by Bella Rose
“Come on and be quiet,” Sasha told her softly. “Let’s go inside. You can have your meeting in the kitchen or whatever it was that you needed to do. And I can go supervise my men. Because that’s what I needed to do today.”
“Wait.” She frowned. “So I won’t see you again today?”
“No.” He pursed his lips, seeming to reconsider. “I suppose not until dinner time.”
“Oh.” Why did that make her feel so bereft? “Okay then. I suppose that’s normal. Right?”
“Right.” He pulled out his phone and seemed to be already sinking into his daily schedule.
“I suppose that’s understandable.”
He looked up, one brow raised in a quizzical manner. “Are you afraid to be here alone?”
“No of course not.” Uh, yes! “I’ll just be working on house stuff. I have plenty to do, I’m sure.”
“If I were you, I might try to start improving my Russian,” he suggested. “At least you might want to improve your understanding. Your accent is deplorable. I’m not sure if that’s fixable.”
“Nice,” she muttered. “Really encouraging.”
“Honest,” he retorted. Then he headed into the house. “See you around, Maria.”
So here she was in her new husband’s home. She now had no housekeeper, which was fine, but she needed to learn how the place worked before her Bratva husband came home from work and realized that she had no real idea what she was doing. Telling Sasha that she’d done that sort of thing in her father’s house was a gross exaggeration. She’d barely been allowed to lift a finger. She had watched, though. Surely running a household couldn’t be that difficult.
The dog made a snorting noise and lifted his head, swinging his heavy head around to look her way. Oh yes. She needed to get inside right now. Otherwise that insanely huge dog would decide that the two of them needed another play date.
Maria shoved her way back into the house and immediately stumbled into a hallway she’d never seen before. Great. She’d just managed to get lost in what was supposed to be her own home. She was probably going to be ridiculed for this too.
She tiptoed her way down toward the other end of the hallway. She could hear voices. They were speaking in Russian, but one of them was familiar somehow. The cadence or the tone or something triggered a memory of her father’s house. The man seemed to be talking fast, begging even.
Curiosity overcame her fear of embarrassment, and she peeked around the corner of a doorway into a very strange room. It was completely devoid of furnishings. The floor was tile. A man was sitting in the only chair, his hands tied behind his back—his back was to her, his mop of black hair preventing any glimpse of his features. Two men she recognized from her wedding as Tarasov soldiers were pacing circles around the guy in the chair. They were all yelling. Their Russian was far too fast and thick for her to make out much of it.
Cold fear trickled down her spine, and she realized that she was not supposed to be seeing this. One of the Tarasovs pulled out a huge knife. He brandished it before the man bound to the chair. There was one more garbled bit of conversation before the Tarasov soldier slit the man’s throat.
The sound of gurgling and air escaping from the severed neck made Maria cover her mouth in horror. Her stomach churned, and she struggled not to be sick. Then the other Tarasov raised his foot to the seat of the chair and gave a shove with an angry shout. The chair crashed to the floor, the dead man staring at the ceiling.
Grigori!
No wonder she’d known the voice! Grigori was a Sokolov! Her cousin, in fact. Why had they murdered a Sokolov? What could it mean?
Maria turned and walked away as quickly and quietly as she could. Now was not the time to wonder. She needed to get as far away from the scene of the crime as she possibly could.
Chapter Six
There was most definitely something wrong. Sasha could not put his finger on what it was, but the quality of the domestic environment in his home was off. He closed the door leading from the garage to the house and listened. It was quiet. But only for a moment.
“You need to talk to that woman!” Olga appeared from a room to the right of the hallway with her hands on her hips. “She’s too damn bossy for her own good! She’s driving the staff nuts! Oksana already walked off the job.”
Sasha wasn’t happy about that. Oksana had been a cook he had imported from Russia at no small expense. She made incredible borsch that reminded Sasha of home. He felt his first twinge of real annoyance at Maria. He had allowed her to be in charge of his home. That did not mean she had his permission to destroy it.
With a glower on his face, he stomped down the hallway and turned right to head for the kitchen. He was going to give Maria a piece of his mind. In English of course, since anything he said in Russian would no doubt be lost on her.
The flicker of candlelight in the dining room made him pause. Swinging around, he gaped at the table set for two. The place settings had been placed at one end. The intimate atmosphere was almost suggestive.
Maria was standing beside the table. She blew lightly on a long wooden match to extinguish it. The shape of her lips gave him decadent thoughts. Suddenly it didn’t matter what had happened to his cook. The only thing he cared about was dessert.
Maria shivered when she realized that Sasha was staring at her from the hallway. She was hoping that this meal turned out perfectly. Considering her disaster of a day, it would be a damn miracle if she managed to pull that off.
“Hi.” It was the only word she could manage to squeeze out from between her lips.
He took a few more steps into the room. “Is dinner ready?” Lifting his nose, he gave a few sniffs. “Something smells delicious.”
