Page 19 of Tarnished Tyrant (Zhukova Bratva 1)

I roll my eyes. “You don’t have to play high and mighty. It’s just the two of us, beautiful Belle.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.

“You don’t have to hide who you are from me,” I continue. “I already know the filthy thoughts floating around in your head.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know how to make you feel good.” I move towards her, and she backs up, step for step. “I know that you worry yourself into knots—a knot that only I could untangle. Twice, actually.”

She lifts her chin, the green in her eyes flaring as she glares up at me. “I don’t want anything from you.”

I press my finger to the furious crease between her eyebrows. “Let me untangle this knot, too. What will it take to do the trick: ten thousand dollars?”

Air hisses out of her lungs.

I smile. “That’s nothing to me,” I tell her. “I’ve been paying off smug auditors like you for years.”

“Then you’ve been hiring a bunch of shady creeps with no moral compass.”

“You know where a moral compass takes you?” I ask. “A future without money in your pocket. A future where you don’t have a job. What's the point of letting that pesky compass lead you to poverty?”

She puffs out her chest. Her breasts whisper across my skin. My body remembers the way she felt and the front of my pants are tight.

“Is that a threat?”

The fire in her eyes does something to me. Not many people are willing—or stupid enough—to stand up to me.

That's probably what this is: a novelty. This woman has given me a hard-on twice in a handful of hours because she's pushing back. And I don't like it, but I respect it.

To a point.

“Not even close. Do you want to hear a threat?” I ask. I lean in close until her face fills my vision. “I told you on the plane that I’m not a nice man. But that doesn’t even begin to describe the darkness I can rain down on your life. Accept my offer, and you’ll walk out of here ten thousand dollars richer. But refuse, and I can dismantle you brick by brick until there’s nothing left. And I can have it done before the elevator doors at the end of the hall open.”

She swallows hard. Her lovely throat bobs nervously. I want to lick all the way up and down it, to taste the salty tang of her fear and the sweetness of her perfume.

“Who do you think you are? God?”

“In this city, I’m the closest thing to it.”

She stares up at me, and I know she’ll give in. Everyone does. Toss a threat and a little money their way and average people fold like cheap suits.

But Belle surprises me.

“My integrity isn’t for sale,” she says, punctuating the point by jabbing a finger into my chest. “Fuck off. And find a new auditor.”

She yanks my office door open and spins out of the room.

Before she’s even cleared the doorway, my phone is in my hand. As soon as the line connects, I give the order.

“Call me when it’s done.”

I hang up just in time to hear the chime of the elevator doors at the end of the hall.

I smirk. Belle Dowan has no idea the mistake she's just made.

4

NIKOLAI

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