Page 63 of Tarnished Tyrant (Zhukova Bratva 1)

For all of us.

I grab my phone and see Giorgos’s name on the screen. “Yeah, I need to take this. I’m going to go.”

“Go? Like, leave? You can stay. Take the call here. I’ll…” Her eyes dart to the other bedroom door.I’ll wait in the bedroom, is what she wants to say. But Belle can’t quite bring herself to say what it is she wants.

Maybe her little sister was onto something: Belle likes to put up a front. She wants to be professional and respectable and decent. With that in mind, admitting how badly she wants to sleep with me isn’t exactly a good look.

Her dress is rucked up around her thighs. She bats her hazel eyes at me, silently pleading. But I turn and head for the elevator. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I don’t turn to see if she’s disappointed—I know she is. But my life doesn’t allow for reflection or regrets. I made my decision, and now, we both have to live with it.

As soon as the doors are closed, I answer the call.

“Hello,” Giorgos says, heaps of false geniality in his voice. “How are you, Nikolai?”

I sigh. “What do you want, Giorgos? It’s late.”

“It is indeed late. Which is why I was surprised to hear you were out clubbing.” He clicks his tongue. “For a man of your age to be out at the clubs in the middle of the week? Unusual, I’d say.”

I stiffen. “Are you tracking me?”

I had Arslan keeping an eye on Giorgos and Xena for months before we set our current deal in motion. There’s no such thing as being too cautious when forming an alliance.

But that was before. Now, we are meant to be partners. There’s no room left for distrust.

“No. Of course not,” he says. He sounds offended that I’d even suggest it. “But I have contacts everywhere. And you aren’t exactly lowkey, my friend. You beat a man senseless within minutes of being inside. That kind of thing attracts attention.”

Bullshit. Liar. Giorgos doesn’t have nearly as many contacts as he’d like me to believe he does. But he did have a man tailing me, I’m sure of that now.

“I hit the bastard because he deserved it. I always make sure people get what they deserve.”

It’s a warning as much as an explanation. Giorgos understands implicitly.

“No need for threats, Nikolai. Fight as much as you want. Blow off steam. All that means nothing to me,” he says. “My real issue is with your companion.”

I get off the elevator in the lobby. “What companion?” I lie.

“We came to an understanding, I thought. About your… loyalty to my sister.”

“I don’t owe your sister shit.”

“You owe her your respect!” he snarls. It’s a moment of unhinged anger, but then he transitions to soft laughter and composes himself once more. “Forgive me, Nikolai. I’m fond of my sister, and I don’t like seeing her emotions toyed with.”

There are rumors about Giorgos and the Greeks. Rumors about what really happened to his parents. After all, he claimed his role as leader at such a young age, and so abruptly. The official story is an assassination, but the only person I know who would want his parents dead was Giorgos himself. He’s the only one who stood to gain anything.

For so long, I couldn’t see it. But now, here it is. Beneath the smiling, bumbling fool I had dinner with the other night is a crazed bastard capable of killing his own family.

Ruthless, power-hungry, violent men I can handle. I can intimidate and crush them into submission as easily as anyone else.

But crazy? Crazy is another ball game entirely. Crazy men aren’t rational and they aren’t predictable.

I’m not afraid of Giorgos Simatou. But I’d be foolish not to be prepared for whatever he may do next.

“And I don’t like being accused of things I did not do,” I counter in an icy growl. “I told your sister I wouldn’t make love to another woman, and I didn’t. Whoever you had following me in that club—”

“No one was following you,” he interrupts. “You aren’t being tracked.”

“Whoever you had following me in that club,” I repeat pointedly, “wasn’t doing their job. And if I ever spot someone following me, I’ll kill them on sight.”

---