I shove my phone back in my pocket and go back to staring at the workers.
“A question comes to mind,” Baron says as we gaze forward. “Elephant-in-the-room kind of question, really. But I kind of don’t want to ask it.”
“And I don’t want to hear it.”
“Tough. You think it’s yours?” he asks anyway.
I grit my teeth. “We were together when it would have happened.”
“So that’s a yes,” he says.
“She could have cheated,” I point out.
Baron frowns. “You think she would?”
The thought makes my blood boil. Amara, having sex with someone else while she was with me. Maybe one of the pretty boys from the club.
Or maybe Tristan.
I crush that thought as hard as I can. “I think a lot of things have proven that I don’t know her as well as I thought I did.”
“So it’s not,” he half-shrugs. “Yours, I mean. That makes it easier on you, doesn’t it?”
“Easier in what way?” I snap. “It means I can’t trust her at all. Which means she could have been lying about anything. Fuck, for all I know, her and Gianni were working with Tristan.”
“I doubt that,” Baron cuts me off.
“Do you? Because doubt is the only certain thing I have right now. She could have applied for the personal assistant job just to get inside the business.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, boss, but I feel like you’re being just a tiny bit paranoid.”
“Am I?” I snap. The more I think about it, the less absurd it seems. “As my assistant, she learned my routine. She had access to everything. Files, passwords, meeting locations, even my house. The woman did my fucking laundry, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, sure, but that’s work. She didn’t hide out in your closet or anything.”
I go quiet.
Baron’s eyebrows scrape the ceiling. “Wait. Did she hide out in your closet?”
“Once,” I admit. “She used to stalk me.”
He blinks slowly. “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to be a hell of a lot more specific than that, cuz.”
“Let’s just say, I’m surprised the realtor didn’t find a shrine in the back ofhercloset when they sold the apartment.”
Baron chuckles a little, then stops when he sees my face. “Oh, shit, you’re serious.” He clears his throat. “Well, regardless, I don’t think she was being a creep because Tristan sicced her on you. I think maybe they just drew her that way.”
“Shut up.”
“And I also don’t think she would have cheated on you. Like you said, she was stalking you. The girl was literally obsessed. Hell, if she’s logging back into the system, she still might be.”
“Or she’s trying to fuck me over.”
But Baron shakes his head. “I still don’t think so. She’s not Bratva.She isn’t cut out for it. But here’s the thing: if the baby is yours, whether you care about Amara or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that her baby is a Bratva baby. A Rozanov. An heir.”
It’s not that I haven’t already thought about that. Obviously, I have. But it does pose a huge problem.
I want to write her off forever. Forget she ever crashed into my life and made a huge fucking mess of it. But if that baby’s mine, then I can’t.
