Page 13 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

He considers that. “It’s better than crying.”

“Oh, don’t tempt me. I’m exhausted and very open to ruining your rug.”

That gets the smallest huff of air from him, not quite a laugh, but enough to make me irrationally angry again because I’m standing here dismantled and he somehow still manages to look composed and devastatingly male in his black suit and rolled shirtsleeves and that impossible face of his.

I look away first, which feels like losing. Before either of us can say anything else, the study door opens behind me without a knock and I turn.

A broad man in his forties stands in the doorway in a dark suit with one hand still on the handle, his face lined hard enough to suggest he came out of the older phase of this family’s history and never quite left it behind. His gaze lands on me first, takes in the files, then shifts to Maksim.

“Pakhan,” he says.

Maksim’s face changes at once. “What is it, Karpov?”

Karpov’s eyes flick back to me, then return to his boss. “The question is moving through the house,” he says. “And it won’t stay inside the house for long.”

A tight silence follows. Then he asks, with the kind of calm that precedes a thunderstorm, “Do you intend to claim the listed girl yourself before someone else does?”

4

MAKSIM

Karpov asks the question like he’s discussing security, not a woman standing ten feet away with fury written all over her face, and I understand at once that the conversation has already spread farther than I wanted.

I turn toward the door and keep my voice flat. “Yes.”

Karpov’s eyes narrow slightly. “Yes, Pakhan?”

I take one step closer. He’s been with my family a long time, long enough to know when I’m in the mood to explain and when I’m not. Tonight, he’s pushing. “Yes,” I say again. “I’m claiming her.”

The words leave my mouth clearly, and once they do, the choice feels obvious. It was always going to come to this. Sergei built the structure to force my hand, and every man worth worrying about will understand exactly what I mean by it.

No one touches her.

No one approaches her.

No one interprets her status for me.

Karpov studies my face for a second, then nods once. “I’ll have it understood.”

“You’ll have it understood inside this house,” I correct. “Outside this house, nothing changes. No loose mouths. No creative versions. No one carries this beyond my walls until I say so.”

His jaw shifts, but he nods again. “Understood.”

I dismiss him with a look, and he takes the door with him. The latch clicks shut.

The silence behind me lasts half a second and then Elena says, “No.”

I turn back to her.

She’s standing stiffly, one hand braced on the edge of the chair, the other curled so tightly I can see the strain in her fingers even from here. Her face is flushed, her split lip angrier than it was a minute ago, and there’s enough fire in her eyes to make a sane man take a step back.

I’m not a sane man where she’s concerned.

“No?” I ask, feigning ignorance though I know what she’s after. If she says what she’s thinking out loud, she’ll give herself more clarity than I ever could.

“No, you don’t get to do that.” She takes a step toward me, and I stay where I am because she’ll come to me if she wants this fight badly enough. “You don’t get to stand there and decide I’m yours because some old bastard with a ledger said so.”

I fold my arms and watch her. “That’s not what I said, and that bastard is your father.”