Page 119 of Mile High Ruin

“I’ve also heard that before.”

“You still haven’t actually told me who you are.”

“I told you my name.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She shifts in the seat opposite me, drawing one leg beneath the other, and lowers her voice even though nobody in this aircraft is under any illusion that our conversation is private. “You admitted you’re not just a businessman, which was already fairly obvious after Bucharest, but then you took my phone, had your men search through my things, told me I wasn’t allowed to leave, and put me on another aircraft without telling me where we were going.”

“You are here for your protection.”

She gives me a look. “I’m sure kidnappers everywhere find that wording useful.”

“You are not kidnapped.”

“Can I leave?”

“No.”

“There seems to be a vocabulary problem here.”

Despite myself, I almost smile.

She catches it. “This isn’t funny.”

“No.”

“Then tell me.”

I lean back in my seat.

There are several reasons not to. The less she knows, the easier it would be to separate her from this life once the problem with the tracker is resolved. At least that’s what I have been telling myself.

The problem is that almost nothing about Sloane feels temporary anymore.

She has already seen too much for another vague answer to accomplish anything.

“My family has been involved in organized crime for generations.”

I watch the sentence settle.

Then her eyebrows draw together. “What kind of organized crime?”

“The kind where specifying individual crimes would take longer than the twenty minutes we have left in the air.”

Her eyes widen slightly. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

She glances across the cabin at Anton, then Marek, then Iosef before looking at me again. “All of you?”

“We’re part of the Bratva,” I say.

She sucks in a breath. It’s such a simple motion. There is no way she’s pretending, or is this a part of a bigger web she has already spun around me? I hate that I can’t tell the difference, not when it come to her. This woman has quite literally robbed me of my good fucking sense.

She’s watching me wide-eyed. “And you’re like their leader or something?”

“Sort of,” I say.

“Oh, now you remember modesty,” she says. “Jesus, what have I gotten myself into. Actually wait, I already know—Russian mob. Great, just great.”