I snort. “Oh, you mean telling the maids what to do?”
Her eyes narrow. “Yes, Maksim, that’s called managing. You might try it sometime outside of murder and intimidation.”
Kostya barks a laugh. “Enough, always with the bickering.” He swings his boots off the table, leans forward, eyes bright with the kind of trouble that makes my teeth ache. “Where’s the pretty girl?”
My jaw locks.
He knows damn well where she is. Or where she was the last time he decided to test my trigger discipline.
I give him a flat look that should say drop it.
He doesn’t.
“What?” he says standing. “If you’re done with her, I want a turn.”
Something in my chest goes cold.
I move before Katya can sigh, before Kostya can finish breathing that sentence out. My hand is fisted in his shirt collar in a blink, the other forearm slamming across his chest as I drive him back into the wall hard enough to rattle the frame behind his head.
Kostya’s taller; it’s infuriating. The wall takes some of it away.
His breath leaves on a laugh anyway.
“There he is,” he says, grinning down at me like an idiot. “I was starting to worry you’d gone soft, brother.”
I shove harder, my forearm digging into his throat now.
“Say that again,” I murmur. “About taking a turn.”
His hands stay loose at his sides. A trust I’m not sure he deserves.
“I’m kidding,” he croaks, still amused. “Mostly.”
Katya’s voice slices through the tension like a blade.
“Can we not redecorate with brain matter today?” she snaps. “We need to discuss actual things. Are you two fucking done?”
I don’t look away from Kostya.
“This is an actual thing,” I tell her. “If he keeps talking about Ayla, they’re going to be scraping him off this wall in strips.”
Kostya’s eyes flicker, something sharp sliding behind the humor. “Touchy,” he says quietly. “We always share, why not her?”
“We don’t share, you take my left overs and I’m not done.”
I push my forearm harder before pushing off of him hard.
He rubs his neck. “Surveillance says otherwise,” he mutters gesturing toward the cameras above. “You fucked her already, what’s the problem.”
“You’re fucked up for watching.”
He chuckles dark. “Never said I wasn’t.”
“Enough!” Katya shouts, her face pulled in disgust. “Nikolai called, he wants to know why this house is empty. Why you’re not running the Bratva from it.”
Nikolai.Our fucking father.
“If Nikolai has questions he has my number.”
