Page 34 of Sexting His Assistant

“What kind of feeling?” I ask.

“The kind that says Luka’s making you do strange things again.”

I almost choke. I actually have to turn away from the door and press a hand over my mouth. “Define strange,” I manage.

“I hope he’s not making you do any funny errands.”

Funny errands. Oh God. Funny errands.

Is that what we’ re calling it now?

I stare at the conference table where, five minutes ago, Luka Kazan had been on his knees between my thighs with the same focus he uses to dismantle hostile takeovers.

“No,” I say weakly. “No funny errands.”

“Good.”

“Very standard errands.”

“Such as?”

“Notes. Scheduling. Documents. The usual.”

“And running from printers.”

“Yes. The printer was aggressive.”

Misha sighs. “Nina.”

“What? You weren’t there. It had toner rage.”

My brother laughs, and despite myself, I end up smiling too. I love my brother, he’s my favorite person in this world.

“Are you all right?” he asks. The question softens, and that makes it worse.

Because Misha is not only my brother. He’s the closest thing I have to a second parent, a bodyguard, a co-conspirator, and a one-man emergency response system. He was sixteen when I was born, already tall and sharp-jawed and too serious for his age, and from the moment our mother put me in his arms, he apparently decided I was both a miracle and a security breach.

So, when my brother asks if I’m all right, what he means is: tell me whose bones need rearranging.

And right now, the honest answer would be Luka Kazan’s, except I’m fairly certain Luka would rearrange back.

“I’m fine, really,” I say.

“You know I work for him too,” my brother says, his voice laced with a warning. “I can ask him.”

Ah, there it is. The bridge between my brother and the man who just walked out of this room with my underwear in his pocket.

Luka Kazan and Misha Hale go back so far that sometimes I think they knew each other before they had faces. They met as boys, or near enough to boys, two hungry young men from families that understood power differently but respected the same rules: loyalty first, weakness never, blood always remembered. Misha chose discipline. Luka chose empire. Somewhere along the way, discipline and empire became useful to each other.

Officially, Luka is a billionaire businessman. He owns shipping routes, luxury properties, energy holdings, security companies, and enough restaurants to make every private dinner in Moscow technically his own dining room. His photograph appears in financial magazines where journalists describe him as elusive, brilliant, ruthless, and unmarried, as if those four words explain anything.

Unofficially, everyone knows there is a darker crown beneath the corporate one.

He’s the boss of the Kazan Bratva, Pakhan, they call him.

The word is never said in Kazan Tower unless someone wants to test the acoustics of their own funeral, but it follows him anyway, silent and heavy as a shadow. Luka Kazan does not simply run companies. He runs men. He runs debts. He runs loyalty, fear, favors, punishments, borders, names whispered into phones after midnight. The Kazan Bratva is not a rumor, not exactly. It is more like weather. You don’t have to see the storm to know when the air pressure has changed.

And me?