Page 31 of Ruined By Sin

She walks me back to the patio and I follow her through the kitchen and out the back door. Dryden's still in his chair, clipboard on his knee, pen in hand. He glances up when I sit down and gives me the usual once-over before going back to his paperwork.

I pick up my coffee and take a sip. It's gone cold, but I drink it anyway because I need something to do with my hands. The phone is a brick in my pocket, incriminating me if he finds out, and I need to get rid of it before he notices it's gone.

I wait for two minutes... three. Dryden writes something on his clipboard and shifts in his chair, turning his body slightly away from me. So I reach into my pocket and ease the phone out, then lean forward to set my coffee down and in the same motion, I place the phone on the ground between our chairs, face down, angled like it slid off his belt.

It's about as close as I've come to getting caught as a person can get as he glances up at me, and I wiggle my pencil between my fingers and he glowers at me. But he doesn't look down at the ground or pay any closer attention to me at all.

I pick up my notepad and stare at the blank page.

Timur actually asked me if I'd consider staying here with him, and strangely, my heart honestly wants to do that. He's so incredible and kind and loving and patient. But he's the enemy. And listening to my uncle tell me that the Kuzins are slaughtering my family, I know I can't do that. Even if Timur is nothing like the rest of his family, they can't be trusted.

It makes me feel sad. But I have to do this. I have to tell Timur what Morin's been up to and hope he sees that my family isn't his enemy as much as he thinks we are. If Morin is trying to kill off every last one of us, would it change Timur's mind to hear that I am a Mirov?

Or would he let Morin kill me too?

15

TIMUR

Ipull my car into Morin's driveway and sit for a minute before I cut the engine. His place is modest compared to mine, a single-story brick house on a quiet street that he bought outright with cash six years ago. He doesn't like debt and he doesn't like his neighbors to know how wealthy he is, which are two things I've always respected about him even when everything else about the man makes me want to put my fist through a wall right now.

The past few weeks have been difficult, but Morin's hasty decisions have put us both in danger. I can't imagine how I'd feel right now if I'd have walked into that clinic to hear he didn't make it. Morin and I aren't necessarily on the best terms, but he's still my best friend. And I still owe him. This welfare check is more than just obligation as his boss.

I walk up the front steps and knock, and his maid, Betya, answers the door in her usual way, pulling it open just wide enough to see who's standing there before she commits to letting them in. She smiles and closes the door before I hear the chain slide through the lock and the door reopens.

"He's in the living room," she says. "Would you like some tea?" She steps back and I pass by her, nodding.

"Thank you, Betya, tea would be nice... Is he doing alright?"

She chuckles and shakes her head. "Incorrigible like a child, if you ask me. But he's healing nicely. I've already changed his bandages for today."

"Good, good..." I take a few tentative steps closer to the living room and turn back to her. "On second thought, hold the tea. Just let me talk to him."

Her head bobs as she closes the door behind me and disappears toward the kitchen while I walk down the short hallway to the living room. Morin's stretched out on his couch with his laptop balanced on his hips and his bad arm resting on a pillow beside him. The sling is off, which tells me he's either healing faster than Levin predicted or he's ignoring medical advice. Knowing Morin, it's the second one.

"You look comfortable," I say as I drop into the armchair across from him.

"I'm bored out of my mind is what I look." He shifts the laptop and winces slightly. "I've been sitting on this couch for two weeks. If Betya brings me one more bowl of soup, I'm gonna throw it at the wall."

"She's taking care of you." I chuckle, glancing at what's on his screen. I can't see it well from this angle, but it looks like a video. I told him I'd be coming by to go over some new intel he has on the Mirovs, and it appears as if he's been prepping for our discussion.

"She's smothering me... I need out of this place." For a housekeeper, Betya sounds like she's acting more like a mother, which isn't a bad thing. Morin could use one of those.

He looks better than he did at the clinic. The color's back in his face and his eyes are sharp again, not glassy with pain the way they were when I last saw him. The bandage on his shoulder is smaller now, just a square of white tape visible under the collar of his shirt.

"How's the arm?" I ask.

"Getting there. Levin says another two weeks before I can use it properly, but it's functional." He demonstrates by lifting his left hand to chest height and rotating his wrist. The motion is stiff but controlled. "I'm not going to be swinging on anyone for a while, but I can hold a phone and work a keyboard."

"Which you've been doing...?"

"Which I've been doing." He grumbles as he sets the laptop on the coffee table between us, turning the screen toward me. "I talked to Rostik yesterday. Got him to walk me through exactly what happened when those guys jumped him."

"And?" By the time Kaz and I showed up, he was nothing but a heap on the ground. We got Levin to look in on him, but the damage was done. He was pretty well beaten up.

"He's certain they were Mirov's crew. One of them called the other by name during the beating. He didn't catch the full name but he caught enough. It was a Mirov soldier, no question."

I lean forward and look at the screen. Morin has a series of notes typed up, timestamped and organized like he's building a case. Dates, locations, names where he has Mirov movement, and asummary of Rostik's account of the attack. It's thorough, which is Morin at his best.