Page 185 of Sexting His Assistant

“What did he say?” he asks.

His voice is calm. I look up at him.

The easiest thing would be to tell him everything.

The safest thing might be to tell him everything.

But Roman’s words are still in my head.

Ask Misha. I need to talk to my brother first.

“Nina,” he says.

I swallow. “He asked me to dance,” I say.

Luka’s eyes darken.

“That,” he says, “is not what I asked.”

20

LUKA

I ask her what Roman said, and Nina hesitates.

It’s barely a second.

Most men would miss it because she recovers quickly. Her chin lifts, her face settles, and she gives me the kind of look she uses when she wants people to think she’s perfectly fine.

I know that look. I’ve seen it across conference tables, outside my office, in her apartment while she tried to lie about Misha, and now here, under chandelier light, with Roman Karpov’s shadow still too close to her.

“He asked me to dance,” she says.

I keep my voice calm. “That’s not what I asked.”

Her fingers tighten around her purse. “He wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“Alina.”

“Only Alina?”

Her eyes flick away from mine.

There it is again.

The room keeps moving around us. Music starts again, softer this time, and people drift toward the tables while waiters weave through them with trays of champagne. Nobody around us knows that I’m standing in the middle of a charity gala considering whether Roman Karpov reached Nina because my own men failed to stop him or because one of them wanted him to. I don’t know what or who to trust anymore.

Nina follows my gaze and then looks back at me, irritation growing in her face. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look around like you’re about to have someone dragged out.”

“I might.”

“Luka.”