“I did. She’s grounded for a month. And she’s got to help the cleaning crew every morning before school.”
“Wow,” she says, and I think I hear a smile on her voice. “That’s pretty severe.”
“Better than locking her away in a tower,” I joke. “Better than what my father would have done to me. She just stomped off to her room completely unharmed. Not a single hair out of place.That’s better than what I and Ares had to face when we were her age.”
She pauses. I hope that’s not pity from her. I loathe pity. “I mean,” she says, the tone in her voice changing, “youdidfind her in a strip club. I’d be a fool to expectnopunishment.”
I have to hesitate. If I hadn’t caught them, Sasha might never have told me. I should be pissed at Ember for trying to save her from my wrath. But I’m not, for some reason.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I was going to tell you. I know how it must have looked with me sneaking her out the back and everything, but… but I never intended to keep you out of the loop.” She stops, and I hear the soft sound of a pencil scratching in the background. Her doodling as she talks, something that I’ve seen her do in passing when she’s on the phone.
“You needed to deal with that situation away from the club,” she says. “The shock of finding her there was… I don’t know, I guess I was afraid you’d ruin your relationship with her and say something you didn’t mean out of anger. Honestly, I guess I was just trying to look out for you two.”
It’s noble. Maybe that’s why I’m not pissed about it. “Thank you,” I say. “You know, most people in my life don’t have my back the way you do. Fear keeps them from speaking up in situations like last night.”
She chuckles. “Thought you didn’t like disobedience, Mr. Orlov. Since when do you like it when I stand up to you?”
“I like it when you challenge me. And being with you has definitely been that.” I pause. We’ve been dancing around the matter of bringing her all the way into the fold. I’ve been in her ear about the ins and outs of owning a club, certainly. ButI’ve been deliberately leaving out the bits surrounding funneling money to the gang and all the nuances of moving in the shadows, even with the law always circling. She expressed an interest weeks ago.
What she doesn’t realize is how risky of a decision it truly is. If she’s going to be a part of all this, she has to be loyal to me. Completely.
I think she’s that woman. I want to believe she is, anyway.
“What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?” I ask.
“Probably sleeping. Why?”
“Meet me at the club. Say, one o’clock?”
She laughs. “Again? I thought we had an understanding about fucking around at the job.”
“It’s not that. Though, if you ever change your mind?—”
“I haven’t. I like you better in the privacy of the bedroom.”
“All right, all right. Just say you’ll meet me tomorrow afternoon.”
“I will. One o’clock.”
I hang up and lean my head back against the head rest. She might be the one. Ihopeshe’s the one.
Her eyesslowly widen while she stares at the ledger, open on my desk before her. Ivan and I are both standing on opposite sides of the desk while she sits in my chair, looking down at theyellowed papers that I asked Ivan to bring in. Her finger stops on one of the lines and she draws her hand back slowly.
“This isn’t for the club finances,” she says. “This is… this is for the Bratva.”
“Yeah, it is.”
She swallows and glances up at me. “This shouldn’t be on paper. You should have it on a flash drive or something. If it fell into the wrong hands, if the wrong people even knew about this book’s existence?—”
“Nobody knows about this book except Ivan and me,” I say, “And now you.”
I look up at Ivan. His mouth is pursed as he watches Ember cautiously. That old school Bratva suspicion glows in his eyes. He clears his throat and adds, “Ultimately, it makes no real difference whether it’s on paper or on a flash drive. Someone looking to steal this information will find a way to do it. This way,ifwe ever need to destroy the evidence, it can be easily dispatched with fire and not some overpriced tech nerd.”
She looks up at him as he talks, taking him in, then she looks back down at the book, slowing turning the page and looking over the entries.
“This is a big responsibility,” she says.
“It is,” I say. “But you’re good with numbers. As good as Ivan is, in fact. It benefits all of us if you two work together.”
