Page 36 of Pregnant By the Russian Pakhan

With a frown, Mikhail went to her laptop to check what she had been working on. He was very computer savvy because his line of work meant he had to be.

She had been creating a code to enable someone to send secret alerts to one organization from another. He looked toward the now-empty staircase. What secret alert was she planning on sending? And to whom? Could she be working with her father?

With a frown, he walked into this office and sent for Vlad. “Did anything strike you as odd when we were over at Dostoevsky’s?”

“Plenty,” Vlad fumed. “Sam’s dead body left hanging disrespectfully out there in the open for the elements to get him, that was mighty odd.”

Mikhail refrained from rolling his eyes. Vlad was still so fixated on the fact that Sam had died, and the how of it. “Apart from Sam? The environment, did you see anything you thought was strange?”

Vlad frowned. “Yes, I seem to remember a pair of eyes peering at us from over a banister as we crept by. But no one raised an alarm.”

Mikhail nodded. “And no one was guarding the dungeons even though all the other doors were guarded.”

“And Dostoevsky was nowhere to be found,” Vlad added.

A memory niggled, and Mikhail asked a question that had been bothering him. “How was Sarah able to send voice notes if she was already in the dungeons? Any self-respecting captor would take away her phone first.”

Vlad thought about it for a bit, then said, “Unless her phone was taken away after she had sent the voice notes?”

Mikhail shook his head. “Dostoevsky wanted us to find her. He must have planted something on her. Maybe a chip, a tracker, or something dangerous like an explosive. Come on,” he ordered briskly as he got to his feet and dashed toward Mira’s room.

When he reached her room, she was giggling with Sarah as though they were two little girls. The two women looked up in stunned silence when Mikhail and Vlad barged into the room.

Mira’s face went cold and blank as a doll’s when she looked at him. Something was definitely wrong. He wasn’t sure what, but in the time it had taken him to go get Sarah and return, the dynamics of his relationship with Mira had changed.

Before, when he walked into a room, she either lit up like a Christmas tree or had to hide a blush. Now, she was stone-faced, like one of the statues in Central Park.

“Sarah, you need to come with us right now.”

“What’s this, Mikhail? You didn’t even knock, and you came in with Vlad. What if I was changing clothes?” Mira demanded.

“You’re right. My sincere apologies,” he said automatically. “I still need to speak with Sarah now,” he added in a voice that brooked no argument.

Sarah got up immediately and walked out with Vlad. As they descended the stairs, Mikhail watched Sarah trail after Vlad as he led her to where Mikhail knew she would be scanned for chips, drugs, or other implants and then interrogated.

“You have no right to treat Sarah like a common criminal,” Mira accused, rising fluidly to her feet to plant herself in front of him.

Mikhail could feel animosity coming from her in waves with even more intensity than when they’d first met. He cocked an eyebrow. “I risked my life going personally into my enemy’s den to fetch your friend and servant. I’m yet to hear you utter a word of thanks, and you want to take me to task for merely trying to ensure that saving her wasn’t part of Dostoevsky’s grand plan to destroy me and everyone else in this villa?”

“You should be thanked, Mikhail. Thank you for all you have done to me,” she said in a voice laden with heavy irony.

Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and he couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t thanked him for what he’d done for her, but what he’d done to her.

What had he done to her? What the fuck was going on?

Chapter 23 - Mira

There was an unexpected foil in Mira’s plans to kill Mikhail and avenge her mother.

Sarah, who was to have been helping her, had developed a chronic case of hero worship where Mikhail was concerned. She wouldn’t even let Mira so much as criticize the man to her hearing, and since Sarah had taken it upon herself to watch everything he ate or drank from the kitchen to his table, Mira couldn’t very well poison him.

Anyway, poison had never really been her style. Her approach had always been more direct. Not that she’d ever killed anyone, but she just knew if she had to kill someone, she wanted them to know she had done it and why.

Mikhail also seemed to have noticed her change in disposition toward him, because he was more withdrawn and quiet around her and he’d made no moves to touch her at all since the last time they’d made love in her bedroom.

Thinking of that time now, it almost seemed like a lifetime away. Mira had been so happy and carefree and had enjoyed his caresses and lovemaking. But now, the thought of letting Mikhail touch her with her mother’s blood on his hands…

She had to kill him.

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