AMARA
Pretend like this isn’t the first time you’ve been handed a brick of cocaine, Amara.
I am silently scolding myself as I sit with a pound of drugs in my lap. But let’s face it. This isn’t a poorly rolled joint handed to me by a shaggy-haired kid with a shit-eating grin in high school.
This is real. Very, very real.
“So,” I start in. But the air in the car is so thick it feels like there’s no room for the words. “It’s true, then?”
“What’s true?” Ransome asks.
“All of it. I’ve researched the… the Bratva.” I stop, realizing I need to be very careful with my words. “Before you took my phone away. I know what they’re known for. What they do. What they are capable of. I guess I just didn’t realize…”
“That I’m part of that,” he says instead of asking.
“Well. Yeah.”
Ransome almost smiles. Almost. “You’re a good assistant, Amara. You’re also a great detective. And an excellent stalker.” I’m not sure which part of that statement made me smile. The three back-to-back compliments, which must be setting a record for Ransome Rozanov. Or just the fact that he said my name again.
But when he goes on, my smile fades and fast.
“Which is why I am going to need you to listen closely and pay attention. Because you need to do exactly what I say from here on out.”
“You know,” I start in. I feel like I am tip-toeing through a minefield, but something about knowing I could step in the wrong spot at any given moment is actually kind of riveting. “You still haven’t actually told me anything.”
Ransome’s eyes point at the lump in my lap. “That’s nothing?”
“So you deal drugs. That’s not unheard of.” I wave my hands, because I still don’t want to touch it and I don’t know what else I am supposed to do with them.
“First of all, I don’t deal. I trap. I flip. And I make a lot of money.”
“See that’s what I’m talking about. Trap, flip, I don’t know what any of that means.”
He rakes a hand through his hair. “You’re cute.”
“Are you hitting on me?”
“Far from it, doll.”
Doll.The word curls hot and warm into my belly despite myself.
“Look,” I start talking before he can. Because the ball isn’t in his court. It’s in my lap. “I know I’m no Walter White?—”
“That was meth, not cocaine.”
“—but you can’t just hand me a pound of—ofproductand expect me to play along without telling me what’s going on.”
His expression turns stony. “Since when did you start presuming you can tell me what I can or cannot do, Miss Parker?”
“No.” I shake my head, hard. “Do not even try that. Don’t pull rank with me now.”
“I—”
“I have had to look out for myself and other people my entire life, Ransome.” His name slips out, but the shocked look on his face makes it worth the risk. “I have had to be smart my whole life. And if I am going to be involved with this, which it looks like I am, I want to know more. Because this was not part of the contract.”
“Duties subject to change,” he says, and I blink.
“I’m sorry?”
