“Why are you sorry?” she asks me, sounding almost stern. “You’ve done nothing wrong. Yeah, maybe the two of you should’ve been more discreet, but–”
“Nothing wrong?” I demand. “Kira, this ruins everything! I’m supposed to be your fiancé! To keep the rumors about Brian and you hiring me as an escort and all that shit quiet! And this is just, just icing on the fucking cake! Because now, at best, you have a fiancé who is fucking your uncle and at worst they find out I’m a rent boy that you hired andthenI fucked your uncle.”
“You guys…” The expression on her face is mortified but curious. “I mean…did you…you know?”
“Oh my god,” I lean forward onto my knees. “I’m gonna be sick, everything is ruined, and you’re asking me if we ‘you know’?!”
“I’m just asking!”
“No, Kira, we didn’t. But it doesn’t matter, because those photos imply that we did. It will ruin our engagement news; it changes everything. You need to fire me. I’ll disappear. You can try and save your image, and maybe this will all blow over for you.”
Kira stares at the letter for another minute, re-reading it. The dark, quiet car is fraught with tension as I wallow in guilt and regret. Then, she slowly shakes her head. “No.”
“No?”
She raps her knuckles on the partition separating us from the driver. It buzzes as it lowers a few inches.
“Take us to my uncle, Nigel.”
“Ma’am? He–you want me to take you–”
“Call him and tell him that Tommy and I need him immediately. He will give you permission to bring me to him no matter where he is or what he’s doing. I swear it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the driver agrees without any more protests, and the partition rises once more.
My stomach was heaving before, but now it’s doing backflips.
“We don’t need to go to him,” I choke out. “Just drop me off a few blocks from your apartment, I can walk home.”
“No.”
“He’s just going to fire me, Kira. I’d rather just go.”
“No.”
“Kira–”
“I said no!” And her shout surprises me enough that I really look at her. Her little fists are clenched tight and she is staring at the letter like it kicked her dog. “No one gets to threaten us. We’re Sokolovs. We don’t run away from anything or anyone. And we don’t letanyonedisrespect us this way.”
“I’m–I’m not–” I swallow hard, my heart pounding. “I’m not one of you, Kira. I’m nobody.”
“This says otherwise.” She lifts one of the photos. One where Young-gi and I aren’t kissing, but I’m in his lap, my eyes closed and head thrown back, and he’s looking up at me, holding me there so I don’t fall. He’s always such a brick wall, so expressionless, but in that photo?
He’s staring at me like I’m the only person in the room. Like I’m the only thing that matters, like he’s ravenous for me.
“We were just–it was just fooling around. He was just–” I shake my head. “Never mind.”
I sigh and slump into my chair, willing to be bossed around by this Sokolov, too, it seems. And for the rest of the drive, I try to kill the squirming little hope inside me that Kira is right, and Young-gi is going to fix all this. I try to be practical, to be real, so I’m not disappointed. But despite my best efforts, the hope remains.
Chapter 25
Young-gi
An alert on my phone gets my attention, and I turn away from the work my men are doing to check the screen. With a frown, I realize that Kira and Tommy have left the restaurant much faster than I anticipated.
Maybe he didn’t care for the food.I have a flash of imagination–Tommy making a disgusted little face at fine cuisine, his nose wrinkled like a kitten forced to take medicine. I get a warm, fuzzy weight behind my ribs, along with a spike of jealousy so sharp I can taste it; I want to see him make that face in person. I want to be with him when he discovers what food he likes and doesn’t like. I want to be the one who knows him best. I want to be the one that catches him.
I resent this business that kept me from dinner with them, but it was necessary.
