With that, she holds her glass up in a cheers motion and walks off, leaving me alone with the last woman I want to be alone with. It’s a graceful, well-played slap on both our faces, and I don’t know whether to be angry or impressed.
Of course, Jenica is angry enough for both of us.
My jaw clamps down as I watch her walk away. For all of two seconds, I forget that Jenica is standing there.
But the luxury of that ignorance only lasts until she starts talking again.
“Disgusting,” she mutters.
“Completely,” I say, and she turns to me.
“So you agree?”
“I agree that your behavior was disgusting, yes.”
Her mouth pops open. “I was talking about her! How dare she show up here?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, she works for me.”
“How could I forget? You never take your eyes off her. The nerve of that hussy coming in here looking like that,” she spits.
She’s lucky she’s a woman. Unfortunately for me, even being raised Bratva we have a strict no-hitting-women policy. If anyone with a dick called Amara that, things would be different right now.
“Looking like what?” I ask. “You’re wearing the same dress.”
Flames brim her gaze in an attempt to incinerate me. “Pregnant. She’s pregnant and parading it around!”
“With my child,” I say loudly enough to piss her off.
Jenica shakes her head slowly in disbelief. “You really don’t care, do you?”
“What I don’t care for is how you treat her,” I tell her.
“And how do you want me to treat her?” she snaps. “You want us to be best of friends? Because that’s not going to fucking happen.”
“What I want,” I snap back, “is for you to stop putting everything on her. You may be my wife, but she is the mother of my child. And the way you are acting is no better for the image of our relationship than people seeing me with her.”
“I don’t understand how you could possibly compare the two of us. She isn’t one of us. And no amount of money or hand-delivered coffees will change that. She’s a different breed, Ransome.”
“You’re right,” I tell her. “You’re not the same at all.”
I’m done talking. I’m done with all of this.
But just as I start to walk away, Jenica puts her hand on my arm, though it isn’t an intimate gesture. It’s a warning.
“Don’t forget that as soon as that baby comes, she’ll be gone. But we will still be married.”
36
AMARA
The only thing that feels better than parading around a fancy party in a two-thousand dollar dress is going home, ripping that dress off, and flinging it across the room.
Silver sequins fly everywhere, showering the tile of the estate like confetti, but I don’t even care. Watching it shatter into a million pieces almost makes up for the fact that my heart is also in a zillion little shimmering shards all over the floor.
I should have known better. I should have known that going to a business party wasn’t going to end well. It’s not like being there meant I was with him. Even if I am carrying his baby.
Ransome Rozanov is married. And not to me.
