Page 139 of Filthy Promises

I stare at the closed door long after Rowan leaves.

I’m just your assistant, remember? Your perfectly professional assistant who schedules your meetings and organizes your files and occasionally lets you fuck her when it’s convenient.

The acid in her voice when she said it… Christ. For a woman who claims not to care, there was enough pain in those words to drown us both.

I slam my fist against my desk, sending papers flying. Something shatters—my glass paperweight, maybe, possibly, probably. I don’t bother to check.

The worst part is that she’s wrong. So catastrophically wrong that I can’t even begin to explain how fucking incorrect she is.

This thing between us was never just convenient. Never just about sex.

It hasn’t been for a long time now.

But how do I tell her that? How do I explain an arrangement with Anastasia that gives us both what we need while maintaining the charade our families require?

I grab my phone, dialing Arkady. “I need everything we have on Daniel Spencer,” I bark when he answers. “Anastasia Kuznetsov’s lover.”

“The surgeon?” He sounds confused. “Why?—”

“Just get it. Now.” I hang up before he can ask more questions.

If I’m going to survive this mess with Rowan, I need to understand what I’m getting into with Anastasia. All the t’s need to be crossed and all the i’s dotted. There’s no room to fuck up.

Because if there’s even a sliver of hope that I can have Rowan and still fulfill my obligations…

My phone vibrates twenty minutes later.

“You’re going to want to see this yourself,” Arkady says without preamble. “I’m sending a car.”

“What did you find?”

He pauses. “Your future bride’s boyfriend isn’t who she says he is.”

My blood runs cold. “Explain.”

“Not over the phone. Just get in the car.”

The line goes dead, and I’m left staring at my reflection in the window. It’s never looked grimmer.

Downstairs, the car is waiting. I slide into the backseat, and Arkady hands me a folder without a word.

The first page shows a surveillance photo of a man in his early thirties. Dark hair. Sharp features. Good-looking in a bland, understated way.

“Daniel Spencer,” Arkady says. “At least, that’s the name he’s using.”

“And his real name?”

“Daniil Petrov.”

Petrov.

As in…

“Grigor’s spawn?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“His youngest son,” Arkady confirms. “Hidden in plain sight. They sent him to medical school in America under a false identity years ago.”

I flip through the surveillance photos. Daniel with Anastasia at a café. Daniel entering her building. Daniel in scrubs at the hospital.

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