Page 89 of Sexting His Assistant

The movement pulls at my shoulder, and pain runs down my arm.

Nina notices immediately. Her eyes drop to the sling. “Does it still hurt?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze lifts. The honesty surprises her.

“It’s healing,” I add.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“No,” I say. “It was what I wanted to answer.”

She almost smiles. Then her expression shifts again, as if she has remembered something heavier than this argument. She looks down at her hands, uncrosses her arms, then folds them again.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says.

“What?”

She hesitates.

Nina rarely hesitates. She snaps, deflects, attacks, mocks, survives. Hesitation does not suit her, and because of that, I dislike it instantly.

“What is it?” I ask, softer now.

She draws in a breath. “Misha⁠—”

“Luka?” The voice comes from behind me.

Familiar in the vague, inconvenient way of a face once seen across candlelight and no longer worth remembering.

Nina stops speaking.

I turn.

A woman is walking toward us from the main hall, smiling like she has been invited into my day rather than trespassing inside it. Tall, blonde, expensive. Pale pink dress beneath a white coat. Diamonds at her ears. One hand rests over her stomach, though at first the gesture means nothing to me.

I know her. I think.

The name does not arrive immediately, which says enough about the importance of the evening we apparently shared.

Alina?

No.

Katie?

Beside me, Nina goes very still.

That helps me place the woman faster.

Karelin.

Alina Karelin.

Dinner at Maison.

The night before the boardroom.