Matthias telling me why he took Serena to the gala doesn’t ease the betrayal I felt that night. He did it to get information about his mother’s grave, since her father was the one who buried her that night on Kirill’s orders. In return, he promised to pay off the suitor her father lined up for her. I am not sure who he is, but he doesn’t sound pleasant.
He wanted Serena as his fourth wife.
I am afraid to ask what happened to his other three.
Matthias tells me he terminated things with her after that night, but she has been trying to get him alone since she found out he returned—telling him their deal isn’t fulfilled.
Bitch doesn’t know how to take a hint.
“Get me everything you have on her and send it to my tablet,” I order, my voice rougher than I intend. “Please,” I amend softly.
Clove nods, fingers flying across the keyboard lightning fast.
Snarling, I stalk toward the door and wait for Maksim to open it since I don’t have a passcode yet.
“Where are you going?” he asks, frowning as I storm down the hallway toward the elevator.
“To skin a bitch.”
forty
Serena clings to me like a second skin as we step off the elevator and head to my office. Her big brown eyes stare up at me, and she flutters her eyelashes flirtatiously, thinking it might endear me to her. The only thing it makes me want to do is rip the fake eyelashes off and shove her out the nearest windows.
Unfortunately, that would be a PR nightmare.
“You owe me that information, Serena,” I remind her coldly, peeling her off my arm. “I did exactly as you asked, and I compensated your father to keep him from arranging any future marriage deals.”
Serena sneers as I lead her into my office. I go straight for the top-shelf whiskey and fill one of the crystal glasses from the bar with as much of the amber liquid as it can handle.
“You honestly think that is going to stop my father from going behind your back and trying to do it again?” She runs a hand through her lengthy black hair and sighs, leaning her frame against the side of my desk. “We both know that he willburn through that cash by the end of the year, and I will be back where I started.”
“That is not my problem.” And it isn’t. I’d been generous with the money I gave her father. He is a leading power player in corporate politics and has been trying to sell Serena to the highest bidder, who happens to be Augustu La Rosa. She’s been begging Leon for help, but he refused, directing her my way instead. He knows I need something from her father, and she is the only one who will be able to get it.
My mother’s gravesite back in Russia.
Edrik Mickelson was a low-level thug for Kirill before he came to the states. I remember his face and the times he used to pay Kirill to fuck my mother and make her scream. It is a running tally I keep in my head of how I am going to make him pay. It is why I went with Serena to the gala and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Serena had the time while I was away to collect the information I need, and now she is trying to bleed me for more.
It isn’t going to happen.
She is a means to an end, and if she proves to be difficult, I will make her life a living hell.
Or Ava will.
“It is if you want the information on where your mother is buried,” she threatens me.
I growl.
“Do not make idle threats, Serena,” I warn her, my lips curling into a snarl, teeth bared. “I am not a man you want to cross.”
Serena laughs, oblivious to the hole she is digging for herself twice over. “You think I don’t know that?” She tilts her head slightly and bats her eyes at me. It is something that would have been cute on Ava, but on her, it is just desperate. “I havesomething you want, and there is only one way you’re going to get it.”
“And how is that?”
Serena grins up at me like the cat that ate the canary. “You and I are going to get married.”
The laugh that rumbles out of me pisses her off. Her dark eyes look at me askance. She does not like being mocked.
“I am serious, Matthias,” she hisses. “We get married, or I don’t give you the information you’re looking for, and I tell my father who you are.”