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“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
I gave a confused blink. “Huh?”
“You eat it.”
Mysmile faltered, and disbelief crept on my face.
Was he insinuating…?
“You think Ipoisonedit?”
He lifted the plate to his nose and sniffed it with a shrug but didn’t drop it. Rather casually, he walked up to me with a condescending look. “Your words, not mine.”
The bastard.
I was fuming now and strangely hurt at the silent accusation. The worst part was that I didn’t bother hiding how much it affected me.
“What? You…you can’t be serious. If I wanted to do that, today wouldn’t be my first try.”
“But today’s the first day you’ve cooked for me. You expect me to believe that overnight, you decided to become a loving, devoted wife who derives joy in preparing breakfast for her husband?”
“No one said anything about being a loving, devoted—”
“Exactly.” He pressed closer, with green eyes growing darker by the second. “So, there can only be one reason why you’d do this for me now. You want to kill me.”
“I don’t know….”
“Good thing I’m not hungry.”
And in a blink, the plate dropped into the trash, clunking on unfinished apple and cracked eggshells. I swallowed back the heated tears burning the back of my throat and curled my fingers into the hem of the shirt.
It was my fault. What was I expecting from a brute like him?
He backed off, retreating with a glower before he turned his back to me.
“Be smarter next time, wife. And wipe those tears from your eyes. They make me sick.”
Chapter 21 – Egor
I relaxed into the worn leather armchair with arms folded across my middle and crooked my head to the side, my eyes fixed on the laptop screen in front of me, ignoring the LA skyline and expanse of his broad shoulders almost blocking the view as he typed.
“You’re saying it’s impossible to go back?”
Arlo dropped his glasses with an exasperated sigh and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t the one deep in the shit, and he was feelingthatexhausted. Imagine how I felt. I wanted it to end and needed to find a way as soon as fucking possible.
“I didn’t say it’s impossible,Korol. Where you’re concerned, nothing is.” He swore under his breath in a rushed string of Russian. “It was attempted murder. You had a knife pressed to his throat.”
“And yet, somehow,you’renot roped in this when you were right there. That means it’s fucking possible to get this case off the list of things I have to deal with. Why’s that so hard to do, Arlo? Niko’s doing a great job, but there are matters onlyIcan deal with. I have to return to LA, and time is running out.”
“I’m on it.”
I pushed down the growl rising in my throat and resisted the urge to break something. The entire court situation was driving me to the brink of losing the last shred of self-control I had left.
“You’ve been on it for the past three months, Arlo. I don’t want you on it; I want you tofixit.God. How difficult can that fucking be? I’m not going to stand before any fucking judge and jury, Attorney.”
Arlo huffed and combed his fingers through his hair, his expression solemn as he flipped through a stack of documentsbeside him while reviewing a few options we had left that could prove useful.
While he spoke, I let my gaze dart around the room, from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stretched toward the ceiling, packed tightly with volumes on everything from ancient history to modern philosophy, to the faded Persian rug covering the floor, its intricate patterns worn smooth by years of use.
