Page 88 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

24

HE THREATENED ME POLITELY. (TAMARA)

Mikhail is waiting in the foyer when I come out of the bedroom the next morning. He looks me over. Black trousers. Cream sweater. Camel coat over my arm. Hair pulled back neatly, revealing nothing.

“Good morning?” he says, making no real attempt to believe it.

“I suppose.”

I slip into my coat and tuck my phone and lip gloss into the deep pocket. Nothing extra to hold on to. Aleksander comes out of the study before I reach the door. He searches my face the way he did yesterday, looking for damage he has no right to repair.

I hate that I notice. I hate more that some part of me wants to let him.

“Mikhail stays with you until you’re inside,” he says.

“Fine.”

“He waits outside the door.”

“That’s what we agreed.”

“If Kalinin asks you to dismiss him⁠—”

“I won’t.”

He absorbs that like it costs him not to argue. He cannot stand the shape of this morning and knows better than to close his hand around it.

“Tamara.”

I turn. He doesn’t step closer.

“If you want to leave, leave. You don’t owe him the end of a conversation.”

“I know.”

“And if he says anything that changes the risk to Mark⁠—”

“I come straight home.”

Home.

I choose to ignore the weight of that single word.

I step into the elevator, Mikhail following. We ride down in silence. In the mirror, I catch the outline of us together: Mikhail, too handsome and careless-looking to pass for what he is, and me, too controlled to pass for what I am.

A desperate mother.

A furious daughter.

A wife with her husband’s taste still on her tongue.

Outside, the black SUV waits at the curb. Another vehicle idles behind it. Mikhail opens the rear door for me. “You know, you don’t have to do that.”

“Aleksander told me to behave.”

“That sounds out of character for you.”

“It has been a difficult morning.”