She blinked.
“You get shot when you are shooting. That’s how a rescue works,” I declared.
“So,” she shook her head and looked at me again. “So you killed people.”
I took a sip. “You said it yourself. The world is cruel. So you get crueler and keep moving.” I let the smirk sit on my face. “That’s how you stay alive.”
She processed that. “What if you get arrested?”
“Why? Are you worried you’d lose your husband?”
“You don’t become important to someone and then just disappear from their life!” She suddenly raised her voice, making my smirk fade. “This marriage will end, I know that. But it doesn’t mean you aren’t special to me. To Cole, too. I don’t like it when people disappear.”
I moved back to her and settled beside her. “I’m special to you?”
She looked down, and I put a finger under her chin, tilting her to look up. I raised a brow, and she spoke. “What do people have to do to be special to you?”
“What you do,” I said.
“Am I special?” she asked.
I didn’t answer with words. My lips took hers in a deep kiss. I didn’t need the word ‘special’. It was too small. Inna was different. That was the truth. Being different meant a lot more than just being special. And kissing her was the most honest thing I could do tonight.
Chapter Forty
Inna Grace
I researched DK Holdings thoroughly, and the company itself was spotless. Every record was documented, every achievement polished enough to earn awards and flattering magazine profiles. It was the kind of company governors attended dinners for and journalists described with words like visionary and elite. But corporations alone didn’t give men the power Dmitri carried into a room. That sort of authority came from somewhere else entirely.
The situation with Akim killing Ivan confirmed it.
When Dmitri told me Akim handled Ivan, I went to Caitlin afterward and asked her about it. I expected grief, maybe a woman demanding justice. Instead, Caitlin reacted as if Ivan’s death were the ending she had long since prepared herself for. Part of me understood it because of what he put her through. But the calmness she carried unsettled me. It told me she understood the world she was living in, and, by extension, the world I had stepped into myself.
I sat with that realization for days and never pushed Caitlin toexplain it further. She was coming out of the pain, and I refused to ruin that progress. Instead, I took her to the beach and watched her smile at the water. The next day, we occupied the kitchen for an entire afternoon and cooked enough food to feed a small village. Most of which turned out surprisingly edible. After that, she showed me her designs, and I spent hours encouraging her to build something from them.
We were supposed to continue researching that today. But Dmitri dragged me onto a plane. He informed me about the trip exactly forty minutes before we needed to leave for the airport. To him, that counted as reasonable notice. It only made sense if you were a psychopath, which Dmitri absolutely was.
I glanced across the cabin at Dmitri. He’d been looking at me since we boarded the plane. He stared as if he had nowhere else to put his attention and no intention of pretending otherwise. Did I call him a psychopath out loud? I don’t think I did.
“What?” I asked.
He said nothing. His fingers moved slowly along his jaw while his eyes stayed on me.
Akim sat farther back with two other men. They were all dressed as if they were attending a business meeting or planning an assassination after landing. With this group, both were equally possible.
I turned toward the window and let the view pull my attention away from Dmitri’s stare. Cole would lose his mind over this view. Smiling to myself, I pulled out my phone and held it up to the window to take photos.
I scrolled back through the photos, impressed with the camera quality. My old phone never captured pictures this clearly.
Then the camera opened again and caught Dmitri instead.
He filled the frame without even trying. One arm rested against the seat while his gaze stayed fixed on the lens. He wasn’t posing, yet somehow he looked like the kind of man luxurymagazines built entire covers around. The picture caught every sharp line of his jaw, the grey of his eyes, and the top buttons of his shirt left open as always. Professionalism lost a fight somewhere halfway down his chest.
I lifted my eyes from the screen and looked at him.
My stomach did that thing it kept doing lately, the reaction that started somewhere normal and ended somewhere dangerous. He had ridiculous eyes. And that mouth. God. How was one person this attractive?
I was staring, and I knew I was.