But the fact that this happened at all still alarmed me.
“They killed him, clear shots to the head. So we can’t question him,” he added.
“Any identification?” Maksim asked, listening in via speaker.
“None,” Nikolai answered. “I’m sure she’ll be spooked when she wakes up and realizes what happened, but?—”
“Don’t tell her,” I advised.
“I think it might be impossible to keep this from her. I mean, we’ve got the cleanup going already, but with the stucco of the exterior walls and the position of where the men shot him… it’s going to take a while to get all the blood and splatter erased.”
I winced, just imagining her reaction to something as grisly as a corpse or brain matter near where she stayed.
“Anyway, it wouldn’t hurt for her to be aware of the danger,” Nikolai said.
“How the fuck is it going to help her?” I argued.
Knowing this was encroaching too close to making it sound like I cared about her, I cleared my throat. “She will be protected. She’s too valuable to allow anything bad to happen to her.”
I meant it. I meant every word.
Elenawasvaluable. She was an asset I’d never take for granted. She was a symbol of loyalty and possession I’d never dismiss.
I only struggled with how I valued her personally. As the woman I wanted to hold close again.
By the time we arrived, she was scared and frantic to know what happened. Guards surrounded her. Since Nikolai was so easygoing and the most personable of all of us, I let him act as the mediator and explain what he could to her.
I kept my distance. From the office—myoffice—I tightened security for the whole estate. I questioned the guards. I watched the security feed. And when I passed the hallway near where she had come in to work, I listened in and eavesdropped on what Nikolai and Maksim told her as they visited her in the office space I’d given her in the big house.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
My heart squeezed.
I detested that she’d ever feel like that while I was in charge of her.
“But it doesn’t matter. I know that,” she added.
“What doesn’t matter?” Nikolai asked.
“Me. I don’t matter. I understand that I was given to your brother and that I’m…” A sigh cut her off. “Just a thing. Forget it.”
I wouldn’t. The fear and defeat in her tone ensured I wouldn’t forget this conversation or her remarks.
She mattered so fucking much.
And even worse, I knew exactly what she meant with that negative opinion.
She mattered as an accountant. Even as an investigator. She knew that. She wasn’t cocky about her skills, but dammit, she knew her stuff and wasn’t afraid to admit it.
She meant that she didn’t matter tome. To be alive and matter as someone in my home and in my life.
Because of how I’d dismissed her after I’d fucked her. Because of how I vacillated between wanting her and resisting her. Because of how much I strained to keep myself under control and deny that she could be a complication I couldn’t afford with my attention at this moment.
She’d think that. But I refused to admit how wrong she was. The second I admitted that she mattered to me, that she had put a spell on me, it would only make me weaker, more dependent on keeping her as not something John Morovov had given to me but as someone I desired with all that I was.
That night, as I holed myself up in my office, I held a drink in my hand and stared at the desk. Zoning out and letting the sounds of her coming replay in my mind, I tried to get my head on straight.
Why would someone target her?
