Page 60 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

I need to get my head together. I need to think about what just happened, what it means, where this is going. A man who loves me but won't let himself have me is a mystery that my brain can’t let go of.

I walk toward the bedroom. My boots are by the bed where I left them and so is that piece of folded paper. I haven't touched it since arriving. Every time I reached for it, Rowan or exhaustion or the terrace or my own cowardice pulled me in another direction.

Now the room is quiet. My body is sated, my mind is clear, and there's nothing left to hide behind.

I pull the paper from my boot.

I unfold the paper and scan the details.

It's a list. Rowan’s name is at the top in bold ink. It was written in by hand. Underneath are dates, locations, cargo manifests. Shipping routes through Eastern European ports. Numbers that look like payments, amounts large enough to make my stomach turn. Notes in the margins, handwritten, cramped script that's hard to decipher.

And then at the very bottom is one name that makes my insides turn rigid with anger.

Nikolai Volkov.

Rowan's name on the paper made me nervous. His son's name makes everything click into place with a violence that leaves me dizzy. I turn the paper over and then everything makes so much sense. In bold block letters the note reads:

You have a mole. Your son has your routes. Found this on a dead man at a warehouse Nikolai uses. Be careful.

He must have been on his way to Redthorne to give this to Rowan.

My heart sinks to the rock hard floor. Nikolai is behind all of it. The shipping problems Rowan has been working through on his tablet while I sketch on his floor. The organized pressure on their operations. The strategic campaign to dismantle everything Rowan has built.

It’s all due to his son. He’s going to be so heartbroken.

The dead contact who walked into my shop and bought roses and dropped this paper was trying to warn Rowan. And Nikolai killed him for it.

I sit on the edge of the bed. My hands are shaking again, but not from pleasure this time.

I fold the paper. Put it back in my boot.

I can't tell him. Not yet. Let him have one more night of calm and I’ll tell him in the morning. He deserves the truth, but he also deserves to have a moment for himself. I can't be the knife that cuts him tonight.

I'm sitting on the bed turning the weight of the secret over in my mind when the sound of water hitting stone fills the compound.

I was so occupied with the paper, I didn’t realize Rowan was in the bathroom.

The door stands ajar.

Not all the way. But enough that steam curls through the gap carrying the scent of his soap.

I stand from the bed. My bare feet are silent on the marble as I cross the room, drawn toward the sliver of light and steam like a moth with zero survival instincts. I ease up to the gap and peer through.

The shower has a glass wall that faces the cliff-face windows, and through those windows the lake stretches dark and endless under the night sky.

I should step back. I should close the door and crawl into bed like a grown woman with an ounce of self-preservation.

I don't step back. Nor do I look away.

Through the gap in the door, through the steam, I can see him. The glass wall frames him against the lake and the night sky. Water runs down his back, over the Bratva ink across his shoulders, down the Scandinavian runes along his forearms. His hands are braced against the stone wall, head bowed, the water hitting the back of his neck and streaming over muscles I had my fingers against this morning.

I dip my attention off the skin art and lower over a firm biteable ass and legs just as well-formed as the rest of him.

And then Rowan turns and my whole night shifts from possibly losing my virginity to most definitely giving this man my body.

I gasp softly with the fear of being caught. It tangles with everything else burning through me.

I wait for him to notice me standing in the bathroom door, but his eyes are thankfully closed.