Chapter 5 Andre
ANDRE
Istrode away from Sofia, feeling her lingering stare on my back. Holding her attention like this coaxed me to smile, and I shook my head slightly.
What are you doing to me?
Why?
What is this nonsense?
Sofia was new. But that wasn’t the only reason I was addicted to being near her. Sure, she’d helped me with my wounds, and yes, she proved to be an unflinching, no-nonsense hard worker.
I’d been around countless gorgeous women in my life and she was no exception there. Something else gnawed at me, teasing me to want to peel back her layers.
That’s it.
It wasn’t mere curiosity or physical attraction. She was an enigma.
I pulled my phone out to text Oleg again. He’d just come to tell me that my father was here, but he couldn’t have gone far.
Andre: Please question Sofia.
His reply came immediately.
Oleg: About?
I furrowed my brow, heading toward the study to meet my father. Everything? I was trapped with this need to learn all there was to know about her, but I intended to take that journey of discovering her on my own.
Andre: About where she worked before. Where she’s from.
She had to have gone through a background check to even enter this building, and the staffing agency she was sent here from would’ve provided the preliminary details about her. I trusted Oleg to tell me more, for him to give me his impression.
Because until I had more answers from her—things I’d need to unearth beyond the persistent small talk I was forcing her to engage in with me today—I had to be cautious.
“Always cautious,” I muttered to myself as I entered the room where my father was waiting for me.
“Cautious about what?” He stood near the window, looking out at me. His gaze shot straight to the bandages and wrap that made my shoulder look puffy. “Getting shot?”
I nodded as I took a seat. This study wasn’t used for anything but holding private discussions like this. My office was a messier hell hole of disarray, where I knew where everything was as it should be. But that room was likely still being cleaned up from last night.
“Why didn’t you come to Claire for help?
” He sat as well, watching me closely. Even though he was preoccupied with Owen’s birth, helping my sister Anya adjust, and taking care of his new wife, he would never dismiss me.
For my entire life, it’d just been me and him against the world.
My mother, Olga, had never been in my life, and I hadn’t missed out with that arrangement.
Mikhail Orlov was the only parent I’d ever needed.
“Oleg showed up at the clinic,” he said before I could reply.
“Daria and Anya were there to help him, but they said you weren’t there with him.
” And he’d been aware of Oleg and me going to the warehouses.
It was no coincidence he was confused why my right-hand man had shown up wounded but I was absent.
“I didn’t want to be a bother,” I said sardonically.
He smirked at me with disapproval. “It’s not a bother. She’s a doctor, for fuck’s sake.”
“And Claire is also a new mother. A tired and cranky one.” I sat forward in my seat and sighed. “I wasn’t hit that bad, anyway.”
“That’s not how I see it.” He arched a brow. “Not when you requested a cleanup in your office.”
“That was more to do with my finding the mole and killing him. Not because I was bleeding out in there.” I almost caved to a smile, remembering the moment of surprise and confusion when Sofia leaned over me and told me to take it easy.
To go nice and slow. “Besides, a new maid happened to be nearby. She helped me.”
“A maid?” He scoffed. “We’ve got a doctor, nurses in training, a fucking clinic, and you resort to asking a maid to play nurse.”
“It didn’t seem like she was ‘playing’ nurse.”
He frowned. “This new maid?” He never concerned himself with the details of how I ran my home or whom I employed.
Usually, the house staff stuck to the background, blending in and staying out of sight, anyway.
Sergei, Roman, my father, and I each had our own building in this block, with staff as we saw fit.
We worked together, often closely, but we still had our separate residences.
“Yeah. Sofia.”
His gaze turned critical. Assessing me.
“What?”
“Is she just a maid?” he asked with measured concern.
I don’t know. Something seemed different about her, but I couldn’t pin what. Maybe it was how she broke the usual barriers of actually speaking to me directly, unlike other hired help. Perhaps it was the burning need to assist me when I was in pain that impacted me.
“I’ll check that she is,” I replied.
“Hmm.”
I frowned again, perturbed by the amusement in his eyes. “What?” I repeated.
“Just be careful that you’re not letting her get to you.”
“How so?” If he meant keeping my desire in check, that was already a lost cause. Curvy brunettes happened to be my type. Her stubbornness for distance between us appealed as a form of her playing hard to get—also my weakness.
“You’ve got no room to be distracted by a woman,” he said with a grunt. “Not now when you’re working on finding out who’s selling intel about our drugs to fucking Giovanni.”
“I can be distracted by a sexy maid all I want,” I argued. “I told you. I handled him. I found Yusef snooping through my things in my office. He was the mole, and he’s dead. That’s the end of it.”
My father locked a calculating stare on me. “Perhaps.”
I rolled my eyes. He didn’t usually question me like this.
“If Yusef was the mole you’ve been looking for, then yes, that’s the end of him and his involvement with our rivals.
But Giovanni’s not going to stop there. He could send someone else.
” Shaking his head as he lowered his gaze to the floor, he let out a heavy exhale.
“I’m not convinced that Giovanni will back off completely after last night.
” He asked about the ambush at the warehouse next, and I gave him a better picture of how Oleg and I walked into the warehouse and were hit so severely.
