Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(91)

Paige turns at the threshold of the door and fixes me with a fierce glare. “I’d prefer Konstantin.”

“We don’t always get what we want.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she snaps. She’s about to leave again when something stops her.

She twists around and takes a step back into the room. “Why do you have to be this way? I came to find you because I wanted to tell you something.”

Venomous words pour out of my mouth before I can pen them in. “If it’s about your lunch with my sister, save it. I don’t need to know every detail of your day or what fucking salad you had to eat. Just like you don’t need to know every detail of mine. We don’t have to pretend to care about each other.

Not when no one else is looking.”

The disappointment pools in her eyes. Guilt overtakes the adrenaline thrumming through me.

“Excuse me. I’ll leave you to your other punching bag.”

Then she slams the door on her way out.





67

MISHA

I’ve spent the last two nights in my office, sleeping on the fold-out couch to avoid my wife.

Not that it helps much. Big as this fucking house is, I run into her regularly. When I do, she avoids my gaze and walks the other way.

We drive to work separately, Konstantin escorting her each morning and evening. Even in the building, we stick to our own departments.

Considering this new arrangement was my doing, I’m not enjoying it much.

It’s only nine in the morning, but I find myself glancing towards the bar cart in the corner of my office.

I’m craving something strong enough to help me forget the hurt in Paige’s eyes the last time I crossed paths with her in the gym.

“Are you still sleeping?” a familiar voice asks.

I curse silently as Nikita walks into my office and eyes my pull-out couch with unabashed judgment.

She closes the door and joins me on it without an invitation.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

“I hate the armchairs you put in here. They’re uncomfortable,” she explains when I glare at her, plucking my blanket off of me and arranging it across her bare legs.

Groaning, I lie back against my pillow. “I meant, what are you doing in my house?”

“Wedding planning, of course. Mom is with Paige in the garden. They’re going over table settings and the menu.”

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. I’m sure you have a million things you’d rather be doing than planning a wedding you don’t support.”

She snorts. “Mom made me come.”

“Since when do you do what she tells you to?”

“Since I realized that she’s been really happy lately and this stupid wedding might be the reason why.

Well, that and your pretty little wife.” She curls her top lip. “It’s nauseating how well they get along.

Mom finally has the daughter she always wanted.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nikita. Mom already has the daughter she’s always wanted,” I say. I pause for effect, then add, “She got that the day Maksim married Cyrille.”

Nikita punches my arm lightly with a shocked laugh, then slouches against the back of the sofa.

“Speaking of perfect daughters, Cyrille is here, too. She brought Ilya.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’?” she repeats in disgust. “Don’t you want to go say hi? You haven’t seen your nephew in months.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“If anything, I’m being generous to you.”

I sigh. “Is this the part where you tell me I’m a shit uncle?”

“Why would I bother?” she asks sweetly. “You’re already well aware of what a shit uncle you are.”

I snort with laughter and Nikita joins in. For a moment, it takes me back twenty years. When she used to sneak into my room in the mornings and wake me up with a poke in the ribs just because she was bored.

“You’re still a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“It’s been so long since we’ve hung out I was afraid you might have forgotten.”

I shake my head. “Impossible.”

She smirks and for a moment, I can feel her longing. The need to go back in time for just a few minutes. Back to when things were simple. When Maksim was around and laughter came easily and being together wasn’t a painful reminder of everything we’ve lost.

“Paige seemed a bit down when we arrived,” she observes. “Does that have to do with the run-in with her sleazy ex-husband or is it being forced to live with the grumpy current husband?”

I straighten up a little and stare at her. “What do you mean?”

Nikita’s frown sharpens. “We ran into her ex at lunch the other day. She didn’t tell you?”

Fuck.

“She saw Anthony?” I demand, jerking all the way upright.

“Okay, so I’m guessing she didn’t tell you,” Nikita says with a sigh. She gets to her feet, too. “He tried to order her a drink. I guess a ten-dollar cocktail and a sticky note is the going rate for reconciliation after abandoning someone to be penniless and alone.”

“What happened?”