Page 4 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

We make a slow circuit of the room. I stop to greet two men I do business with, a city alderman who owes me a favor he pretends not to remember, and a woman who manages three of my legitimate properties. I introduce her to Luna without elaboration.

Elizabeth smiles. “So nice to meet you. Wasn’t the wedding lovely?”

“The best of the seasonso far,” Luna says like a cheeky debutant.

“I know exactly what you mean. This early in the season, you never know what you’ll find.”

They chatter, and I make note of the fact that Hugo doesn’t approach.

He won’t. He’s smarter than he is wise, which means he knows better than to make the first move without understanding what he’s walking into.

During a lull in conversation, Luna leans close enough that I can hear her without her raising her voice. “You were right about how to play this.” A pause. “He’s fuming.”

She laughs then, and it’s a better sound than anything else in this room, which is full of an orchestra and two hundred people performing wealth at each other.

This arrangement is temporary, but there’s no reason a man can’t appreciate a thing he does not intend to keep.

I shift my gaze toward him, and sure enough, he’s pinching at his coat, as if there’s something on it. Fuming, indeed.

When the orchestra shifts tempo, I offer my hand.

She looks at it, then at me. “Are we dancing?”

“We are.”

“Do you actually dance, or is this one of those things where you stand in one place and sway with authority?”

“Come and find out.”

She takes my hand.

The song is fast enough that it requires genuine effort, and Luna meets it without hesitation—she moves well, easily, without self-consciousness, and I find myself adjusting to match her rather than leading outright, which is not something I typically do. We draw attention, which is not surprising. I’m known, and if they don’t know me, I’m large. I tend to gather eyes wherever I go.

But more than that, Luna is enchanting.

Her onyx black hair is striking against her pale ivory skin—elegant black paint on a blank canvas. And the crisp white curl near her temple, like a forties starlet, swirls near her bright green eyes. By its root, a mottled scar at her hairline. The white streak is from some kind of old injury she doesn’t bother to hide.

I like that. And I like that she smells like flowers.

The tempo moves through me, and as I follow the music, a memory surfaces. An ugly one.

The argument was nothing new, taken piece by piece. Hugo has been sharpening his resentments for years, and I’ve let most ofthem pass because the cost of responding was higher than the cost of endurance.

I’ve always understood cost. It comes with the job.

But yesterday he had assembled all of it at once—every grievance, every cruelty—and delivered it in the corridor outside the hotel ballroom where his wedding rehearsal dinner had just concluded, in the voice of a man who had finally decided he had nothing left to lose. After all, he’s the public face of the organization. The one who shows up at the legitimate functions, the one who talks to the cameras for us.

Hugo has a good face. Classically handsome, confident. He knows how to move in a room full of important people. In another life, he would’ve made a great politician.

But I’m his stepbrother, and I run the Fedorov Bratva.

So really, in this life, he’s just our mask.

I maintain power, in part, because my stepbrother knows how to talk our way into rooms we wouldn’t otherwise be invited to. His work keeps part of the business legit, and that’s an invaluable person to have.

For now.

But his impending wedding cracked something in him. I don’t know whether he felt guilt over dumping Luna the moment a strategic woman became available or if he was merely feeling his importance, but Hugo lost his composure long enough to piss me off last night.