Page 56 of Sexting His Assistant

The car door opens. Cold air rushes in.

Luka starts to move by himself.

I grab his good arm. “Don’t even think about pretending you can walk normally.”

His eyes cut to mine. “I can walk.”

“You were shot.”

“In the shoulder.”

“Do you think specifying the body part makes it less insane?”

One of the guards reaches in to help. Luka gives him a look so lethal the man freezes.

I give the guard a look of my own. “Help him.”

The guard hesitates for exactly one second, glancing between me and Luka like he is trying to decide which death will be faster.

Then Luka says, through his teeth, “Fine.”

That’s when I realize how bad it must be.

He lets the guard take some of his weight as he steps out of the car.

I climb out after him, legs shaky, dress wrinkled, hands red. The front doors open before we reach them, and warm golden light spills down the stone steps.

A woman stands in the doorway.

For one bizarre, disorienting second, the sight of her makes everything feel less real.

“Luka,” she says.

I know her. Yelena Kazan.

Luka’s mother.

I met her years ago at one of Misha’s birthdays, then again at a charity dinner where she kissed both my cheeks and told me I had my mother’s eyes. She’s warm where Luka is cold, rounder at the edges where he is all hard lines, with silver-blonde hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck and soft brown eyes that make her look as if she belongs near a fireplace, not at the entrance to a fortress full of armed men.

She’s wearing a cream cardigan over a dark dress, and somehow the sight of it nearly undoes me. Something in her seems to fracture as she takes him in, and I feel like an asshole for behaving so rudely through the car ride. As if he hadn’t quite literally saved my life.

Her gaze moves from Luka’s shoulder to my hands.

Then to my face.

“Oh, Nina,” she says softly.

That’s what almost makes me cry.

I try to speak, but nothing comes out.

Luka’s voice cuts through the moment. “Not here.”

Yelena steps aside immediately. “The doctor is ready.”

Inside, the estate is even more overwhelming. Marble floors, dark wood, tall ceilings, oil paintings, thick rugs, the faint scent of wax and smoke and something warm from the kitchen. It should feel like luxury, but with men moving quickly through the corridors and Luka leaving a thin trail of blood behind him, it feels less like a home and more like the most beautiful war room in Moscow.

They take him down a corridor to a room that looks like a private study until one of the bookshelves opens into something far more clinical.