Instead, I smile.
Because here's the thing about chess. You can't win if you don't know you're playing. And Dmitri made one critical mistake.
He let me see the board.
I push off the door and walk to my closet. Sleep can wait. I have planning to do.
He wants dinner? Oh, he'll get dinner.
The best dinner of his entire life.
I pull out my phone and scroll through my contacts until I find Amanda's name. She answers on the second ring, her voice groggy.
"It's eight in the morning on a Saturday. Someone better be dead."
"I need your help."
A pause. Then rustling, like she's sitting up in bed. "I'm listening."
"I have a date tonight. With the Russian."
"Fuck." Amanda's voice sharpens with interest. "The hot stalker?"
"The hot stalker," I confirm. "And I need to look like I'm not trying while simultaneously looking like the best thing he's ever seen in his life."
"That's my specialty." I can hear her grin through the phone. "What's the play?"
I catch my reflection in the mirror. Messy hair. Sleep-rumpled pajamas. Dark circles under my eyes from staying up too late thinking about a man I shouldn't want.
"He thinks he's running this game," I tell her. "He's been pulling strings, watching me, manipulating situations to get close to me."
"And?"
"And tonight, I'm going to show him what happens when someone tries to play a Sartori." I smile at my reflection. "He wants me? Fine. But he's going to work for it."
Amanda laughs, delighted. "I'll be there in an hour. Don't shower yet—I'm bringing some new hair products."
She hangs up before I can respond.
I toss my phone on the bed and stretch, energy humming through my veins.
Dmitri Baganov wants to play games?
Game on.
Dmitri
The phone vibrates against the polished mahogany of my desk.
Pietro Sartori's name flashes across the screen, and I let it ring twice before answering. Patience. Control. These are the weapons that separate men who lead from men who beg.
"Baganov." I keep my voice neutral, bored even, as if I haven't spent the last forty-eight hours orchestrating every piece on this chessboard.
"Dmitri." Pietro's tone carries the weight of a man who'd rather be doing anything else. "James Rogers had to cancel his dinner with my sister. Something about a family emergency."
Emergency.I almost smile. The photographs Igor obtained—Rogers with his hand up a waitress's skirt at a hotel bar three nights ago—made their way to his fiancée this morning. A fiancée the Sartoris apparently didn't know existed.
"That's unfortunate," I say.