Cleanup crews were no doubt still there this morning, moving the bodies.
“Like everything else, Andre, Giovanni’s obsession with striking at us is a multi-layered fate.”
I nodded. “Yes. But his loss of an informant has to set him back.” Yusef was a tool for him, and he was no longer at the man’s disposal. My father would never truly relax, but I was in the mood to welcome a break. To be more lax about this after last night.
“I trust that you’ll take some time to recover?” he asked after we finished speaking.
I nodded. “Sure. I can hang around here and let myself get back to one hundred percent.” I followed him out of the study and toward the door where he could use the elevator to return to his building.
After he rode it to the sub-basement, he’d navigate the interconnected tunnels of hallways that linked the four of us.
“Hang around home to spend time with this new maid?” he asked with a smirk.
I smiled and shrugged my good shoulder. “Why not?”
Once he left, I checked my phone to see if Oleg had anything for me. He did. Of course, he did. He’d been injured last night, too, but he wasn’t an invalid. He’d probably get bored before I would as we took it easy.
Oleg: She’s a maid. Nothing else to her.
I rolled my eyes. I seriously doubted that.
Oleg: Parents are dead. She took a few nursing classes but dropped out. Lived in a shitty apartment with some roommates before starting here.
That couldn’t be all there was to know about her.
Andre: What about that bruise on her face?
Oleg: I noticed that too. I asked. She said it was from a handsy jerk at a bar who was trying to make her go home with him.
Narrowing my eyes at the idea of anyone trying to harass her, I pocketed my phone.
She was too gorgeous not to be singled out at a bar, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t care for the chance that she’d ever be with another man at all.
What the fuck?
What’s going on?
I rubbed my cheek, ignoring how I needed to shave.
How the hell is she getting under my skin like this?
This streak of possessiveness was coming out of fucking nowhere, but I wasn’t going to try to stop it.
Something about her drew me in. Some element of her taunted me to want to protect her.
Not as repayment for her assisting me last night when she hadn’t been expected to, but because I wanted her.
Because I wanted to embrace this new awareness and connection that kept her on my mind despite only realizing she existed less than a day ago.
And without anything new on my schedule, other than to recover from these injuries that wouldn’t hold me down at all, I saw no reason to quit this interest in her.
Seeking her out, I checked all through the main floors of my residence. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining room. Nor was she in the lounge or libraries. As a bachelor who was often not home and never had guests, I knew better than to assume she was preparing a guest room for anyone.
It was just me here.
Me and you, Sofia.
The idea of our being together was a force of need I couldn’t quell.
“Renee.” I stopped her as she headed toward the stairs that would lead to the laundry rooms.
She turned her wizened old face toward me and raised one brow.
“Where’s Sofia?”
She harumphed, clearly realizing that I was interested in the new maid for other reasons than the purpose of her being here. “She’s supposed to be dusting in the old library.”
It was my turn to snort in reply. Dusting in the “old” library. What a useless waste of her time. That room of books was more like storage than anything else, and I bet that Renee had delegated her there just for her to have something to do.
“Whatever,” I mumbled to myself. I headed there, looking forward to another chance to be alone with her, uninterrupted and unbothered.
It seemed that I wasn’t the only one with that idea, though. Even worse, someone else had beaten me to it. To her.
“Stop,” Sofia insisted, pushing back the guard who cornered her against the walls of shelves. Bookcases blocked her from escaping as the new recruit on the security detail trapped here there. Literally in the corner, walls to her sides and back, and his body pressing against her from the front.
“Leave me alone.” She paired her request with a shove of both her hands on his chest.
“Just shut the fuck up.” He chuckled and tried to reach his hand under her skirt. “No one can hear you.”
A red tide of anger coursed through me as I strode into the room. “I can,” I growled.
Sofia gasped in surprise, her delicate features twisted with discomfort.
The guard spun around at my voice, frowning.
He didn’t wear the expression for long. I punched him with enough force to knock him back, sending him sprawling and smacking into a chair. The feet of the furniture skidded over the floor, a loud scrape that almost distracted me from the new spike of pain that traveled up my arm.
I’d punched him with no regard for my injuries. Even though I’d used my “good” side, it still stung to be this physical.
“Mr. Orlov!” Sofia reached for me, already worried by my hiss of pain.
“Fuck,” the guard groaned as he slowly stood, shaking his head from the hit. “Sir, I was just—”
I hit him again. And again. The new waves of agony rippled through me, but the need to be brutal and punish this stupid asshole didn’t fade.
Sofia clung to my arm, trying to pull me back.
The guard groaned and held up his hands in surrender.
And still, I couldn’t dispel this urgency to teach him a lesson that no one had the right to bother what was mine.
Already, I saw this compassionate maid as mine. Not only my employee, but mine to protect. To shelter. To repay in any good deed that I could justify for how she’d given a damn to want to help me when I was down.
“Mr. Orlov,” Sofia insisted, tugging me back from the guard when I paused. My chest heaved. My knuckles ached. And the skin around my injuries protested moving like this. “Stop. Please. That’s enough.”
I whirled around to face her, giving up on watching the beaten man on the floor. “That’s enough?” I shot back.
I’d be the one to determine what was enough.
Where she was concerned, I had only just started.