”
I want to be pissed off, but I can’t bring myself to rise to it. “Fine, but my skillset is pretty limited since I dropped out of school to look after grandma.”
Dariy swings the car into the parking lot beneath the hotel. “Take each day as it comes. When you find you want a job, we can cross that bridge. Part of being your husband means that I look after you in every way. Not just in the bedroom.”
He parks in his space and turns to me.
“I should have been the one to propose.”
“I didn’t propose, not really. I just offered a solution to a problem you have. Helped you tie up the loose end that was me.” I tilt my shoulders and give him jazz hands in a bid to lighten the mood between us.
He shakes his head and gets out of the car, rounding it to open mine for me.
We ride up the elevator in silence, with me not knowing how to fill it since he looks so deep in thought.
The penthouse is bright, even in the fading late afternoon sun, and I immediately go through to the kitchen to make us coffee.
“I just need to see Adrik, update him on our situation.” He kisses me on the forehead before he leaves and the gesture leaves me silently stunned for a second.
No one has ever kissed me like that before. Like it could be the beginning of a habit born from tenderness and care.
I pour myself a coffee and sit on the sofa that faces the strip, watching as the lights brighten in the darkening sky.
Dariy
The elevator ride to the executive level feels longer than the one that carried Callie to my bed last night. My pulse doesn’t know what to do…speed up, slow down…like my entire circulatory system has been hijacked by a woman who I’ve only known for twenty-four hours.
I find Adrik alone in his office, reading numbers that decide the fate of men who don’t know they’ve already lost.
He doesn’t look up when he says, “You didn’t kill her. Did you at least put a baby in her belly.”
It is not a question.
“No, I didn’t kill her,” I answer, stepping in, shutting the door. “I can’t. But there has been a development.”
Now he lifts his gaze. Those ice-blue eyes not unlike mine, spark with something close to amusement.
“I’m going to marry her.”
Adrik sets his pen down with surgical precision. “You’ve known her for less than twenty-four hours, brother.”
I press my palms to the back of a chair, grounding myself. “Time doesn’t matter. What I feel—”
“Is exactly what I felt for Jasmine.” His voice isn’t mocking. Just tired. A man who remembers fighting the same madnessnot that long ago, and now goes home every night to her warming his bed.
“If you want to marry her,” he continues, “make it so no one, not even the bratva, can question it. You put your ring on her finger and put your child in her belly. That’s the only reality our world offers to women not born into it.”
I nod once. It’s already decided. “I’ll take care of the first part immediately.”
“And the second?” he asks, one brow rising. He already knows the answer.
“Will happen soon. And there’s no hardship in the trying.”
Adrik smirks and shakes his head. “I’m happy you found someone, Dariy, even if the circumstances were less than favourable.”
