Page 18 of Bought By Sin

And I watched her through it all. In my peripheral vision, she showed how she wasn’t merely sitting there and eating. She was observing. Picking up clues and marking who was where and what happened when.

She was sharp. Perhaps too sharp for her own good. Too sharp to do something as simple as assisting on smuggling runs.

When she seemed about finished and put her fork down, I laid my phone on the island counter and faced her expectantly.

She raised her brows in a silent question of what? “Should I bring this to the sink for Selma?”

I smiled slowly, appreciating how damn fine-tuned she was to picking up on her surroundings. An older maid had only just whispered to Selma in the kitchen, yet Mila heard her among all the noise. “No. That’s not necessary.”

She lowered her hands to her lap and watched me with that stubborn sass burning in her eyes. She was compliant with the understanding that I was her boss, her owner. The spirit she couldn’t hide shone through her, though, proving she did not like her situation. It only made me more curious as to how she’d ended up as a slave. I could bide my time to discover her story, though.

“How many men are working outside right now?” I asked her calmly.

She didn’t have a good view. Maybe she might have spotted them in a reflection of the window. But if she could count and track the different voices…

“Five.” She frowned slightly. “Five on the crew, but one of them is a woman.”

I nodded once, my mind made up. Classifying her as my lover would have been infinitely more rewarding, but I wasn’t a fool. I wouldn’t dismiss an asset when I saw one.

“Are you ready for your training?”

She swallowed and stared at me, back to the mute bullshit. It didn’t last long, though. “I’m ready for anything that’s expected of me.”

Hmm. That answer could work if she were still under the impression that I only wanted her for her body.

There’ll be time for that later.

“Good.” I stood and gestured for her to come with me. “I expect you to begin the orientation that we have all of our recruits complete.”

She didn’t speak as I led her from my ranch. After that initial assessment of her, realizing how damn observant she was, I imagined that she could fit right in as a spy for the family. We had many in our employ, and she would likely do well as an extension of eyes and ears for us, wherever we needed intel.

I brought her to a training facility where we usually had new soldiers go through a series of trainings and assessments. On the walk there, I tried to figure out where a good starting point would be with her.

“Have you been employed as a spy before, Mila?”

“I’m not employed,” she corrected. “I’m owned and used.”

If that difference bothered her so much, I wondered why she hadn’t answered me truthfully yesterday about whether she wanted freedom in death or under my ownership.

I tried again. “Do you have experience as a spy?”

“Yes.”

“What else do you have experience with as a runner?”

A few gunshots rang out in the distance, near the shooting range, but she didn’t flinch. “Transporting goods, surveillance. A variety of tasks.”

We continued to walk through the morning heat. The interview-nature of our conversation was unconventional, but so long as she was supposed to serve a purpose for being with me, I needed to know what she could do. Every word that she shared was delivered in an emotionless, detached tone, though. It gave me the impression that she’d been questioned like this before. That it was a routine. I wondered if all of her other owners had seen through her stubborn exterior.

After we entered the training facility that doubled as a large gym, I debated whether she was sharing the whole truth.

I summoned Nikolai over, who was here working out. My cousin preferred this gym over the other facilities we owned because it was the largest. As one of the top enforcers for the family, I was most used to overseeing the recruitment of new men on our force. Not directly, but it was within my sphere of responsibility, hence the training buildings on my property.

Nikolai and I greeted each other, but I had to give him credit for how he refrained from checking out Mila.

“This the new runner?” He tipped his chin at her, sizing her up.

“I’m not sure. She might prove to be resourceful in other ways.” I looked her over. “We’ll see what Roman says.”