“Your friend Maverick is a never-ending problem it seems. Anyways, Dmitry and I may have come to a… conclusion… about how to handle things. A truce, for lack of better words.”
I’d rather there be any other word used than that. Truces between rivaling Bratva families are typically done one way. An old-school way. A way that I am not about to fucking go along with.
I hang up the phone abruptly and turn on my heels, ready to blow the place apart. I’m going to need a schedule change, which pisses me the fuck off. It’s not even 9 A.M., for Christ’s sake.
But just as I cross the threshold of my door, I run straight into Amara with enough force that I have to reach out and grab her to make sure she doesn’t go skidding across the marble floor.
“Fuck,” I growl, my hands clamped around her biceps. I know it hurts because she gasps as her hands find a place of their own, planted flat on my chest to brace herself. They’re smaller, softer, warmer than I would’ve imagined.
“I’m sorry. Oh my God, Mr. Rozanov, I’m so sorry.”
“How long have you been standing here?”
“I haven’t. I mean, not long. I heard you talking to your dad and?—”
With her arms still clutched hard enough in my hands to leave prints, I drag her into my office and kick the door shut. “What did you hear?”
Amara’s eyes are wide with fear. “N-nothing! Just that he wants to have cocktails. So I went back to my office and I made the changes to your schedule. But I think I dropped it…”
She looks around and it’s only then that I realize she is still pressed against me.
“Look at me,” I growl. Amara’s attention whips back into my direction. I let go of her but she stays put, too startled to move. “Spying on people gets you nowhere but trouble. Do you understand me?”
“I didn’t— I wasn’t— I just made you a new schedule because you made plans with?—”
“I said: Do. You. Understand. Me?” I drill the words in my mouth straight into her deep, wide eyes.
She nods before words register then stutters out, “Y-yes… sir. Yes, sir.”
There is a moment, a fraction of a moment, a flicker of one at best, where my eyes drop contact with hers and float down to where her mouth is. Her perfect pink lips, quivering from the interaction. I could kiss them. I could suck the soul straight from her body. This woman has never been incompetent before. She should be punished for it. Kiss her in a way that will ruin her for any other man, then throw her aside.
But I won’t.
Because it would never end with just that.
“Good.” I release her and stomp behind my desk. It’s safer to keep something between us. There’s no telling what I would do if I stayed within arm’s reach.
Without another word, Amara stumbles out of my office. She’s a smart girl. Hopefully, she can take a hint.
Some lines are not meant to be crossed.
8
AMARA
He knows.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Ransome Rozanov has been the sun of my universe for so long now, the last thing I think about every night when I go to bed and the reason I wake up every morning. He has been the center of my calendar, the linchpin holding my day together. I know everything about him—where he is at all times, what he likes to eat, how he takes his coffee, his favorite type of whiskey, even what he sleeps in: nothing. Ransome sleeps in the nude and I know this because I have been watching him… very,veryclosely.
And now, he knows.
I do my best to keep it together as I walk out of his office, my arms still burning from the clutch of his hands, my skin still pricked from the tone in his voice, and my nipples still hard from the force of all of it—“Look at me… do you understand me…”—and I bolt down the hall of Apex Energy, bypassing my own office and heading straight for the bathroom.
There, I lock myself in a stall, sit down on the toilet, and gasp for air.
He knows. I am full-fledged, certified, no-doubt-about-it stalking my boss—and heknows. He figured it out. There will be consequences.
