She keeps talking but I’m not listening anymore. I’m staring at Niko’s silhouette, leaning against the entrance wall that leads to the house. Of course he opted to stand outside and wait for me. He wanted to know exactly what I was up to.
Alyssa seems to have caught on that something’s up because she’s stopped talking. Instead, she’s looking at me curiously. “Uri? Something wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” I say in a voice too brusque to be believed.
I park haphazardly on the drive and get out of the car. Alyssa follows me towards the house in silence. I can see her adjusting her dress from my peripheral vision. She looks like a woman who’s been recently ridden hard and put away wet—which, to be fair, is accurate.
“Little brother,” Nikolai greets in an amused murmur.
When I stop in front of Nikolai, Alyssa stops next to me. I give her only a cursory glance. “Go to bed. The evening’s over.”
She flinches instantly, hurt pooling in her eyes so fast that I want to kick my own ass. She glances at Nikolai, then back at me. Then, with a clenched jaw, she enters the house.
My brother watches her walk away the whole time. As much as I would like to, I don’t stop him. Purely because I know that’s exactly what he wants me to do.
Only when she’s disappeared does he turn back to me with raised eyebrows and a knowing expression. “She’s pretty.”
I roll my eyes, trying to look less guilty. “I told you I would come to you.”
“And I can see why. Did the two of you have a nice evening?”
I push past him and head towards my office. My good mood has just been reduced to ash in a matter of seconds. I don’t speak again until we’re in my office and I’ve got a glass of vodka in my hand.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Nikolai asks, breaking the silence.
I take a sip of my drink. “What’s going on is that Boris needs a little—”
“No,” Nikolai interrupts sharply, “I’m not talking about Sobakin. I’m talking about your pretty little prisoner.”
I clench my teeth, but my answer still comes too fast and too insistently. “Nothing’s going on there.”
Nikolai scoffs. “Come on, brat. You dressed her up and took her out for dinner? Not to mention that she’s living in the house now, in one of the guest bedrooms?”
“It was necessary. Lev was getting antsy and I didn’t want to push him towards a full-scale breakdown.”
Nikolai’s eyes go wide. “So Lev knows about her?”
“He broke into the basement and found her. It was out of my hands.”
“And Polina?”
“Pol has no idea. Which is why, on the weekends that Polly’s here, Alyssa’s going back down into the basement.”
“What if Lev lets slip?”
I grit my teeth. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“That seems to be the party line these days.”
Mother used to say that Nikolai and I were too alike and that’s why we butted heads all the time. These days, I think it’s more because he’s a condescending prick.
He’s not finished yet, either. “Tell me honestly, brother: are you getting attached?”
Something inside me roars with indignation. Me? Attached? To a woman? Fuck no. “She’s a plaything, nothing more.” Why do those words feel so wooden and rehearsed? So utterly and obviously bullshit? Instead of letting Nikolai point that out, I change the subject. “Need I remind you that you’re here so that we can discuss Sobakin, not so that you can grill me about Alyssa?”
Niko is unmoved. “Both things concern me.”
“Neither one should. I’m handling the situation with Alyssa and I have a plan for Boris.”
That gets his attention. “Do you?”
“The Black Rose. The whole city knows it’s just a front for his drug ring. If we stage a little ambush like we’ve been planning, take down a few of his men in the process, we can remind him of who exactly he’s dealing with.”
Nikolai cocks an eyebrow. “We’ve been over this, Uri. We can’t just launch an attack on a popular nightclub without the cops getting involved.”
“You forget about Vincent.”
“Imbroglio?”
I nod. “LAPD has been tipped off about Sobakin’s drug ring but he’s too powerful for them to deal with. They’ve tried a handful of underground sting operations that have failed. So if we wanna get a little messy in the Black Rose, the police department is willing to turn a blind eye.”