“I know that name. He was Vitya’s former driver. He occasionally drove me around New York to Vitya,” I disclosed.
It wasn’t until Konstantin turned to me, his eyes cold, that I realized how it looked.
I might know more than I thought.
This looks bad. Damning, even.
“You’re going to tell me all about this man,” he demanded.
I felt knots in my stomach. I was really under suspicion again.
“He’s Russian, I’m sure,” I started, and Mila nodded. “Dark hair, always in casuals. He was the only one Vitya trusted to bring me whenever we were meeting at his place—well, that was what he said then. Later, I no longer saw him, so I asked Vitya. He told me that he was helping him with some underground work.”
“That’s all I know,” I remarked, facing Konstantin.
“Uh, I’ll run the digital fingerprints now,” Mila said, rising to her feet.
The silence between Konstantin and me, within the thirty seconds it took Mila to fetch her laptop from the adjacent office, was heavy. I looked straight ahead while his eyes remained on his laptop screen.
She took her seat again and was typing away in seconds.
“The leak is from within the Lobanov charities. Someone inside the manor right now is a primary player in the leak. That much is clear,” she declared.
The weight of Konstantin’s suspicious gaze on me pricked my skin. It made my heart heavy.
“Not necessarily in this place. Just…within the building. It could be anyone. They could be anywhere,” Mila added, her speech rushed.
She could apparently feel his suspicion and was trying to ease the tension. Of course, she was just being a reasonable person who assumed every marriage was a real partnership.
I stood up, unable to bear it any longer. Wordlessly, I went up the stairs.
I covered myself with the covers the instant I got to my bed. I was sad about what things looked like. I hated that I found someone I knew in the information shared with us. I was annoyed with myself for not thinking hard enough when Konstantin kept asking me to tell him every single thing I knew about Vitya’s network.
He told me every tiny detail mattered, for crying out loud. He did.
But I was angry at him, too. More than angry.
How could he switch on me just like that?
We had just agreed to work together, to stand together in all of this, and then just one tiny oversight from me was all it took to put me back in a suspect position?
So much for becoming friends.
I tossed and turned for a while before pulling the covers back and deciding to just relax. I felt like going back downstairs to yell at him that I wasn’t the enemy he was looking for. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself if he thought I’d ever want to be his friend after treating me this way because of one suspicion.
But I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to see his face. I didn’t want to see the confusion in his expression about what to believe. I didn’t want to hear him tell me that he was torn and he didn’t mean to act like that.
But even more scary was the possibility that I would offer to prove myself to him. That I would plead with him to believe me.
I remained in my bedroom until Hans brought me lunch.
“Where is Konstantin?” I inquired, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“Oh, the boss is out. He left a few hours ago,” he said.
“Okay.”
Immediately after eating, I stepped out.
