Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“I’ll get bored if there’s not more to it than just crunching numbers,” I’d told him.
“You will not be bored. I want you to run office as well,” he said in his gorgeous thick Russian accent that made my dick hard.
“How do you know I can do that?”
“I am looking at you, am I not?”
It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me.
Six years ago, after I’d worked for him for four years, Dimah asked me to be his partner, and I quickly accepted. I bought shares with my savings, we signed the paperwork, and simple as that, we went into business together. So after ten years of first employment and then friendship, I knew my partner. He was not a liar, and even if he were, he definitely wouldn’t ever lie to me. His business—our business—was legitimate. I was the bookkeeper. I set up 401(k)s and retirement packages. I paid the personnel and vendors. Dimah was in charge of logistics. He did the legwork, went to the wharfs, watched goods coming in and being shipped out. Ours was an easy distribution of responsibilities. His brother, Kirill, had his own endeavors, and those, from what Dimah told me, walked a thin line between clean and criminal. Being in business with Kirill might get you used for chum if loyalty was not high on your priority list. I didn’t know the whole story of why the two brothers weren’t partners, and I honestly didn’t care. They were completely separate, and since I saw our books on a daily basis, I knew where every penny came from and where it flowed out to. I could say with great certainty that if Dimah said he had a brother, then he did have one. A living, breathing one, even if no one I knew had ever seen him.
“Your partner is a criminal,” my brother told me for the billionth time.
“My partner is a businessman,” I corrected. Again.
Cord grunted and flicked his moss-green gaze to me. “What’s under the bandage?”
“Just a scratch.”
Alex growled. “We both know a scratch doesn’t get you taken to the hospital in a fuckin’ ambu—”
“That’s it,” I cut my brother off, picking up my phone. “I’m telling. I’m calling Dad back, so you better watch out.”
He grabbed the phone out of my hand, slammed it down on the bed beside me, and then took my face in his hands, forcing me to look up at him. “You scared the fuck outta me. I lost Mom. I ain’t losing you.”
God, he had to play the mom card? “You realize I’m thirty-three, right?”
“I will always be older than you.”
Yes, he would. “You can see I’m fine.”
He was squinting so he wouldn’t cry, but his eyes were red-rimmed, giving him away.
“Really,” I said, yanking free and then putting out my arms for him. “I’m good.”
Leaning in fast, he clutched me tight, burying his face in my shoulder. Underneath the outer persona of prickly, volatile, alpha DEA agent lay his great heart that couldn’t take losing another family member. I had to be more sensitive to that.
Glancing over at Cord, I saw him shaking his head, condescension dripping off him. He was such an asshole, and he had no right to judge me. When I flipped him off, he clenched his jaw in irritation.
“He’s fine, Al,” Cord growled. “Now ask him why someone would shoot up his office first thing this morning.”
Alex pulled back to look at me. “Trace?”
“I have no idea.”
“Hazard a guess,” Cord said snidely.
“I don’t have one.”
“Maybe somebody thought shooting up the office and killing you would send Dimah Mashir a message,” Cord surmised, making me want to deck him.
“Like what? Like, I’m gonna shoot the bookkeeper so nobody gets paid?”
Before Cord could tear into me, Alex excused himself to take a call. We both watched him walk to the opposite end of the room, and then Cord moved closer to me.
“He was a wreck on the way over here,” he admonished me.
“Which I’m sorry for, but—”
“Not enough to get another job, though, right?”
“I like my job,” I said, defending myself. “And I own half the business.”
“You’re putting your brother through the wringer for no good reason. Way to be a dick.”
“You didn’t even listen to me.” I sighed. “And I don’t tell him not to go undercover for months on end and miss Christmas with his family, so why should I worry what—”
“You could get another job.” He was relentless.
“It’s not just any job. It’s my business as much as Dimah’s. Should I say it again so you hear me this time?”
“It’s selfish,” he berated me. “Your brother’s in law enforcement. You should show some fuckin’ respect.”
“How so?”
“By not working with a member of the Russian mob for starters!”
Russian mob. Was he kidding? “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”