12. Cady
Cady
By the second hour of Artem Makarov occupying my office, I'm seriously considering whether murder could be classified as self-defense. He’d claimed he was there to “protect me,” but apparently that means sprawling himself across my couch while I try to work.
By the third hour, I’m over it. In barely two days, the man has managed to make himself comfortable in nearly every room of my penthouse. First my guest room. Then my kitchen and shower. Now my office.
With one arm hooked over the back cushion, he scrolls through his phone, completely at ease. It makes me irrationally angry.
I try to ignore him and focus on the screen in front of me.
Lucas Manifold's face stares back from an article published three days ago, smiling beside a headline about expanding the city's organized crime task force.
I've spent most of the morning digging through public records, donor lists, campaign schedules, and every interview the man has given over the past six months.
If there's a crack somewhere in his operation, I'm going to find it.
I just need a few uninterrupted hours to do it.
Unfortunately, Artem is here.
He shifts behind me, the couch creaking softly under his weight, and I refuse to look back even though I feel him watching me.
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" I ask without looking up.
"Not currently."
I glance up. "That's unfortunate."
I manage almost ten minutes of silence before movement catches my attention. Not because I want to know what he's doing. Because every time Artem gets quiet for too long, it means he's about to become a problem.
Sure enough, when I glance up, he's standing on the opposite side of my desk.
Holding half the sandwich I’d brought in with me to eat.
Slowly, I lift my eyes back to him. "Did you just steal my lunch?"
"Yes."
I stare.
He stares back.
Neither of us says anything.
Finally, I lean back in my chair. " Do you always touch things that aren't yours?"
"I haven't touched you yet."
Yet.
The word sits between us, and he doesn't take it back or look away. He doesn't do anything except stand there holding my sandwich. Another man would backtrack, laugh it off, pretend it was a joke. Artem is waiting to see what I do with it.
"And you're never going to," I tell him flatly. "Go home, Artem. This is me telling you that I don't want you here. I don't need you here. Fuck off."
He takes another bite of my sandwich.
"You still mad about the whole brother thing, Lisichka?"
Nostrils flaring, I begin to Google openly and silently, typing out how to kill someone and make it look like natural causes.
I don’t even get to hit enter before Artem offers, “Carbon monoxide. You won’t even need to worry about the self-defense part.”
This asshole reads lips, too.
My brows pull together. “They’d pick that up in the autopsy report.”
“Then why didn’t you die?”
“Because I killed you.”
I point to the door. “Then take your important ass and get out of my penthouse.”
“Eat your sandwich, Lisichka. You’re cranky.”
“You stole it.”
“You weren’t eating it.”
“I was working.”
“And now you’re talking.”
I hate him. I really do.
He follows me around, steals my food, and shot my car yesterday. But somehow, none of that is the part getting under my skin.
Every time I start making progress, he finds a way to pull my attention back to him.
Judging by the look in his eyes, the bastard knows it, and he's testing how far he can push before I snap.
"You're staring," he says without looking up.
I turn my attention back to my laptop, forcing myself to refocus on Lucas Manifold's profile, on the articles and schedules and carefully curated image he presents to the world—untouchable on the surface, with something underneath no one is supposed to see.
I read the same paragraph three times because he's staring at me.
Manifold's latest press release is full of promises about public safety and community outreach, and not a single word helps me because Artem continues to chip away at my last nerve.
"I've been thinking about your shopping problem," he says.
My fingers pause over the keyboard before I force myself to keep typing. "I don't have a shopping problem."
"You're fishing for information for your daddy, right?"
"No."
"It's the reason you’re dating my brother."
That pulls a slow blink out of me, because there are a lot of assumptions a person can make about my life, but that one feels like a jab.
"Excuse me?"
"He's not your type."
I scoff haughtily. "Don't presume to know my type. I guarantee I'll disappoint you."
"Doubt it."
My office isn't small. The desk alone could comfortably seat six people.
Yet the room feels noticeably smaller when Artem comes around my desk and stops beside my chair.
I keep my eyes on my screen and my hands on my keyboard, and I breathe normally, forcing myself to pretend that I am completely unbothered by six feet, two inches of brooding Russian standing close enough to feel his warmth.
"You didn't answer the question," he says.
I tilt my head. "Which question?"
"Are you dating my brother because you want him, or because it gets you what you need?"
I look at him a moment longer than it should.
"I don't need your analysis of my personal life," I finally say.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
Artem's eyes stay locked on mine like he's waiting for a crack to show.
He shifts, one hand coming to rest on the edge of my desk.
"You know what I think?" he says quietly.
"Don't care."
"I think you don't want my brother," he continues anyway. "I think you want access. I think you want distance. And I think you're very good at pretending those two things look like affection when they need to."
"And I think," I reply carefully, "that you've spent too much time in my apartment."
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth.
"I don't think I have."
I should tell him to move. I should stand up and put the desk between us. I know how to remove men from rooms. I've been doing it since I was nineteen years old and figured out that the fastest way to control a situation is to control where people stand in it.
I stay where I am. I look at him, and he looks at me.
He's looking at me with a slow, unhurried attention. Except this time, it's different. This time there’s something in his expression that isn’t strategy, assessment, or careful observation.
This time it just looks like want.
And the real problem I've been avoiding since the moment he walked into my life is that I recognize it because I feel it, too, and I hate that more than I hate everything else about this situation.
"You're staring," I mutter. "What do you want from me?" I ask.
His next words cause a pool between my legs that has my thighs clenching.
"I want you to fuck me."