Page 34 of Savage Boss
“Your arrival that night may have been a coincidence, but the door was unlocked for a reason. I had—” he clears his throat and gives a self-deprecating chuckle, “ordered some company for the evening. She never showed, but you did.”
Those blue eyes flick up to me with such intensity, I gasp.
“You walked into my penthouse.”
Something about the way he says “penthouse” makes me think he means “life.”
“And now you’re back again. Why? Pavel said you ‘demanded’ he bring you here.”
I take a deep breath because I honestly don’t know how this scene is going to play out. There are too many variables, and Dmitri is unpredictable. “I want to know what happened with Natasha Mikhailov in your office.”
“You were there; you know what happened. She presented a proposal, which I declined. I told her to get lost. That was it.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I get that part. But you must think me stupid if you think I don’t know there’s more to it.”
“Oh, you are far, far from stupid.” The words are spoken softly, but there’s a sharp edge to them.
“Then tell me what else was going on there.”
He hums, telling me nothing, then goes silent again. I watch the clouds outside sink lower, obscuring the tops of the buildings until they look like glowing lanterns. Rain splatters against the windows, running in long rivulets down the glass and turning the view outside into a kaleidoscope of lights and colors.
I don’t know whether Dmitri will tell me anything, but I have to try. I can’t just let things go, not after my conversation with Andrey Mikhailov. Not when I’m carrying his child.
“What is it between you and the Mikhailovs?” I try again, half expecting Dmitri to ignore me.
“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course. And if you don’t tell me, I’m walking out of here and never coming back. I deserve to know.”
“That’s debatable,” Dmitri muses but walks back the statement when I begin to rise, making good on my threat. “Sit down, Clara.”
“If you’re not going to tell me, I’m removing myself from this situation, and your life.”
“I said,sit down.”
I snap to that tone before I even know what I’m doing. “Talk to me that way again, and I walk.”
“You sound like her sometimes, you know that?”
“Like whom?” It’s an odd statement, and I have no idea whoDmitriis talking about. Natasha? I would hate to sound like that elitist socialite.
His wife.
The realization hits me half a heartbeat before he says it.
I’ve never heard him speak in such a tone before, one so desolate, reverential, broken. In that moment, Dmitri appears to be a different man, not a billionaire CEO, not the shadowed leader of the Russian mafia, with laundered money in his accounts and blood on his hands.
He is entirely human, the creases on his face molding his expression into that of a lonely, lost widower who misses someone he loved dearly. Who misses her company and mourns not only the woman, but the life they would have had together—the life that was stolen from them.
“Lauren.”
“Your wife’s name was Lauren?”
“She had dark hair like yours. A ball-buster of an ad executive, assigned to my company when it was still in its infancy. I was instantly smitten.”
I sure as hell hope he didn’t order her around like he tries to do with me.
His ice-blue eyes flick to me briefly, and I almost feel like he is reading my thoughts.
