Page 35 of Boardroom Sins

But my brain won’t shut up.

What is wrong with you?it demands.He’s your boss. He’sold! He knows things about you that he shouldn’t know. He might be a criminal. He definitely has dirty secrets.

All true. Completely, undeniably true.

And none of it changes the fact that I want him.

I realize I left my phone out in the living room. I go fetch it, but when I wake up the screen, I see that I have six missed calls, all from Jillian. That’s unlike her. My stomach flips.

I call her back. She picks up on the first ring. “Finally!” she hisses. “I’ve been trying to reach you forever.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I was in the shower. What’s wrong?”

“So I looked him up.” She sounds choked and wary. “Your boss. Lukas Lazarev.”

I sink onto the edge of my bed. Water drips from my hair onto my shoulders. “And?”

“Rae…” She pauses. “His wife didn’t just die. Shedisappeared. They never found the body.”

11

RAE

LAZAREV GLOBAL - EMPLOYEE PAY STUB

Pay Period: 11/17/25 - 12/01/25

Employee: Everett, Rae - ID #0129

Previous Annual Salary: $67,000.00

Salary Adjustment: +$53,000.00

New Annual Salary: $120,000.00

Approved by: L. Lazarev

I wake up Saturday morning with Jillian’s words still ringing in my ears.

She disappeared. They never found the body.

Jillian couldn’t tell me much more than that. She’d gotten the tip from a retired P.I. she uses as a source sometimes. The guy had worked the case briefly back in 2007 before being told to drop it. No explanation was given. Just a fat check and a strong suggestion to find other interests.

“That’s all he remembered?”I asked her.

“That’s all he’dsay,”she corrected. “He got weird when I pushed for details. And this guy worked Brooklyn homicide for twenty years. He doesn’t spook easy.”

She promised to keep digging. I told her to be careful. She laughed and, stealing my name, said careful was her middle name.

Her middle name is Rose.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well after we hung up. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Elena Lazareva’s face from that old photo. The elegant updo. The pale skin. The complete lack of smile.

The more I think about it, the more I start to feel like that remote look in her eyes wasn’t just someone who disliked camera-wielding paparazzi and public appearances. It was a woman who was trapped in a life she feared.

… Or maybe in amarriageshe feared.

But that’s getting ridiculous and I know it. I’m completely inventing scenarios with no basis in reality. It’s just that Lukas seems like a man who’s capable of terrible things. I keep flashing back to the night he caught me with his son’s hand wandering up my skirt and the icy way he said,I didn’t teach him properly…