Chapter Eight #2
“I’m here to see—” I paused for half a second, his name sitting just at the edge of my tongue. “Dmitri. Dmitri Konstantinov. Or something close to that.”
Her brows lifted enough to ripple the smooth surface of her expression. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I believe so.” I held her gaze. “Call him and tell him Inna is here. He’s expecting me.”
Her eyes moved over me, assessing my body as if trying to find a category that fit. Her fingers moved across the keyboard.
“I’m sorry, but he is not expect—”
The desk phone rang. She stopped mid-sentence and picked it up, her eyes sliding back to me.
“This is Ann.” A pause. “Oh, yes.” Her shoulders pulled back. “I’m sorry, sir. Of course.”
She set the phone down. The polished calm she had been wearing since we walked in developed a crack right through the middle.
“I’m sorry, madam,” she said politely. “I didn’t know you were the boss’s wife.”
The words reached me, and for a moment, my brain refused to process them.
Was he watching us? I lifted my eyes and found a small black dome fixed in the corner of the ceiling—a camera. Of course, he was watching.
“Where is he?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she snapped her fingers toward a guard stationed a few steps away. He crossed to us immediately.
“He will take you,” she said, then turned to him. “Use the private elevator. Twenty-seventh floor.”
“Follow me.”
My grip tightened on Cole as we fell in behind the guard.
The elevator ride passed in silence. When the doors opened, the twenty-seventh floor greeted us with stillness.
No footsteps. No voices. Just space. The floors shone without a single mark.
The walls stood bare, but quietly expensive.
And the windows stretched wide across one side, framing the city below.
It looked like a painting someone had hung there to remind you how far up you were.
Everything felt like the movement itself required prior approval.
I already knew the man was dangerous. The lawyer alone was enough to confirm that. But standing here on this floor, I settled into the understanding that this was not a man you crossed and walked away from.
I swallowed and made a quiet decision. I needed distance from him.
A man in a suit came toward us from the far end of the floor. I recognized him as he moved closer. It was the suit guy from the beach restaurant last night—the messenger who seemed to love his job a lot.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said, dismissing the guard without so much as looking at him. “Follow me.”
We walked down the hallway, and the suit guy stopped in front of a door and knocked once. When someone answered from inside, the guy turned to me.
“Cole will wait out here.”
I didn’t like that arrangement, but I had little choice. I gave Cole an assuring nod as the suit guy opened the door for me.
The office opened before me, and for a second, I felt as if I had stepped into a place that didn’t belong in the real world.
The room stretched wide, every piece of furniture sitting exactly where it fit.
Nothing was out of place. The glass wall drew my attention across the room; the city spread out until it touched the ocean.
I could watch that all day and not get tired.
Dmitri stood by the window with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. He gave me attention the moment the door closed behind me. He didn’t move; he just watched.
I stepped further inside, already sliding the backpack off my shoulder. Dmitri moved too. Each step he took closed the distance between us.
I needed to find a way out of this. Because this man was not ordinary. Ordinary was the only kind I knew how to survive.
“I think you went too far with faking the DNA test. I don’t know how else you want me to apologize, but please, let’s stop this,” I said.
He tipped his head and studied me as if I had wandered into his office uninvited. “Good morning to you, too, wife. Tell me, did you work for Coca-Cola before? It must have been hard providing for our son in my absence.”
I exhaled and reached for patience I didn’t have anywhere near enough of. “You know I lied. Why are you doing this?”
“Do I?” His lips curved, careless and amused at the same time. “I sleep around a lot. There’s a chance I met you somewhere and simply don’t remember.” He lifted his glass. “But I’m fairly certain we slept together. And the result?” His gaze dropped, then came back up. “A son.”
I stared at him. “I’m twenty-five, and he’s nine.”
“Noted.”
“You realize that would mean I got pregnant at fifteen.”
“True.”
“Shouldn’t that be illegal?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I pulled the briefcase from my backpack and set it down on the table. “Let’s be practical. Here is the remaining money. I’ll pay back what I used, and you can name your price for the lie. I’ll settle everything.”
He went quiet. For a moment, I thought logic had actually found him.
He began moving closer again. His eyes stayed on mine, and I told myself to step back, to put distance between us, to do something useful with my feet. But my body didn’t listen. Those grey eyes kept me exactly where I was.
He stopped right in front of me and lifted his hand. He brushed his fingers under my chin, tilting my face slightly upward. I swallowed the urge to knock his hand away and held his gaze instead. If this were a game of control he was trying to run, I would not be the first one to fold.
“I love that mole,” he said, his eyes tracing the small mark beneath my left eye as if it were something worth the time.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I did.” His gaze came back to mine. “And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, you are already my wife.”
My throat tightened around whatever I was about to say.
“Now,” he added, stepping back enough to break the closeness. “Sit the hell down and relax.” His eyes darkened at the edges. “If I wanted chaos, you’d already feel it.”