Page 53 of Cruel Demands

Her eyes narrow. There’s the knife.

“Yes,” she says. “I understand being late on my first day is bad.”

“Then do not do it again.”

Her mouth opens, then closes. I can see her fighting with herself. She was late because of me. We both know it. Because I brought her home, kept her in my bed, and then sent her across the city with less than half an hour before she was expected here.

I press on the wound anyway. The girl from last night would snap at me. The intern standing in front of me knows she cannot. That awareness pulls something hard through my body that I like. “This cannot happen,” I say.

She laughs once, quiet and humorless. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I am speaking about your lateness.”

Anger flashes through her like oil catching fire, and I can’t help but smile at it. There’s the girl bold enough to fantasize about me in my own bed while lying beside me. The girl who turned away the boy who wanted her and went home with a stranger twice her age.

Viktoriya enters with a folder and a tablet. Her eyes move once from Taylor to me, quick and careful. “The intern packet, Governor Korolev.”

I hold out my hand, and Viktoriya places it in my palm. “And your mother is on line two. She said it is urgent.”

Everything in me goes cold. “My mother?”

“Yes.”

Taylor sees the change. I hate that she sees it.

“Miss Hayes, we will finish this later.”

Taylor’s gaze snaps back to mine. For half a second, something like protest appears on her face, but it’s quickly replaced with relief. She follows Viktoriya out of the room before I can say anything else.

I force myself not to watch the curve of her tight ass as she walks away, and I force myself not to be seen rushing back to my desk.

When the door closes, I lock it and cross to the phone too quickly, knocking the receiver against its base before lifting it. “Mama.”

For a moment, I hear only breathing. Thin. Shaken. Wrong. “Misha,” my mother says.

I turn away from the door and face the window. Moscow spreads beneath me, gray and gleaming. “What happened?”

“They came to the house.”

My hand tightens around the phone. “Who?”

“I don’t know them.”

“How many?”

“Three. Two came to the eastern gate. One stayed in the car.”

The eastern gate. Her gate. The entrance closest to the private wing where she lives. My free hand is already reaching for my mobile phone. “Did they get inside?”

“No. The guards stopped them.”

I send Arkady a message without looking away from the window.

Take the six men into custody now. Separate rooms. No contact between them. I want every telephone, every account, and every person they have spoken to since yesterday.

My mother continues, her voice trembling. “They said they had a delivery for me. Medicine. They used the name of my pharmacy.”

Something old and savage wakes in me. “What did they leave?”