“You don’t have to be here. You definitely have men to order around, work to attend to,” she uttered, sarcasm clear in her voice.
“That wasn’t work. It was my cousin letting me know he’d arrived back at his place.”
“The man dissing me in Russian before the wedding.”
“He wasn’t —”
“Yeah, he was just saying he liked the music,” she interrupted. “Which there wasn’t.”
“He told me you’re beautiful,” I revealed. “He called you a looker. That was what he was telling me.”
She didn’t say anything at first, obviously taken aback.
“People don’t compliment people while looking at them so suspiciously,” she remarked.
“It’s the circumstances. Everyone is suspicious.”
“Tell me something new,” she uttered, looking away from the mirror.
I let out a huff of air, pulling myself out of the aggravated state she was pushing me into.
“Goodnight, Konstantin,” she remarked, sighing.
There was no venom in her tone as she called my name this time. And in a way I couldn’t explain, I liked it. Both her voice and expression were calm, like she was just tired. It made me decide to leave like she wanted.
“Goodnight, Alina.”
I left her room and went to my office.
“Boss,” Sergei called, stepping in just as I was about to shut the office door behind me.
“What?”
“We just caught someone trying to bribe one of the guards to slip her a phone.”
“Someone is trying to get to her,” I mused.
“Yes, boss,” he affirmed, nodding. “Trying to communicate something to her, maybe.”
The war I thought I was containing had followed me to the safe house.
“Get the plane ready. We leave for New York tomorrow,” I instructed.
“Yes, boss.”
Chapter Eleven
Alina’s POV
“Come in,” I called, half-hoping it wasn’t Konstantin coming back.
I had finished my dinner about an hour earlier, and I was sitting with my back against the headboard, reading a book I had taken from the library.
I hoped whoever was at the other side of the door wasn’t him because I didn’t want to think about him, let alone see him. The different emotions that crossed my mind during our conversation weren’t something I wanted to explore.
Ruslan’s head poked around, and I laughed, telling him, “No one is here. Not your boss or your boss’s boss.”
“Okay,” he said, coming in fully and closing the door behind him.
