Page 115 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

“How did you get up here so fast?” I spin around.

“There’s a set of stairs in the back of the house.”

“Oh.” I toss my purse on the desk and fold my arms. And wait for the scolding.

My pulse jumps. My breathing catches. My center twitches. The filthy spot he put his mouth on me yesterday and made me see stars quivers.

His gaze moves over me slowly. “Come here.”

I just stand under the archway between the sitting area and the bedroom. “Who is Tamara Chernova?”

He stills, and his face turns to ice.

“How do you know that name?” he asks, his look of fury fading imperceptibly.

Kirill controls every reaction before it fully surfaces.

“She was at the dress shop today. Said she knew me. And knew you, too. Pretty well.”

“Hang on,” he says, holding up his hand.

“You told me you didn’t sleep with anyone while I was gone,” I say, my voice cracking.

“I didn’t. Tamara was a decoy,” he says finally.

The way he handily admitted to knowing her makes me sick all over again. “Why did you need a decoy?”

“To get Ares’s psycho security director to stop hacking my phone. To make him think I moved on with someone my father approved of, so I could keep looking for you behind his back.”

I study my husband for a second longer, wondering if he gazed at Tamara the way he looks at me. “Oh.”

I nod and let the silence settle between us, even while the name keeps circling in the back of my mind like smoke that refuses to clear.

“She knew I left you. She thinks I left you on purpose, the same as you,” I say, my voice small. “Did you…talk about me, on your fake dates?” When Kirill doesn’t answer, just wipes his mouth, I sink into the wing chair. “Kirill, no…”

He looks up. “I said as little as possible.”

“Does the entire brotherhood think I left you?”

Kirill’s jaw tightens. “Some of them do. The ones who I had looking for you.”

“And you let them believe I’d leave my child?” I hold my chest, feeling sick.

“I wasn’t about to stand in front of the brotherhood that my father ran to discuss my marriage.”

I lower my eyes. “I guess.”

“Now, will you tell me why you bought seventeen tickets on a charter flight to Miami?” He sits back, legs crossed.

Biting my lip, I move toward him and tell him about Tamara’s scheming posts. Before I’m even done, Kirill is slapping his leg, laughing.

The pakhan laughs! Then he pinches the bridge of his nose.

“What?”

“Her father has contacts all over this city. He’ll see the seats were purchased by me.” He cracks his knuckles. “He’ll know it was to get even for what she did to you.”

“Then we’ll have to find fourteen friends and take a trip to Miami.”