“Or,” Rome suggests, “we take you downstairs and simply kill you. That would solve a lot of problems.”
“Works for me.” I push off the glass, and Sergei holds up his hand, stopping us.
“I have information,” he says, getting our attention, but his eyes are pinned to Carson. “On Adam Damien.”
“The fuck did you just say?” Carson stands, leaning over his desk toward the older man. “Choose your next words carefully, or I’ll pull your trachea out of your goddamn ugly-ass nose.”
I hate it when he does that. It’s so damn messy.
“You heard me.” Sergei sits back smugly in his chair, examining his nails. “I have information that you’re going to want. But I won’t give it to you unless you make me a king.”
“Murder it is,” Mateo says, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together with anticipation. “Can I play with the blowtorch this time? You assholes always get all the fun.”
“If you kill me, my daughter will die.”
Now, his eyes find mine.
“You can’t hide her away in your mansion forever. My men will find her, torture and rape her, and then kill her painfully. Is that what you want for your new wife, Julian?”
“He’s bluffing,” Rome says.
“I guess that’s the chance you take,” Sergei replies as he stands. “I understand these decisions take a little time. So you think on it and call me.”
He turns to walk out the door, and everything in me screams to take his fucking head off.
But if he’s not lying, I can’t risk Natasha’s life.
So, we watch him walk out the door, and then we all turn to Carson.
“You know as well as I do that any information that sack of shit has on Damien is intel that we can get ourselves,” Mateo says, shaking his head.
Now everyone turns to eye me.
“I’ll start digging tonight.” I’m the hacker of our organization, and there isn’t much that I can’t find out. If there’s new chatter about the man that sent Carson to prison and killed the love of his life, I’ll find it. “I’ll report back in the morning.”
Twelve
NATASHA
“Shit, damn, fuck,”I mutter as I consult my phone, and the lovely photo of the salad on the website, and then the mess in the bowl in front of me.
It’s supposed to be a Greek salad, but it looks like slop. I swear, I followed the recipe to theletter, but it doesn’t look great at all.
“Maybe it’s one of those situations where it might not look pretty, but it’s actually delicious.” I prop my hands on my hips and stare into the bowl, then shrug and cover it and set it in the fridge. “Or, it has to set up in the fridge. I bet that’s it.”
I also found a recipe for a Greek chicken casserole. Yes, there’s a theme for this dinner. My new husband is the head of the Greek Mafia. I want to cook Mediterranean food for him. I’ve never cooked a day in my life, because we always had a chef on staff, but it was drilled into me ad nauseam that this is one of my many jobs as Julian’s wife.
I have to have dinner waiting for him every single day. I’m the one who is supposed to plan the menu, and if we don’t have a chef, that means that I’m in charge of preparing the meal. I can read a recipe. I’m an intelligent woman.
“I can do this,” I say for the hundredth time and pull the cooked chicken out of the oven. The recipe called for it to be pan fried, but I’ve never used a gas stovetop before, and this behemoth is scary.
Don’t get me wrong. I would bet that the whole set up cost well into the five figures and that every chef in the world would give it a gold star.
But it’s intimidating as hell.
So, instead, I googled how to bake chicken because the oven isn’t quite as intimidating, and I did that instead. Now, I have to cut up the chicken and mix it with the other ingredients for the casserole. Cutting and stirring I can do. In fact, I have a Taylor Swift song blaring through my phone as I stir and wiggle my hips.
This part is fun.
