Page 52 of Until Death or Defeat

Roman nods, and Maxim speaks up. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know, I have to go back to the house and check on Giselle.”

Maxim’s arm catches my shoulder as I go to walk away. “Is she hurt?”

“No. But she could’ve been. I’ll deal with it,” I say curtly, and he nods.

When I walk into the house again, I see her sitting on the third step waiting for me.

“Is that my father’s iron?” I break out into a laugh as she huffs and stands, setting the golf club down.

“Yeah, laugh all you want. This is the only weapon I could find, you know, and it worked wonders.”

I finish laughing and shake my head, my lips still curled in a smile.

“And I wouldn’t need it if you’d have given me a gun, considering you all plan to leave me here apparently vulnerable to break-ins.”

“Maybe if you behave for more than a day I can consider it,” I say as my smile disappears from my face and I walkforward and grab her chin, moving her face from side to side to examine her.

“God, get off me,” she says struggling, and moves back.

“Did he do something to you?”

She shakes her head, rolling her eyes.

“No, besides giving me a heart attack. He had a gun but never reached for it, so he might not have meant any harm, but I don’t know who he was.”

“I told you not to trust men, you shouldn’t let your guard down even if someone seems not to mean harm.”

She throws her head back a bit. “Yeah, yeah, no one but you, I remember. But what am I supposed to do when some guy comes here and saysyousent him?”

“What did he look like?”

“Uh, I don’t know. I mean light hair, light eyes, Russian accent, a little short.”

“You’re describing half of my men,” I say with an irritated sigh.

“Well, how is it my fault all your men are from the same place? I don’t know anyone’s names yet, and I’m not an expert in description.” She crosses her arms, and I put one of my hands on her forearm.

“Where was he in here? Did he go to the bedroom?”

“No, he was in your demented torture chamber. Which, once again, is just casuallyunlocked. He said something about papers? Like you sent him to find some and bring them back?”

I furrow my brows and try to think of who would be looking for something here, and what it would be. I ask her to take me to see where he was looking, and she brings me down to the basement.

“If you sit there, I can show you what he was doing.” she says, casually gesturing to the chair that’s bolted into theground in the middle of the room. The right side of my mouth lifted in amusement as I follow behind her.

“Nice try,solnishko. If you want to get me back, you’ll have to trick me a little better than that,” I whisper loudly into her ear as I pass her to the file cabinets. She rolls her eyes and looks them over before she picks a drawer to open.

“He was looking through this one when I came in, but I don’t know how long he was really in here.”

I shuffle through some of the folders in the cabinet, but they’re only old accounts of shipments from last year.

“Who keeps this much paperwork anyway? Do you know what year it is?”

“You think criminal organizations should upload their secrets to the Cloud?”

She scoffs, trying not to laugh. “I just mean, anyone can walk in here and rummage through these. You could keep everything on physical hard drives. That’s what my dad does, at least.”