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“I plan on telling her the truth soon,” I told him.
I watched Avgust let out a deep sigh. “There is no way to clean this up without further humiliating her, Maksim. If you do nothing, then everyone will believe that you married a whore. If you say that it was merely a…a fantasy that you were fulfilling for your girlfriend, then men will believe that she enjoys being leered at. No matter what path you choose, she will still end up the loser in all this.”
“I’ll simply say that I enjoy showing her off,” I semi-lied. While I did enjoy having her on my arm, that was different from parading her modesty around to one and all.
“I will call Nero,” Avgust announced, surprising me.
“You will?”
He nodded. “The sooner that we capture Nikel, the sooner that we can spread the word that Katja’s little act was for the betterment of the bratva. We can let it be known that she is not-nor was she ever-a whore, and that she had agreed to do what she did to help us set a trap.” He shook his head as his mind raced with the best way to help me on this. “The story is believable if we spin it correctly.”
“It could work,” I muttered, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it first. Of course, my emotions were involved, so that changed things a bit.
Avgust eyed me again. “You need to tell her the truth soon, Maksim,” he advised. “I’ll let Melor know that she is unavailable and to begin fielding calls, but since the word is already out there, it’s possible that she might hear it from someone else.”
“She is around no bratva unless she is with me,” I reminded him. “The rest of the time, she is at work or at home with her grandfather.”
“Maksim, I am telling you this as your friend,” he said seriously. “Tell her before she finds out from someone else. Being honest with her will be the difference between getting yourself a wife or a prisoner. Trust me on this.”
“There’s only one little problem with telling her now, Pakhan,” I replied.
“And what would that problem be?”
“Right now, she is honoring her word to help us lure Nikel out in the open. If I tell her what I did to her, what guarantee do I have that she won’t flip on us?” I posed. “A woman scorned is one that does not care about any consequences to her wrath, something that we both are very aware of.”
After mulling my words over for a bit, he finally said, “Let me call Nero. That’s our best course of action right now.”
I gave him a terse nod. “Let him know that I am willing to pay whatever price tag that he feels appropriate.”
With the rest of his coffee untouched, Avgust stood up to leave. “Is there anything else that I can help you with?”
“Katja needs some clothes,” I told him. “I cannot send her home in my stuff, but I also cannot send her home naked. Her grandfather might have an issue with that.”
Ignoring the part about Katja’s grandfather, Avgust asked, “And what are you going to do about her job? I imagine that she’ll no longer be allowed to work, no?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Once we’re married, she’ll understand why I cannot have her working.”
“You’re putting a lot of faith in that little piece of paper, Maksim,” he remarked dryly.
“Just call Nero,” I said. “I’ll deal with the rest of it once Nikel Ovchinnikov is no longer an issue.”
Avgust smirked. “Good luck. I am fairly certain that you are going to need it, bratok.”
“Thanks,” I replied wryly.
“I will ask Samara to pick out a few things, then have them delivered downstairs,” he said, finally addressing the issue of Katja’s lack of clothing. “Send me a picture of the clothes that you ruined, so that we have an idea of her size.”
“Sure thing,” I replied, grateful that he was doing this for me.
Not needing me to host him, Avgust showed himself out of my penthouse, leaving me with a fucking headache. Though I’d already known that this thing with Katja was going to be hard to navigate, a woman scorned really was the most frightening thing on earth.
Chapter 24
Katja~
While I was doing my best to concentrate on living a normal life, it wasn’t easy. After Maksim had used me the other night, I had convinced him to give me a few days to get some air, and luckily for me, he had agreed. While we might be playing right into what Klive had been hoping for, I had explained how I couldn’t keep disappearing at night without my grandfather getting suspicious, and so Maksim had agreed to give me a few days to live my life normally, though he’d made it clear that it would be a small reprieve and nothing more.
At any rate, while my grandfather and Artur seemed to be settling in nicely, I felt like I was going crazy, and the regular banality of work was actually the only thing that felt comforting. When I was at work, I didn’t feel as if my life was falling apart. When I was at work, I didn’t have crazy Russians threatening to kill me and my grandfather. When I was at work, I didn’t have a high-ranking member of the Russian Bratva hypnotizing me with things that were impossible. When I was at work, I was simply Katja Volkov, IT tech.
