Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
It was possible. Dmitri would be a fool to ignore it as an option, no matter how unlikely. Aiden was a more formidable opponent than Dmitri had expected, so it was possible that he’d orchestrated this…
He shook his head. “Nyet. Aiden O’Malley would never sacrifice his sister like this. Not Keira. Carrigan? Possibly. But not Keira.” The man would do anything for his family. His siblings might not be able to see it because of his methods, but to the outside observer, it was pathetically apparent. It might as well have been a big shiny red button inviting enemies to push it. It was that loyalty that predicted Aiden would come around once again to ally against the Eldridge women. The man was as predictable as he was honorable. No, he wouldn’t try something like this.
But Keira?
Dmitri found he couldn’t conclusively say one way or another what Keira was thinking—or what she would do.
CHAPTER FIVE
Keira skipped dinner. She mostly did it to see what Dmitri would do, but other than a gruff Pavel conveying that they’d reschedule at a later date, nothing had happened. She laid low for two full days to give Dmitri a false sense of security before she started losing it. Her rooms were big enough to live in and never leave, but she was bored out of her goddamn mind and she could only sleep so much. Best she could tell, this building took up the greater part of a city block. Plenty of places to hide bodies.
Not that Romanov would ever be crass enough to commit murder in his own home. He was too savvy for that. He wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty unnecessarily, though he must have at one point or he wouldn’t be head of the family.
She layered up in a tank top and cardigan thing and a different pair of jeans and went exploring. There wasn’t anyone stationed outside her room, but she didn’t think for a second that she could walk out of here without some kind of tail attached. If they even let her leave at all.
No, Romanov wasn’t that different from her brothers after all.
The hallway twisted strangely, and she wondered again who had decided that converting old apartments was a good way to go about building a freaking mansion in New York. Someone with something to prove.
The second floor was consigned to guest rooms. After the third door opened into one decorated similarly to hers, she gave up and went to the stairs. Dmitri’s study was on the first floor, and she wasn’t ready to face him again. Keira wasn’t sure who gained the point for the win in their last conversation. He’d agreed to let her train and not to force her, but… she hadn’t really thought he’d force her to begin with. If he was the kind of man to do that shit, it would have already happened. She’d sure as hell put herself in vulnerable positions with him over and over again.
They would have sex. It was a given—had been a given since the moment she set eyes on him.
Keira stopped at the top of the stairs and tried to picture how the hell that would go. She wasn’t a virgin. Far from it. But Dmitri wasn’t some blitzed guy in the back of a club. He was… a different animal altogether. He’d touched her once in the backseat of his town car, and the look on his face hadn’t been controlled or locked down. He’d seemed half a second from taking her right then and there.
And then he’d shut it all down.
Would holding out drive him into a frenzy?
She shivered, her skin prickling at the thought. It didn’t matter what Dmitri wanted. He wouldn’t force her, and she’d be damned before she traded away her only advantage before she was good and ready to.
No matter how sexy the Russian was.
Determined to put it out of her mind, she moved down the hallway. It was shorter than the one on the second floor, broken up only by two closed doors and ending in a third. Keira poked her head into the first. Her stomach did a slow flip at the sight of the crib positioned in the corner. She stepped into the dim room, taking in the rocking chair sitting at an angle to the crib, the changing table on the other side of that. The other half of the wide room was devoted to the next age group up. There was a teepee with pillows scattered inside it, a low bookshelf with kid-appropriate board books, and even an easel with tiny paints and colored pencils. All of it untouched as if just waiting for a child.
Her child.
She pressed her hand to her stomach. She wasn’t even sure she wanted kids. Fuck, she was only twenty-one. If she did want them, she didn’t want them now. She’d been sober all of a few days. Hot mess did not begin to cover the shit show that was her life.