“I’m getting to that.” He takes another sip from the small espresso cup. “This was before Dmitri met Lauren, of course.”
“Oh? Is that someone else in the company?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?”
“She was Dmitri’s wife.”
The café goes silent to my ears, and it takes all my self-control to calmly say, “I didn’t know he was married.”
A look of sadness overtakes his grin. “Wasbeing the operative word, Ms. Benson. LaurenAnderson-Smirnovdied in a drive-by shooting. It’s still unsolved.”
“I had no idea,” I calmly say.
It’s not the response Andrey expected. He tilts his head and peers at me.
“Dmitri went mad after that for a time. Almost lost his company and his, well, you know.”
His Bratva.
“I suppose it was a natural response, losing your wife and child in such a?—”
“You only mentioned a wife, not a child.” I cut him off, unable to control sounding shocked, because I am.
“Oh, didn’t I mention it? She was five months pregnant at the time.”
My stomach drops, and I feel sick, my hand twitching as I force it to stay on the table, instead of covering my belly where there is life growing inside me. There is no way Andrey Mikhailov can know I’m pregnant.
“Lost in his grief and looking for someone to blame, he accused me of killing them.” Andrey’s expression turns to sadness and regret, but there is something off about it, like it’s practiced and not sincere. “But to be honest, I always wondered…”
He pauses and waits for me to ask the question before finally continuing without it.
“I always wondered if he didn’t order the hit himself.”
“On his pregnant wife?”
“You’re surprised, but our world is a dark one. Worse things have happened. Lauren was an outsider, and maybe she decided she’d had enough. Maybe with a child on the way, she decided the darkness was too much and she tried to leave him, but he refused to let her go. That’s the way it goes in our world sometimes.”
My entire body feels cold.
Refused to let her go.
Is he really suggesting that Dmitri killed his wife when she tried to leave him?
“You know I’m a lawyer, and if we were in court, that would fall under hearsay, Mr. Mikhailov.” Just as at the police station, I hide behind the attorney side of myself.
He shrugs. “Of course. But between the two of us, I believe I know more about what kind of darkness is out there.”
I can’t argue with that.
“Dmitri never got over my sister because they’re too much alike—ruthless, cold, power-hungry, and possessive. Whatever you think you see in Dmitri Smirnov, Ms. Benson, you’re imagining it. He doesn’t have an ounce of humanity left, if he ever had any to begin with.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I switch tactics.
“Because I want to avoid bloodshed. Because I don’t want another innocent woman killed. A woman who doesn’t deserve to be dragged into our world by someone who only cares about getting what he wants.”
“And you’re different from him how?”
