Page 46 of Vow Of Fire

I wondered how he could be so sure, since he wasn’t the one buying the art.

“I hate to say it, but there might be others doing the same thing as you and Malakov.” My chest tightened at the admittance, but I pointed to two transactions where the funds originated from Russia.

“These are Sergei, I’m pretty sure of that. That’s a company Mikhail uses. It’s called Hermitage Holdings.”

“How can you be sure it’s Malakov?”

“Because the Hermitage Museum is in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and I remember during one of our conversations, Sergei told me he used to visit there as a child. His mother took him.”

Dante gave me a thoughtful look. “I guess that makes sense. What about these others?”

A warm, fragrant aroma from the kitchen wafted over. The stew was ready, but I’d lost my appetite. Eating was the last thing on my mind right now. I got up to turn off the stove.

I shrugged. “Those appear to be from a buyer in Central America. I’ll have to look up the details on my laptop.”

He turned to the door, taking out his key. “Let’s do that now.”

“You don’t want anything to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

I sighed and sat back to wait as he fetched my laptop from his SUV.

12

COMING CLEAN

Dante

The stew smelled incredible. Almost as good as anything from Dino’s. I was hungry, but there was no way in hell I was sitting down to a meal with my fucking prisoner. No matter how great a cook she was.

I shook my head as I took the laptop out of the trunk.

Ophelia. Business owner, art expert, and now a cook. A complicated woman, full of surprises. Not many people surprised me anymore, but she was one of them.

My father would have approved. He’d always complained Valentina was a terrible cook.

I frowned and slammed the trunk down hard enough to echo off the surrounding trees. Max, who was on guard duty, glanced over. I lifted a hand to signal everything was okay.

Shit. Where the hell had that thought come from?

It must have been the cooking. It was my father who’d first taken me to Dino’s back in the day. Home-cooked food from the old country, he used to say.

I scowled as I marched back to the cabin. She was always in my fucking head, one way or another. I felt like I needed to exorcise her or something.

It was ridiculous. Women had no influence over me. I didn’t even do relationships. My romantic assignations were unapologetic hookups. And only when I needed to take the edge off.

I stayed clear of anything that lasted more than twenty-four hours, and even then, my partners never knew who I was. Wrong. What I was.

It wasn’t worth the risk. Sex was the ultimate power play. If I was going to lose control, even for a brief moment, it wasn’t going to be with someone who could hold it against me.

When I walked back into the cabin, Evelyn was setting an oven dish—that I never even knew we owned—on the countertop. Then she sat back down at the table and swiveled the laptop to face her.

Reluctantly, I moved the chair beside her and eased myself into it. Being this close was a bad idea, but I had to watch what she was doing. I didn’t want her sending any under-the-radar emails or messages without my knowledge.

We might be working together on this, but I still couldn’t trust her.

She logged on using a password I didn’t manage to catch, and searched the file system for the spreadsheet she’d mentioned.