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“Any part of your past in particular?”
I know where she’s going, and I don’t want to hear it. Which is exactly why I get up and walk to the bar, even though I still haven’t finished my whiskey.
“Kolya.”
I ignore her and cross the room to the dark mahogany bar with the carved wooden paneling on top to store wine glasses and the like.
I changed a lot about this house once it passed over to my control. I’d actively removed all signs of my father’s taste. He’d preferred his bars sleek and modern. Marble counters rather than wood. Bottles hidden away rather than displayed for everyone to see.
I ripped them all out and crushed each one to rubble.
“You need to tell her, Kolya,” Milana says abruptly.
“I don’t need to tell her anything,” I snap, keeping my back to her as I rest my forehead against the cool wooden wall.
“You’re going to need her cooperation going forward,” Milana warns, ever the pragmatist. “If she finds out later—”
“She’ll just have to deal with it.”
“The Accident—”
“Enough.”
I never raise my voice, but the change of tone is all I need to get my point across. She falls silent, but I hear the click-clack of her heels as she walks over to me.
“Kolya,” she says when she’s close, “why did you pick me as your right hand?”
I turn to her slowly. “You fishing for compliments?”
She smiles. “Just answer the question.”
“Because you didn’t shut up even when I told you to.”
She grins sadly at me. “Exactly. I’ve never been a yes woman. You can count on me for the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. But I’m not talking to you now as your right-hand woman. I’m talking to you now as a woman, period. If June finds out the truth later, it will hurt her, and it will undermine all the progress you’ve made. You can’t expect her trust if you don’t give her yours.”
“My trust was never on the table.”
Milana rolls her eyes. “Don’t give me that. You may not want to admit it, but you like her.”
“She’s my brother’s woman.”
“She was,” Milana agrees. “But as far as Ravil and his men are concerned, she’s your woman now. That’s all that matters. And that is precisely what’s going to force him to show his hand.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You have a plan?”
“I do,” she says with a half-hearted smirk. “But, fair warning—you’re not going to like it.”
37
JUNE
I stop short when I walk into the medical room a few days after we get back from Mexico.
Milana is in there already. She’s leaning forward, resting her face in both her hands. I can tell from her lack of reaction that she hasn’t even noticed that I’ve just walked in.
Which in and of itself strikes me as weird. Milana notices everything.
I can smell the faint pervasiveness of surgical disinfectant—and beneath it, the thin veneer of desperation. Or maybe it’s sadness.
