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This could be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Or he could decide that carrying his child is one more reason I’m never allowed to leave. I need to know he wants me here by choice before I tell him something he could use to keep me.

Chapter 32

Vasily

It’s nearly seven p.m. when I look at the clock again.

Seven.

I’ve checked it often enough that the number should have lost all meaning by now. Instead, it irritates me.

Matty is back from jury selection in Elizabethtown and still at the office in town, preparing. I’ve given her an office, a small team, everything she needs to work without having to deal with the chaos of my business. She should be safe. She has Art’s people nearby. She has security at the building.

There is no reason for me to be pacing the great room like a fucking husband waiting for his wife to come home.

And yet, here I am.

It’s been two days since she and one of the house staff were followed back to the lake house by one of Yuri’s cronies. No one we needed to worry about. Arthur sent a Boevik out later that night to track down the SUV and make a point.

Slashed tires, broken knuckles, and a half-burned trailer. Yuri won’t be making any more half-assed threats.

Which is what I wanted, but could also be a problem.

I cross to the windows overlooking the lake, stare at the darkening water, then turn around and walk back toward the fireplace. Did I make a mistake? Was that move too obvious, too significant a reaction at an attorney being followed?

Because that’s all Matilda is supposed to be to me, an attorney. The one dismantling any evidence Yuri’s men passed on to the government regarding operations at Deep Waters, but an attorney just the same. Nothing more.

This is ridiculous.

I’ve spent years waiting for men who might betray me, shipments that might never arrive, enemies who might make their move. I have sat across tables from people who wanted me dead and never once felt this particular kind of helplessness.

Because those things were business. Matty is… different.

She has somehow become the one thing I can’t calculate; the chaos I can’t get a firm grip on.

I want this trial over. I want Mikhail dealt with. I want Yuri dealt with. I want Matty back here where I can see her.

No; she’ll go back to the city. To Isla, to her life.

The thought has a black hole forming in my gut. I shouldn’t care that she’s going back. After all, that’s the life I ripped her from. And our agreement was that she’d get to return, if and when she cleaned up this mess for me.

I’m beginning to understand how dangerous it is to care about someone.

The front door opens, and Ariadna steps inside, carrying with her the scent of Lake Placid summer nights: campfires and pine. It wakes me up, rouses me, and I straighten my shoulders.

She takes one look at me.

“You look terrible.”

“I’m aware.”

Her mouth twitches, but there’s no humor in her expression. “The plan worked.”

I stop pacing.

“Yuri’s compound?”