Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Something has to give.
I get to my feet and note she doesn’t stir. Mikhail will expect me on a call to update, and I have almost nothing to tell them except Isabella Morales is unbreakable.
Is that true, though?
If I really wanted to get through to her, I could push harder. She buckled under the sexual tension I put on her, and if I leaned into that—yeah. Yeah, that would very likely work. But it doesn’t seem like she’s actually hiding anything.
I check on her before I go. In sleep, her hands are underneath her chin. She looks almost childlike, with none of that reservation and ballsy energy that defines her. She wore herself out. I take no small measure of satisfaction knowing I had something to do with that.
Here, she’ll be safely confined and under close surveillance.
Not that that stopped her yesterday. She’ll try to escape again, no doubt, but probably not right away. She likely wants a shower, some food, and maybe some money before she does.
I keep a wad of cash in the desk drawer.
I want her to get this out of her system. Let her push on the walls of that cage now because the sooner she does, the sooner she’ll realize she won’t ever escape.
If she were a man, she’d already be six feet under, and we’d be planning our strategy to take on the LSD. But she isn’t a man.
Oh, hell, she is not a man.
I take the call at the kitchen table—my iPad set up with a dual screen with Isabella’s sleeping form on the left side, my brothers on the other.
“Morning,” I tell them while I fire up the espresso machine.
“Well, good morning, sunshine,” Aleks says with a smirk. “How was your night?”
I snort and pull out a mug. I wonder if she drinks coffee and, if she does, how she takes it. I set my mug in place and hit the button, the rich, decadent smell of hot espresso filling the room. I turn to face the camera. “Exhausting,” I tell him honestly. “But I can’t say this is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Mikhail smiles grimly. “Did she reveal anything to you when you interrogated her?”
I warm milk and frown, thinking it over. I hit the froth button and watch the milk churn. “More than she knows,” I say with a shrug. I pour the foam into my mug, turn, and sit back down at the table. I glance at the screen before I elaborate. She turns over in her sleep, maybe thinking of waking up. The blanket’s fallen to the side, revealing her perfect form. She starts to stretch.
“Gonna fill us in?” Viktor says darkly, leaning over in front of the screen with a scowl. He will never forgive her for sneaking onto his property unnoticed. He takes it as a personal threat against his wife.
He’s not wrong.
“Yeah. I’m monitoring her on another screen. So, there’s no tracking device on her at all. She really is on her own, which is telling in its own way. I know nothing else about why she’s here.”
Mikhail stares at the video camera in front of him. “Did you really interrogate her, brother? I know it’s harder with her being a woman.”
I take a sip out of my mug before I answer. I nod. “I did. I could’ve continued, but she was exhausted and worn out. So was I. It was a long fucking day. She almost escaped, too.”
Mikhail chuckles. “And how’d that work out for her?”
I shrug. “She didn’t get far.”
“I found out some shit,” Aleks says, looking down at his tablet. “And it corroborates what you’re saying, Lev.”
“Go on,” I say, leaning back in my chair, my gaze locked on Aleks.
He looks up from his tablet. “Isabella’s brother has been making some moves. His alliances are shifting, and he’s burned some big fucking bridges. It looks like he’s preparing for something huge.”
I tense, my grip tightening on my mug. “Like what?”
Aleks taps a few times on his tablet, pulling up a series of documents and photos. “He’s been in contact with some of our old enemies. There’s talk of some kind of seismic power shift, obviously it’s something to do with dismantling what we’ve built here in The Cove.
Mikhail curses. When he took over as pakhan in the wake of my father’s death, his first plan was to destroy our biggest adversaries. However, it was like eliminating fucking weeds from a garden. As soon as we removed the threat of the largest one, smaller, resilient ones popped up. No one wants to see us get stronger, but with each year that passes, that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We’ve come to expect challenges. But the LSD may be the most significant challenge we’ve faced.
Mikhail’s expression grows serious. “And Isabella? How does she fit into all of this?”