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“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The launch is coming up and?—”
“Cut the bullshit, Arsen,” Dominik snaps. “This isn’t about the launch. This is about Laila.”
My jaw locks into place. I slam the file closed and meet Dominik’s gaze for the first time since he walked in.
What I see surprises me.
His hands are white-knuckled around the edge of my desk as he leans close, all slitted eyes and flared nostrils. “Laila—you remember her, right? Yourwife.”
“Careful now, Dominik.”
“She needs you!” he grits out anyway. “And so does that baby. Or have you forgotten your daughter already? She’s eight days old today, and you haven’t picked her up once since she was born.”
“This is your last warning. I’m not about to pull my punches just because you’re my second.”
“You’ve never pulled your punches.” Dominik crosses his arms over his chest. “And Iamyour second, which means it’s my job to tell you when you’re being a fucking asshole.”
“Laila has everything she needs.”
That’s the truth. I told Polina to be right by her side day in and day out. Laila’s physical therapist is making house calls. They are safe and protected under my roof. They want for nothing. Except for?—
“Except for her husband,” Dominik lobs at me, finishing the thought I’d already begun in my head. “Except for her partner. It doesn’t matter who you order to be there for her—Polina, Brynn, me, Gedeon, even Marie—she wants you.”
Now, my hands are the ones white-knuckled around the table’s edge. That’s the problem with Dominik—when he gets going, he’s like a dog with a bone.
“You’re doing the same thing with Laila that you did with Natascha.”
The words cut exactly as deep as he meant them to. “Laila is not Natascha.”
“That’s what makes this so much worse,” he insists. “You never cared about Natascha, but you do care about Laila. And you’restilltreating her like shit.” Dominik’s eyes are trained on the fist balled at my side, but he doesn’t back down. “Go on, get mad. You can beat the shit out of me if you want. That still won’t make anything I just said a lie.” He stands tall with righteous outrage. “The irony is that you’re so damn afraid to lose her that you’reholding her at arm’s length—and now, you’re gonna lose her, anyway.”
“You need to stop talking now.” It’s the final warning I can offer him. My hands are shaking at my sides, days of pent-up anger looking for some direction.
“You don’t want to talk about Laila?” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “Fine. Let’s talk about Jasper instead.”
Blyat’.I have no interest in going there either, but I can’t run from all of life’s problems.
“What about Jasper?”
“Last night, I caught him at Bruce’s.”
The biker bar is notorious—for good reason. Nothing pleasant happens there. But I square my jaw. “He probably just went in for a drink.”
“No one goes into Bruce’s for a fucking drink,” Dominik sneers. “I have reason to believe he’s back in touch with some of his old cronies from max.”
If Jasper is talking to other inmates, it would be a violation of his parole, and, more importantly, a breach of my trust. If he’s serious about being in the Bratva, he wouldn’t dare.
“Do you have proof?”
Dominik stalls. That’s answer enough.
“Fuck off then,” I snarl. “Don’t waste my time with your suspicions. You don’t have to like Jasper, but you do need proof.”
“I couldn’t back up my claims last time, either, but it didn’t stop him from betraying you!”
“We’ve been over this before?—”
“We have,” he agrees. “And each time, I wonder how you can be so damn ignorant.”
