Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Supposedly, participating in an illegal fight circuit wasn’t the only shady business Leon was undertaking.
Although the list of accusations against them were long, a judge ordered that Leon and Vasily’s possessions be returned to their family before he closed any cases associated with them.
You can’t prosecute ghosts.
The rumors circulating about their accident stopped swirling shortly after that. There is no evidence that they were killed, but evidence of an accident is just as lacking. You’d swear their car was picked up from the freeway and dumped into the lake by a crane. There were no tire tracks to the boat ramp they supposedly sailed off, no missing rails. Nothing.
Needing to distract my mind from the deaths of two men who don’t deserve my remorse, I slip out of bed and head for the stack of drawers Yev cleaned out for me.
Since Yev is too exhausted to think straight, I reach my phone before he can order me not to answer it. “It is Sunday morning,” he grumbles under his breath when I slide my finger across my phone’s screen and squash it to my ear.
“Hello…”
“Mrs.”—a gruff voice rustles through sheets of paper—“Cabanow. We have an order we’re meant to be collecting for a client. Pick up was scheduled for nine. Driver is announcing no one is there.”
“You’re collecting an order today?” You can hear the confusion in my voice. We usually drop off our orders to the shipment distributors. On the odd occasion we don’t because the order is too large, the company comes to us, but that is usually during office hours.
And let’s not mention the fact he called me Mrs. Cabanow. It is an easy mistake to make since the papers are reporting that I am Vasily’s grieving widow, but it still makes me cringe.
In hours, Vasily had our lives so well entangled it was hard to tell where his business finished and mine started.
“Uh-huh,” the man replies, drawing me from my thoughts. “Got a man out back. He says the shop looks locked up. No lights on, either.”
Now I’m even more intrigued. Trade is slow on Sundays, but excluding when I ordered Nat to close early, we haven’t missed a single day of trade in over six months.
“Can your driver wait? I can be there in ten minutes.”
While the dispatch clerk radios in to the man outside my boutique, I head into the walk-in closet to get dressed. If this order is big enough for the courier to come collect on a Sunday, it isn’t an order I can afford to lose. Business is so slow right now my overhead is higher than my earnings.
I’m pulling a cashmere sweater over my blouse when the clerk replies, “He’s happy to wait. He’ll be in the bakery next door. I’ll text you his number so you can buzz him when you arrive.”
“Thank you,” I reply before ending our call and entering Yev’s room.
He’s still semiconscious. That’s what he gets for keeping me up half the night before feasting on me in the wee hours of the morning.
“I need to pop into the boutique. We have a big order waiting for collection.”
Yev drops the arm covering his face before arching a brow. “Where’s Nat?”
Ignoring the unease twisting through my stomach, I shrug. “Don’t know. I’ll text her on the way. The dispatch clerk said the store looks empty.”
He isn’t as schooled at hiding his emotions as I am. As his brow crinkles, he scoots across the bed, flops both his feet over the edge, then attempts to stand.
“What the hell are you doing?” I say when the groan he tries to stifle rips through his lips. “Get back in bed.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Like hell you are. You can barely walk.” I push his chest until he lands on the mattress with a thud. “Nat is probably just running late again.”
“If you go, I go, Polly. That’s our promise.”
He almost has me over the ledge until my intuition rings louder than his words. “By the time I get you to the car, I’ll be back already.”
He pffts me but doesn’t deny my claims with words.
He can’t when I’m being honest.
I’m tall for a girl, but he is a brute of a man.
Even quick trips to the bathroom take ten minutes.
“There are no more threats. My father dealt with them.” I hate myself for my last murmured comment, but it slipped out before I could stop it. I’m more honest than conniving. That’s why I should have realized sooner that my ruse with Vasily would have never worked. “And Dustin said the more weight you put on your leg, the longer your recovery will be.”
“Dustin doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. No one called Dustin does.”
When he looks set to force weight on his leg again, I get desperate. With determination fueling my strength and remorse that I left everything on Nat’s shoulders the past two weeks, I grab Yev’s hands, clamp his wrists together, then tether them to the bed before he understands my motive, much less how I plan to achieve it.