Roman frowned. “I thought you said you wanted your sexy little maid to be a new office assistant.”
I held back a growl at his calling her sexy. Any other man noticing her beauty rubbed me the wrong way. “She is. She’s been cleaning up my office for when I’m off this light-duty nonsense.”
“Then that simplifies it,” my father said. “Sheis leaking the intel.”
I bristled, gritting my teeth and sitting upright. “What? What the fuck is being leaked?” I huffed a mirthless laugh at the preposterous idea. “There isn’t anythingtoleak in that office. It’s a dumping ground for the fucking bookkeepers we used to hire. All the papers are old and meaningless for anything any enemy could use against us.”
“You do everything digitally anyway,” Sergei said. “Mostly.”
I nodded. “I do. That’s why when our security team found Emilio Ricci was hacking into my system, I had Oleg take him out.”
“And that coincided with the end of any intel about the drug routes being shared,” Roman said.
“Yes. That and I caught Yusef snooping in my office. Sofia said that when she saw him in there, he said he was looking for a map. I killed him right then and there.” I splayed my hands out. “Ergo, the leak of intel stopped.”
My father pointed at me. “That. Why was she in your office to begin with?”
I was getting sick of this third degree. He had the right to be this strict and careful, but for fuck’s sake, Sofia wasn’t doing anything.
“I don’t know. It was her first day and she was probably lost. Renee had her doing stupid bullshit tasks, probably testing her and seeing if she’d quit with the nonsense.”
“Fine.” My father nodded once and sat back. “You caught Yusef red-handed and killed him. You had the clues to target Emilio Ricci, and you had Oleg kill him.Someintel had stopped being leaked, anything pertaining to the drugs. But other intelisbeing leaked. It may not be anything too important, but it’s onlycoming from things you’d have in your office.” He sat forward. “You’ve always been my negotiator, Andre. My trusted right-hand man. The chatter that our men are picking up on, that the Giovannis are aware of what political candidates we’re planning to sponsor, or that Roberto Giovanni is following up on some of our investment moves… That’s information sourced back to you and what you manage.”
I furrowed my brow. The political sponsorships and investments weren’t even dirty. We had grown our wealth through legal and illegal means of revenue. But it didn’t seem likely that Roberto Giovanni or any other crime family rival would want to care about our legal business and economic decisions.
“So you’re saying that Sofia’s spying? That she’s been in my office snooping and sharing intel with enemies?” I couldn’t help another preposterous laugh. “I’ve been in the office with her. She hasn’t been in there without my supervision. If she were trying to do something, I’d know it.”
But would I?
I was in the office, but that was because of my need to be near her. While I sat there and let her tidy up for the couple of hours in the morning that she actually worked, I was often on my phone—either with calls or tending to emails and messages. I wasn’t hovering over her and hawking over her every move.
“Consider it,” my father concluded sternly. “Consider the possibility that shecouldbe a threat.”
“You think every woman’s a threat,” Roman teased.
He narrowed his eyes at him. “The very real and obvious effect of living and learning,” he quipped dryly. Facing me again, he sighed. “Don’t make the mistake of being led by your dick, Son.Use your head and make sure this maid or assistant of yours isn’t going to be a problem.”
We spoke about a few other matters, and then we headed out to eat with the women. Maisie’s mistake of mixing upasswithsasshelped to break the serious mood, but after the meal and once we’d gone back to my building, I felt ragged with the nagging worries about whether my father was being paranoid or if he had a good point about trusting Sofia.
Maybe I was biased in wanting her so badly.
Perhaps I wasn’t thinking straight and being logical about her showing up in my life.
However, the slight chance that I could be letting down my father ate away at me. The possibility that a woman could be duping me peeved me.
I didn’t want to test her, but I would. I’d make sure that Sofia wasn’t a spy or anything like that.
My sister contacted me, saying she wanted to talk to Sofia that evening, and it was the window of opportunity for me to spring a slight trap.
Anya:If Sofia is free, I’m going to come over and talk about that nursing program with her.
Andre:Sure. Go ahead.
After I checked that Anya—and Daria, since she’d tagged along—were busy talking about nursing coursework with Sofia in the kitchen, I headed to my office to prepare some bogus documents and lies about a made-up drug shipment. It’d been a while since I had gotten on my laptop or used the printer, and I wasn’t really eager to be back in the swing of things.
Everyone was right about me. I did work too much. A lot of my duties as a negotiator meant speaking with people and cutting deals. Those were done via calls, emails, and in-person meetings. I never let myself be bogged down with administrative crap, but I imagined that if I expanded our legal business ventures, I’d need a real office with real staff.
For now, my only task was to make up some correspondence about a fake drug shipment and leave it stuffed among papers that Sofia would likely be organizing and straightening up tomorrow when she came in here to “work”.
