Page 82 of Black Ledger

This was going to be a problem. Nika wasn’t usually this protective or this harsh with people. She wasn’t the type of girl who marked her territory like this. “Clear the room,” I said. “All but Keira.”

Nika’s entire demeanor hardened, and she squeezed her knuckles so tight they turned white. But she refused to argue with her Pakhan in front of an outsider. Dimitri and Ilya gave me concerned looks, but they, too, left the room, the door clicking shut behind them.

I faced Keira, expecting her to yell at me for hiding the vigilante and putting her in danger. I expected her to talk to me about the possible rat in my kingdom. I didn’t expect what came out of her mouth.

“Why have you been ignoring me all night?” she asked.

I stepped back, and my brow furrowed. I didn’t know how to answer that question. The truth was not advisable. I had avoided her because I didn’t want to be engaged to her. Because I had imagined this moment with another person. And that was not an appropriate thing to say—especially not to the woman I was supposed to marry.

I went with the most dismissive option, which was utterly unkind. “Did I?”

Her brown eyes scanned my face for a long moment, as if waiting for me to say something else, but I didn’t.

“Right.” She sighed. “Anyway, I have a list of people you might be interested in checking more deeply. Especially now with your… situation.” Her voice was flat and drained of all emotion, like a soldier briefing a superior. “I included Grigori Larin and Mikhail on the list because they were very clean… possibly too clean, and that makes me suspicious.”

I nodded. Her coldness caught me off guard. Clearly, she was mad, and she probably had every right to be. No woman liked to be ignored. But it still unsettled me. I hadn’t expected her warmth to evaporate.

Keira slid her fingertips under her dress and into her bra. My heart jumped into my throat. My attention betrayed me because instead of keeping my focus on her face, it dropped to the neckline of her dress for a beat too long.

She wasn’t the woman I wanted her to be, but she was still a magnificent creature.

She pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. It was warm to the touch. I unfolded it and read a list of twenty-nine names.

“Why not keep it in your purse?” I asked, motioning to her clutch bag.

The corner of her mouth drew up. “Because someone could steal my purse. It’s much harder for them to steal my bra.”

My throat worked. I looked again at her breasts. Apparently, my self-control was on hiatus tonight. “Smart.”

It wasn’t the most sophisticated of answers, but I needed to say something.

She bit her lip and tilted her chin in acknowledgment. We were now stuck in an awkward dance I had created by refusing to acknowledge her existence tonight.

“Well, then, it would seem the party is over,” she said.

She didn’t let me get another word in. She yanked open the door and left.

Well, I had summarily fucked that up.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Xeniya Morozova

Age 35

Iheld my breath as Mirko Kuznetsov was dragged into the room with a hood over his face.

He was the first of the five men Severin had selected to interrogate that I was actually actively haunting. The others’ time would come—eventually.

Haunting was definitely the right word for what I did.

To my victims, I was a vengeful spirit back from the dead, tormenting them until they joined me in the grave. They weren’t far off.

I had sat through four previous interrogations where the men didn’t have anything useful to say. Severin was hunting the ghost, not his rat. And they obviously weren’t the same person.

I had given him a list of names, and Dimitri had given him another list—I still wasn’t convinced the Morozovs weren’t the rats themselves—and Severin chose five names that overlapped for an aggressive conversation.

When I joined them for said conversations, Nika had gotten into an argument with Severin that went a little bit like this: