“They have their own tower,” I went on. “Private landing strips. Drone surveillance. Their own airspace restrictions?—”
“Yes, yes,” Viktor interrupted lazily from across the aisle. “We’re all very impressed with the corporate murder palace.” He nudged Andrei’s foot with his own. “But we’re not staying there.”
Andrei smirked. “Too obvious.”
I frowned. “Then where exactly?—”
The jet banked sharply, engines shifting pitch as we veered away from the coastline. The skyscrapers disappeared behind us, only to be replaced by open desert.
“We’re nearly home,” Mikhail said from the seat ahead of me.
It was then that I noticed that we weren’t descending toward the main airport.
We dropped lower until the desert resolved into orderly rows of palm trees lining a private runway, smooth, immaculate, illuminated by low amber lights that blended into the sand. A hidden oasis carved out by power and money.
The Dragunov estate.
The jet touched down with barely a tremor.
“This is ours,” Mikhail said as he stood.
For the first time, he looked directly at me.
The plane lighting softened his features, but it didn’t touch his pale green eyes. Those remained impossible to read.
“Welcome to Dubai,” he said. “Stay close.”
I bristled. “Revenant sent me here to work. Not to play hide-and-seek.”
He stepped toward me, until he was close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to keep looking at him.
“Dubai is far more dangerous than you think,” he said.
I blinked at him. “Dubai has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world.”
He held my gaze without blinking. “We’re not talking about street crime, Katerina.”
My pulse stumbled at the sound of my name falling off his lips.
Andrei added quietly, “Here, danger comes with men wearing suits, not gangsters and hoodlums in back alleyways.”
Mikhail didn’t look away from me. Heat wound itself low in my stomach, slow and unwelcome. He wasn’t touching me, but it certainly felt like he was.
I swallowed. “I can handle myself.”
“Of course you can,” he said. “But you’re ours to protect while you’re with us.”
Ours.
The word tiptoed along every nerve I had and not entirely in a way I hated either.
I crossed my arms. “I don’t need a handler.”
“I’m not offering to be your handler,” he said simply. “I’m stating a fact.”
Viktor laughed behind us. “Oh, look. He’s doing that thing where he pretends that he’s not flirting.”
Mikhail didn’t even turn. “I don’t flirt.”
