"I'm serious. You've been walking around here smiling at your phone all the time, and you skipped our session last week to go to dinner with her." He throws a lazy jab to keep distance. "Stepan's worried about you," he says, tapping his chest. "That's all I'm saying."
"Stepan's talking about himself in the third person, which means Stepan needs to get hit."
I close the distance and throw a three-piece combination—jab, cross, left hook—and the hook catches him on the jaw and snaps his head sideways. He staggers and his mouthguard pops loose and hangs from his lip with a thread of spit dangling. He pulls it out and works his jaw from side to side, testing it.
"Okay, I deserved that."
"Yeah, you did."
"But I'm not wrong." He puts the guard back in and squares up. "You're distracted and everyone can see it. Ro said the same thing the other day."
"Look," I say, bouncing a little, "I'm doing everything I've been asked to do. What more does everyone want from me?" His nosy snark is getting my juices flowing. I can feel my temperature rising as anger starts to swell.
"We want you to run a background check on the girl."
I stop moving, glaring at him hard. "What?"
"Timur offered to run a standard background, nothing invasive. Family history, known associates, financials." Stepan holds his gloves up in a peace gesture. "We do it with everyone who gets close to the family. You know that."
"She's not a business associate, Stepan. She's a woman I'm seeing." This is ridiculous. If I start prodding around in Zora's life, she'll find out and then she'll never trust me again. I'm not putting her through that. Hell, I'm not even telling her what I do for a living right now. We're not to that point in the relationship yet.
"Which is exactly why we should vet her. You're Roman's right hand right now. Anyone who has access to you has access to everything we do." Stepan's gloves still hover in the air, waiting for me to tap them, but I'd like to put one into his face.
"She doesn't have access to anything. She came over and I fucked her, okay?" I start bouncing again, hoping he gets the point that I'm not budging on this. I don't even know her last name yet. There's no way I'm pushing her.
"She may not have access now, but over time, that'll come up. That's how relationships work." Stepan drops his hands and looks at me straight. "You gotta see where we're coming from." He really doesn't get this, does he? It's starting to really piss meoff. I throw a few quick jabs from a distance, not nearly close enough to strike him, and he scowls.
"So I'm supposed to, what, never let anyone in? Stay alone forever because the family might get uncomfortable?"
"That's not what I said."
"It's what you're saying."
"I'm just saying let him run the check, Kaz. If she comes back clean, we never talk about it again." He's still not raising his gloves, and the thought of slamming his face hard is so tempting.
"No fucking way."
He pulls his mouthguard out and tucks it into his glove. "Kaz, I'm not trying to start a fight about this."
"Then shut the fuck up." The heat is building in my chest and crawling up my neck and I can feel my hands sweating inside my gloves. "I don't need Timur running her name through a database. I need my family to trust my judgment for once."
"Fuck's sake, Kaz, I?—"
My fist moves before he finishes the sentence. I come at him hard, throwing a right cross with my whole body behind it, and it catches him on the temple, making his knees buckle. He grabs for me on the way down but misses and hits the mat on his back with a thud that shakes the floor under my feet. He lies there blinking at the ceiling with his gloves still up and his chest heaving.
I stand over him for a second, and the anger drains out of me as fast as it came.
I shouldn't have done that, but he had it coming. When I refuse something, I mean it. He's an idiot to keep pressing. If this had been Roman, I'd have had no choice, but I know Stepan's just being nosy. Ro didn't order this.
I pull my glove off with my teeth and reach down. "Get up, loser, and stop pushing my buttons."
He grabs my hand and I pull him up. He stands there swaying for a second, rubbing the side of his head with the heel of his glove.
"You hit harder when you're pissed off," he says. "Good to know."
"I shouldn't have thrown that."
"No, you shouldn't have…" He peels his gloves off and tucks them under his arm. "I'm done. You knocked something loose in my skull and I need to go sit down."
