Page 114 of Sexting His Assistant

“Who is he?”

Luka does not answer immediately. That scares me more than if he had sworn.

He takes the phone from me, zooms in, and stares at the paused frame. The picture gets grainier, but apparently, he sees enough.

His jaw tightens.

“Luka?”

He hands the phone back to me. “Roman Karpov,” he says.

The name means nothing to me.

I wait for the rest.

He gives me nothing.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “And am I supposed to gasp dramatically, or are you going to explain?”

His gaze stays on the screen. “He’s a rival.”

“A business rival?”

His mouth tightens. “Among other things.”

Among other things.

With Luka, that could mean anything from hostile acquisitions to bodies in rivers.

I look back at the frozen story. Alina’s laughing in the hallway. The man beside her is half blurred, almost nothing to me. But Luka looks at him like he has just found a knife in his own bed.

“She knows him?” I ask.

“It appears so.”

“And that matters because…”

“I don’t know,” he says, frustration creeping into his voice.

I stare at the screen again. The pieces are still not fully clear to me, but I can feel the shape of them beginning to change.

“Could the baby be his?” I ask.

“It’s possible.”

My stomach sinks. “Would she lie about something like that?”

Luka looks at me. His expression is grim. “People lie for money,” he says. “They lie for protection. They lie because someone dangerous told them to.”

I hate how easily he says it.

I hate more that I believe him.

I look down at Alina’s frozen face, her smile bright and careless in the hallway, Roman Karpov half visible beside her.

“So what does this mean?” I ask.

“It means Alina did not come to me by accident.”