Page 18 of Savage Little Lies

I don’t make reckless decisions.

And wanting Cara would be reckless.

7

Cara

“You’re not doing enough!”

My father’s voice rings in my ears as I walk away from the office on my lunch break. It won’t be relaxing since he wants to chew me out for my lack of progress throughout the duration of it.

And through his constant disapproval he heaps on me, I can’t stop hearing Dmitri’s deep, seductive voice in sharp contrast saying, Good girl.

Two words conveying his approval and I’m capable of setting off flash flood warnings in the desert.

“I’m sorry. Things are just taking a little longer than expected,” I explain to my father. “I’m close to getting him to open up. He already trusts me with his other business,” I tell him as I pitch a quick look over my shoulder to make sure that no one is too close behind me.

Specifically, Dmitri, who should be on the other side of the city by now for a lunch meeting with a friend of his.

“You need to end the engagement immediately. I don’t care what you have to do, yeah? Make him loathe the thought of being with her. Just do something for feck’s sake!”

“I’ll figure out a way to make it happen,” I assure him, withholding a frustrated sigh. I swallow my frustration. This isn’t an easy mission.

“We need a backup plan in case you can’t pull this off,” he mutters. “Do you still have that bug I gave you?”

It’s safely tucked away in a zipper compartment in my purse. For emergencies. “Yes, why?”

“Bug his desk phone,” he tells me. “I want to hear all the conversations that he’s having in the office. The more intel I can get, the more I have to use against him. Maybe he’ll say something that’ll piss off Suyunov, and I can send the recording to him.”

I doubt that Dmitri will say anything too damning while on the phone, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my father will get exactly what he wants, and I’ll be off the hook.

“I’ll do it today,” I say without letting my frustration show. I’ve only given my father attitude once in my life, when I was a teenager, right after we were reunited. And the punishment was that I couldn’t leave his house for the entire two months of summer break. No phone. No television. No friends. It took over a week for the bruises to heal from his backhand.

I’ve seen him do worse to disloyal men right in front of my eyes, and that’s stuck with me for years. It’s not easy to disobey a man who can kill others without a shred of remorse. That’s why I’m not as afraid of Dmitri as I probably should be.

“Let me know when it’s done, yeah?” Sean replies before ending the call.

I tighten my grip on my phone, fighting the urge to chuck it across the street so that I don’t have to have any more calls with him. They exhaust me every single time, and they certainly don’t help my confidence going into this plan.

My own father doesn’t believe in me. I’m going to prove him wrong.

Good girl.

For some reason, Dmitri has already put a little of his faith in me.

And how do I return that faith? By betraying him every second of every day.

At lunch, I eat my feelings, ordering a brownie to go along with my club sandwich and orange soda. Eating in a quiet sandwich shop calms me somewhat, but the thought of having to sneak a bug into Dmitri’s office phone isn’t relaxing in the slightest. It’s a huge risk.

I devour my brownie in a few nervous bites, my stomach twisting at the thought of failing. It’ll all be over if Dmitri catches me in the act. He might shoot me right then and there because I know that he’s carrying most of the time.

Uneasiness haunts me as I head back to the office, the sun beating down on me from above. I step out of the elevator and see Karly eating a salad out of a Tupperware bowl, making better life choices than me.

“Is Mr. Ivanov back yet?” I ask her.

She shakes her head with a mouthful of lettuce. “No. Why?”

“Just wondering,” I say as I walk past her to disappear into Dmitri’s office. At least he’s still insisting that I work in his office with him, so I have an excuse to be in here whenever he’s out.