Page 21 of Pregnant By the Russian Pakhan

Gamely, she swiveled on one foot and strode toward his desk. Deliberately, she went all the way around his desk and dropped into his seat rather than taking the visitor’s seat across from his desk.

His calm vanished, replaced by thinly veiled irritation. She expected him to demand she leave his seat, but he didn’t. Instead, he perched on the edge of the table and stared down at her as he waited for her response.

She allowed herself a small, humorless grin. “Your name is practically a curse word at my house.”

“I’ll bet,” he said.

“Marrying you would be—”

“The only way I could possibly let you leave this room alive,” he told her silkily.

Mira swallowed. He wasn’t even slightly kidding; he was dead serious. Rationally, she knew what he meant. How he was perceived was so important in his world that it could spell the difference between life and death for him and his men. Every mafia boss needed to be feared and respected. By slapping him in front of his associates, she had disrespected him in the extreme, and if he let it slide, he would be thought weak and the attacks would begin soon enough.

“Oh, get over yourself. I am not about to bind myself to any man just to protect his ego. So I slapped you in front of your guests—you deserved it.”

Mikhail grabbed her arm and enunciated in a low, dangerous tone that made goosebumps creep all the way up her arms. “Listen to me very clearly—your father has been hounding me all over Chicago for decades and I’ve done little to retaliate because his antics have not besmirched my reputation in any way. You, on the other hand, have managed to embarrass, belittle, and humiliate me in front of my rivals and associates in less than five minutes. You better believe that my retribution will make your hair stand on end when I’m done with you and that father of yours. Your only way out of this mess is to marry me and do it today.”

“Couldn’t we just tell everyone it was a lovers’ tiff without getting married?” Mira asked, forcing her voice not to quaver from fear.

He shook his head. “It won’t work. You have to show the same people your support and respect for me, and no one is more supportive than one’s wife. In theory, at least,” he grated.

Mira frowned. He didn’t sound like a man eager to get married. He sounded like someone headed for the gallows. If he hated the idea of marriage that much, why was he even suggesting it and insisting on it?

She bit her lip as she tried to think of an alternative, but she couldn’t. Even though she tried not to show it, he had scared her good. And she knew he meant every word. If she didn’t marry him, he would make her life a living hell. She was already fighting one mafia boss—her father. She didn’t think she had it in her to take on two mafia bosses at once.

Seeing her hesitation, Mikhail placed one hand beneath her chin and forced her face up to his. “Tell me again why you’re here, the truth this time, and I’ll decide if I’ll let you live or not.”

Mira wasn’t fazed. “You’ll be doing me a favor if you kill me. Because that’s the only way I’ll be able to get out of marrying the man my father’s planned for me.”

Something in her expression must have communicated itself to him because he paused and frowned. “This fiancé of yours got a name?”

“Edgar Ronald,” Mira announced.

To her shock, Mikhail blanched. “Edgar’s bad news,” he told her.

“I don’t care what kind of news he is, I’m not marrying him,” she declared.

“No, you’re missing the point. Edgar is a bottom feeder. The very scum of the earth. The only way any father alive would let him marry his daughter is if Edgar had some sort of hold over him. I think your father may be in danger,” he added.

Mira studied him. Mikhail was her father’s enemy, yet he didn’t sound very happy about the fact that her father might be in danger from this Edgar person. What a mass of contradictions he was.

“Well, if you don’t want to marry him, my proposal makes even more sense now, doesn’t it?” he stated.

“The engagement is this evening. If I’m already married, Edgar, scum though he may be, can hardly marry me again,” she said slowly.

Mikhail’s brow lifted, but he said nothing.

His reasons for wanting to marry her made sense; it was all her own fault. She had acted without thinking and she’d put them both in danger. But she could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as he wondered why she’d sought him out.

She looked up in time to see his gaze drop to her midsection and she lifted her chin as she glared at him.

“Okay, first off, I’m not pregnant with your baby or anyone else’s baby, so you can get that speculation right out of your mind. Besides, I wasn’t expecting to find Mikhail, the guy I slept with, when I came here. I came looking for Nikolai, my fath—Oleg Dostoevsky’s enemy.”

“Did you get tested for pregnancy?” he asked, watching her carefully.

She hadn’t, but she wasn’t about to admit that. So she forged on. “I just didn’t want to get married, and I thought Nikolai would be the only one capable of helping me escape getting married, because he’s not scared of my father like other men. You just happened to be Nikolai. I swear that’s all there is to it.”

He was watching her. “I’m having a hard time keeping up.”

---