Page 158 of Filthy Promises

What did she expect? Poetry? Flowers? A goddamn flash mob?

I loosen my tie with a vicious jerk. It’s strangling me and I need it fuckinggone.

She doesn’t even understand that I’m trying to do the right thing here. I’m trying to protecther,keephersafe, and if she’s too fucking stubborn to see that, then I’ll do what must be done in order to make her?—

“Rough night, son?”

My body goes rigid at the sound of my father’s voice. I turn slowly, hand automatically reaching for the gun that isn’t there.

Andrei Akopov sits in my living room, in my favorite chair, drinking my favorite vodka, looking as comfortable as if he owns the place.

“How did you get in here?”

He swirls the crystal tumbler, ice clinking against glass like a chattering laugh track. “I still have the override codes. Did you forget who paid for this place?”

Of course. How could I forget? The golden handcuffs my father has kept me in since birth.

“What do you want?” I move to the bar and pour a drink of my own. Cut the lime, drop it into the liquor with aplink. My hands are steady despite the storm raging inside me. “It’s late, and I’m not in the mood for one of your lectures.”

“No lecture tonight.” He shifts and readjusts his crossed legs. “Just a conversation about your latest interesting development.”

I freeze with the glass halfway to my lips. “What development?”

He laughs, the sound lacking any warmth. “Please, Vincent. Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence. I know about the girl. About her…condition.”

The glass was poised at my lips. I set it down without taking a sip and turn to face him.

“How?”

“I have my sources. Ultimately, though, it’s irrelevant. Here we are. No more secrets.” He waves a hand dismissively.

“What exactly do you want?” I demand again, losing patience with his games.

Andrei rises from the chair to go stand by the window. Manhattan twinkles beneath us, a sea of artificial lights mirroring the stars we can’t see through the city’s smog and filth.

“I want what I’ve always wanted, Vincent. For you to secure your place as my successor. Fuck knows you’ve made it harder than it needed to be.” He turns to face me, his silver hair catching the light. “But now, it seems, you’ve found a way to do that which I hadn’t anticipated.”

I study his face, searching for the trap. “I thought this wasn’t a lecture?”

He sighs. His exhale ghosts the windowpane. “I specifically warned you against her. And yet you persisted.” He takes another sip of his drink. “She’s carrying your child. The next Akopov. My grandchild.”

The way he says it—my grandchild—sends a chill down my spine. As if the baby already belongs to him rather than to Rowan and me.

The way you feel is the same way she felt, you fucking fool,sneers a voice in my head.You called it yours. He calls it his. We’re all trying to claw this unborn child into our own laps, to load it into our own guns like a bullet to be fired.

If this keeps up, that’s exactly what it will be.

It’s whatyouwere made to be, too.

A blunt, disposable object.

“So what?” I say. “What’s the point you’re driving toward?”

“So,” says Andrei, “while she might not be the bride I would have chosen, the fact remains that she’s pregnant with the heir to our empire.” He spreads his hands in a gesture of magnanimity that doesn’t fool me for a second. “Family is everything, Vincent, as I keep telling you. Blood is everything. Your child—regardless of its mother—is Akopov blood.”

I didn’t expect this. Rage, yes. Threats, certainly. But this calm acceptance? This is new territory.

Andnewfrom my father always meansdangerous.

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