Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(66)

“I… I’m not scared of him,” I lie.

“Then you’re a fool.” He grabs my arm and pulls me against his chest. I feel his heart racing against my cheek. “Because you should be scared.”

“He can’t attack me in public.”

“Why not?” Misha scoffs. “He killed my brother in broad daylight. What makes you think he wouldn’t do the same to you?”

I fall silent as the pain sears through his silver eyes.

“Misha…” I whisper, my hand reaching for his face.

He steps out of my reach, his walls rising high around him. “I’m putting twenty-four-hour security on you. It’s only a matter of time now before he discovers everything we’re hiding.”

“No one even knows—”

“You confirmed our marriage to the entire marketing department a few days ago,” he reminds me. “As I said, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the news spreads.”

The doors ping open and Misha walks out. I follow him because I don’t know what else to do. When we arrive at his office, he turns to Nikolai.

“Nikolai, go and grab Mrs. Orlov’s things from her office. We’re heading home.”

Nikolai nods and hurries off. “Of course, sir.”

“What are you doing?” I balk, following him into his office. “I still have work to do.”

“You’re done for today.”

“Misha—”

“Paige!” he erupts, the desperation in his silver eyes piercing through my indignation. “Give and take, remember? Now is the time for you to take. And to do it silently.”

And I see it now: how much he needs to cloister me away behind his high walls and his fortified security. It may not solve the problem forever, but it’ll help today. It will bring him a moment of peace.

“Okay,” I say softly. “Let’s go home.”





48

MISHA

“What are you doing?” she asks as I pull out a cast iron skillet from the kitchen cabinet.

I grab a large knife from the butcher’s block. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

She eyes me curiously, keeping the kitchen island between us. “It looks like you’re planning on carving Petyr Ivanov up with that knife and searing him in that skillet.”

“Don’t give me ideas.”

She grins for a moment before it fades away. “Seriously, though, what are you doing?”

I crush a head of garlic with my palm and separate out the cloves. “If you can’t connect the dots here, I can’t help you.”

“You… cook?” she asks slowly.

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes.” The short response is delivered with no hesitation.

“I find cooking cathartic.”

She watches as I dice the onion and then move on to the garlic, the blade flashing effortlessly and catching the light like it’s alive. “You’ve got some serious knife skills.”

I ignore the compliment and gesture towards the freezer. “Pull out the shrimp for me. They’re in the door.”

She pours the shrimp into a colander and sets it in the sink under a cold drip, but her eyes never leave me for long. When she slides back into the bar stool, the interrogation continues. “Who taught you to cook?”

“Gordon Ramsay.” She frowns and I explain. “Cooking shows. Cookbooks. It’s pretty straightforward if you know how to follow instructions.”

“Take it from someone who tried: it’s not that easy.”

I chuckle as I arrange my minced garlic into neat rows. “Are you telling me you’re not a stereotypical

housewife, then?”

“Only if you want to come home to find your house on fire,” she admits. “I almost burned the trailer down twice, so I stuck to cereal and canned beans most of my life. Once a month, Clara and I would pool the money from the odd jobs we worked around the trailer park and treat ourselves to McDonald’s. That was our version of a home-cooked meal.”

“Jesus.” I wince. “McDonald’s. Even just saying the name tastes bad.”

“Hey! We used to look forward to those meals. It was the highlight of our month.”

“And no one ever called Child Protective Services?”

She smirks. “In Corden Park, being able to afford McDonald’s separated us from the riff-raff. We were high class. Crème de la crème. Queens of the trailer park.”

I pause my chopping and look at Paige. “Do your parents still live there?”

The smile dies on her face almost instantly. Her breathing hitches, as though the thought of her parents still existing out there, somewhere in the world, has her on edge.

“Last I checked,” she admits at last in a voice with none of the easy laughter it had a few moments ago. “But that was ten years ago. I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”

“Do you have reason to believe they might not be?”

She considers that for a moment. “Mama smoked like a chimney and Dad drank like a fish. So… who knows?”

She doesn’t look sad, exactly, but I can see the regret that things aren’t different. I want to free her from it.