Page 7 of Scarlet Thorns
What the fuck is going on?
I pull out my secure phone and scroll through the encrypted messages from our last several transactions. Igor has been handling more of the medical coordination lately, working directly with hospitals and private clinics to identify potential opportunities. If he wanted to run side deals without our knowledge, he’d have both the access and the credibility to pull it off successfully.
The more I think about it, the more Stanley’s theory begins to make sense. Igor’s increased involvement in day-to-day operations. His reluctance to include us in certain client meetings. The way he’s been deflecting questions about specific transactions by citing patient confidentiality.
Trust is a currency more volatile than cash, and I learned that lesson the hard way years before I ever met Stanley or Igor. In this business, betrayal doesn’t just cost money— it costs lives, families, futures.
If Dr. Igor Shiradze is playing me for a fool, if he’s been running private operations while maintaining his innocent facade, then he’s about to learn why that’s a seriously stupid mistake in judgment.
I close the portfolio and lock it back in my desk drawer. The numbers will have to wait until tomorrow. I have a pregnant wife waiting at home and a reputation to maintain in public, but my mind is already working through possibilities, calculating odds and contingencies.
Stanley may be an idiot, yes.
But if he’s right about Igor… well, the good doctor and I need to have a conversation.
Chapter Three
Ilona
My hands shake against the steering wheel as I sit in my car outside Stanley’s building, the engine running but going nowhere.
The tears won’t stop coming— ugly, choking sobs that leave my chest aching and my vision blurred. I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror and hate what I see. Mascara streaks down my cheeks, my lips are swollen from biting them, and my eyes look hollow.
Phantom pain.
The words echo in my head, sharp and dismissive. Nearly two years together, and that’s what he thinks of my suffering. After sharing a bed, planning a future, building what I thought was love— and he can reduce my agony to lies and convenient excuses.
The cramping in my pelvis pulses with each heartbeat, a constant reminder that something is deeply wrong with my body. But now it’s joined by a different kind of pain, the kind that comes from realizing the person you trusted most doesn’t trust you at all.
I should call Dad.
He would listen.
My father always listens when I need him, never dismissing my concerns or making me feel dramatic for having emotions. He’s been my anchor since childhood— the one person who sees me exactly as I am and loves me anyway. When I scraped my knee at seven, he sat with me for an hour explaining why crying was brave, not weak. When I failed mycalculus final in college, he drove three hours just to take me for ice cream and remind me that one grade didn’t define my worth.
But the thought of telling him about tonight makes my stomach twist with shame. How do I explain that the man he’s grown to like— the man he plays golf with twice a month and discusses business strategies with over dinner— just accused me of cheating? How do I tell him that I think Stanley isn’t such a great guy after all?
There’s something else, too. Something that’s been bothering me for weeks, but that I’ve been pushing aside. The way Dad and Stanley talk sometimes, in low voices that stop when I enter the room. The way they exchange glances during family dinners, like they share secrets I’m not privy to. I’ve told myself it’s just male bonding, the natural evolution of a relationship between a father and his daughter’s boyfriend.
But tonight, with Stanley’s accusations still burning in my ears, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to their connection than casual friendship.
Stop it, Ilona.
You’re being paranoid.
Dad wouldn’t keep secrets from me— not important ones. And whatever Stanley is hiding, whatever darkness is eating at him from the inside, I won’t drag my father into it.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and shift the car into drive. I need to move. I need to be anywhere but here, parked outside the building where the man I thought I loved just shattered my heart into a thousand pieces.
The streets of Boston blur past as I drive without a destination, letting muscle memory guide me through neighborhoods I’ve known since childhood. The pain in my abdomen flares with each bump in the road, but I barely notice it anymore. Physical pain is manageable. It’s the emotional devastation that’s threatening to pull me under.
I’m stopped at a red light when I see it— a building I’ve never paid attention to before, though I must have passed it dozens of times. The sign glows in deep red neon:The Scarlet Fox. Something about the name tugs at me, draws my attention like a magnet. The exterior is understated but elegant, dark brick with tall windows that reveal warm light spilling from within.
On impulse, I turn into the small parking lot. This isn’t me— I don’t drink alone at strange bars, don’t make reckless decisions when I’m emotionally compromised. But maybe that’s exactly what I need tonight. Maybe I need to be someone other than the woman who just got called a liar by her boyfriend.
Screw him!
Fixing my make up with jerky movements, I swing open the door and get out of the car.
