18. Demin
DEMIN
Ithrow Sergei into my office and slam the door behind us, and he's still turning to face me when my fist catches him across the jaw and snaps his head sideways.
He stumbles into the edge of the desk and catches himself on it, and I'm on him before he finds his feet, fisting the front of his shirt and driving him back into the wall. The pictures rattle on their hooks.
"Explain to me," I say. "And think before you open your mouth, because I'm deciding right now how much of you walks out of here."
Sergei's body is stiff as he takes my wrists, gently prying me off his chest. He's bigger than me, but with how I'm feeling, I'd lay him out cold in a heartbeat. The fucker touched Isabela, and I don't tolerate men touching what belongs to me.
"Demin. Brother. It's a misunderstanding."
"I don't think your hand on her tit is a misunderstanding. I understand perfectly." I rake a hand through my hair and take a step back but stay close enough that I can pound him if he blinks wrong.
"She's a good-looking woman." He shrugs like it's nothing, but I glare at him and bare my teeth, so he lifts his hands in surrender.
"I swear to you, I didn't know. Nobody told me you'd claimed the girl.
I thought she was just leverage. If I'd known she was yours, I'd never have laid a finger near her, you know that. "
His eyes drag over my face skeptically, like he's trying to see if I believe him. I'm beginning to see why Sebastian doesn't like the man, but one slip up does not a monster make. He didn't know, right?
"My men know not to touch her."
"Your men have worked for you for years.
I've been here a week, brother. I don't know which mouths in this house are yours and which ones aren't." He sounds almost wounded, pressing one hand to his chest like he physically aches.
But I haven't even touched him yet. "I made the obvious read—she's damn fine. You'd have made the same one."
I take a step back again and shake my head, wondering if I've overreacted. The instant he saw the look on my face, he pulled away. So that counts for something, right? This has to be just a misunderstanding.
But a man caught with his hands on the boss's woman should sweat a little or stumble over himself. And Sergei isn't stumbling over anything. It sends a red flag waving, but I'm too irrational now to see it for what it is. Nothing… it's nothing. He's a good man.
I've known Sergei twenty years and I called him here to help me. If I trust him this little, how can I be sure he'll do his job? I'm overreacting. I'm on edge and losing my shit because someone inside my home is a traitor. I just need to calm down.
"You thought she was leverage?" I repeat, now feeling like an idiot for how poorly I acted in that hallway.
"I'm sorry, man… I swear it. We live in a world where women are tools, you know?" His words make my brain hurt, but I know what he's trying to say. "I swear I never knew."
"It won't happen again," I tell him bluntly, knowing how dangerously close I was to killing this man, all for a woman who still wants to escape me. It's irrational that I would become so possessive and defensive over her. It's something I'm going to have to sit and think about for a while.
"It won't," he agrees. He scuffs his toe on the ground and rolls his neck. Then he changes the subject smoothly, like grown men are prone to do rather than lingering on drama. "While we're talking. I've got something you'll want more than my apology."
My head is fucked up right now. Isabela should not elicit such aggressive or instantaneous responses from me. I can't think straight, so I say nothing and he continues.
"Chatter." He lowers his voice, leaning a shoulder against the wall like we're old friends again. "I've been pulling threads since I landed. My contacts, the ones who owe me from the old days, say your suspicions were correct. Someone on the inside told Solano's people the night you were coming."
It's nothing I didn't already know. But hearing it land from a second source, an outside source with no reason to flatter my theory, confirms it to me.
Now I know I have a mole, and the hope that this was some misunderstanding is gone.
Whoever did this did it on purpose and they deserve to be punished.
"Names," I say.
"Well, I don't have anything concrete, but the names Devlin and Igor have surfaced… Mean anything to you?"
Those men are so low-level, there's no way they had prior knowledge of that raid, but it doesn't mean they weren’t tipped off by someone higher up. "You’re certain?" I ask, not questioning his intel but knowing this isn't the end.
He spreads his hands. "Could be a third I haven't smoked out. That's why I need a few days."
So if he has names of lower level men involved, this means it's a bigger problem than I thought. It's not one man conspiring against us, it's men organizing to potentially overthrow us—several of them. Seb isn’t going to like this at all.
"Dig," I tell him. "And do it quietly. You bring whatever you find to me and to no one else. Understood?"
"Of course." He pushes off the wall, sensing the meeting closing, the apology apparently behind us. "Anything else, Boss?" My mind flashes to the way he was touching Isabela and I almost lose it again. My God, I want to hurt him.
I walk around the desk slowly and stop near him, making sure he understands my hard glare.
"One thing," I growl. "You put your hands on her again—for any reason—and I take the hand.
And you'll have a long time to think about it because I'll have the doctor keep you alive so I can do the same thing a week later with the other hand.
" I hold his gaze. "And if your mouth says one more word to her like the ones I'm sure it said this morning, I take the tongue after it. "
"Demin—"
"Do we understand each other?"
"We understand each other." He nods respectfully, his smile gone now, but there's still no fear in his eyes. "It won't come up again. You have my word."
He lets himself out, and I stand there glaring at the closed door.
I don't know if Isabela instigated that or not, but judging by the way she ran off when I walked up, I know she wasn't happy with my catching it.
If she thinks she can throw her body at one of my guards to have them cut her and her father loose, she's got another thing coming.
And if he was just harassing her, she might very well need to talk to me about this.
I want to get to the bottom of what the actual fuck Sergei thought he was doing because if it happens again, I will kill him myself. Mole or not, I will not tolerate the disrespect. She is mine, and I want my things to be mine alone.