“It’s the pasta.” She blushed a little. If he only knew how badly she had clashed with Oksana about that stupid Russian menu the woman had insisted on. Nobody ate that sort of thing anymore. Did they?
“Are you ready to eat?” The expression on his face suggested he was thinking about more than food.
“Oh—um—yes! I’ll just…I mean you go ahead and be seated. Or would you like to get a drink at the bar or something or—oh! I’m making a mess of this.” She felt ridiculous.
He laughed. The light from the candles played off the dark highlights in his hair and made his swarthy skin look rough. He was just so sexy. When he turned around to pour a drink from the bar at the far end of the dining room, she grew distracted watching him move. He looked like a big cat, instincts primed and ready to pounce. She thought about what it had been like to see him naked the night before. He was so very muscular.
He cast a dark look at her over his shoulder. “Maria?”
“Yes?”
“Dinner?”
“Right!”
She dashed from the dining room to the kitchen, pushing through the swinging door at about a million miles per hour. The place was empty—no surprise.
A quick stir and a taste told her that the pasta primavera was ready to serve. Her mother had been Italian. Their household had enjoyed mostly Italian-American dishes, and Maria liked to cook those the most. She had never been allowed to cook for the household, but that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy dabbling in the kitchen. She pulled the buttery garlic rolls from the oven and scooted them into a basket. She tossed the dressing into the salad and then put everything on a tray.
The thing weighed a ton. Balancing it carefully in her arms, she made her way back toward the swinging door. A quick kick with her foot and she was through. Sasha was sitting at the head of the table now. Maria glanced around and realized that she was probably going to scratch the pristine wood tabletop if she just scraped the tray into place. Great. She was stuck.
“Let me help you.” He stood up and took the tray from her arms.
Maria began unloading dishes. “Thank you. I guess I didn’t think through the serving plan very well. It won’t happen again. I’ve never had to actually do the cooking for the household, but I really like to cook.”
“So.” He appeared to be attempting to peek into the kitchen behind her. “Where’s the kitchen staff?”
“Oh I gave them the night off.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. They totally had the night off. And tomorrow night too. And probably forever. Ugh!
Was she actually lying to him? Sasha’s mood darkened. He did not like being lied to by anyone. Not his soldiers. Not his avoritets, the captains of his little army. And certainly not his women. Yet here was this little piece of fluff in a blue dress—a striking outfit, but that did not matter—lying through her teeth about something that had happened in his personal household. Unacceptable!
He could feel the expression on his face sinking into an angry glower. Maria was bustling about placing the food just where she wanted it. He was no longer hungry. Not even the decadent smells coming from the pasta could tempt him at the moment.
She glanced up and abruptly stopped fussing with the salad bowl. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t appreciate being lied to.” Sasha wondered why he felt so belligerent about this. Surely he had expected her to disappoint him. All people eventually did. Perhaps he had just been entertaining the possibility that Maria would take longer to do so.
“L-Lied to?” She stumbled over the phrase as though she was still going to play it off. “If you’re talking about the kitchen staff, I told them that they could either do things my way or they could find employment elsewhere. I don’t really know what will happen. They could come back tomorrow. It’s possible.”
He cocked his head and stared at her, wondering if she truly believed that nonsense.
“Okay, so maybe I’m delusional.” She sighed. It was a sound of defeat. “I didn’t mean to mess things up. I’m just tired of people treating me like a child.”
Sasha did not add that she was a child. Maria could not have been more than twenty years old. He was pushing thirty. By his estimation, she had very little life experience and even less intelligence.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Her voice was low and intense. “Do not act like I’m some inexperienced baby you have to take care of. I hate that! Just because I’m not in my thirties with years and years of criminal escapades behind me does not mean that I have nothing to offer.”
“Okay.” He said it quick and flat. He didn’t even entertain the notion that she believed him. “You have to understand. My world is very different from this.” He made a gesture to encompass the dining room and the house. “The notion of worrying so much about what staff think of me or whether the menu is going to be a success seems superficial at most.”
“And yet you had that cook believing that you would murder her if she didn’t make you Russian food for dinner,” Maria said shrewdly. “So maybe it’s more important than you think.”
She could not tell if he was being intentionally dismissive or if his behavior was just the product of his being a man in power. Whatever it was, he was being an ass. She waited to see how he would respond and honestly expected him to completely blow her off.
“That’s fair.”
She actually opened her mouth to argue with him before realizing that he’d given her a concession. To cover up her unease, she hastily dished up the pasta. The steaming white sauce smelled heavenly.
“Did you make this?” He sounded surprised.
She put salad in his bowl and put the bread within reach. “It’s my mother’s recipe.”
“She was Italian.” He was speaking slowly, and it occurred to her that he might not remember her mother. Alaina Sokolov had died long ago.
“Yes. She was Italian, born here and the daughter of a Sicilian mafia boss.” Maria could not hide her bitterness. “Let’s just say her marriage was a lot like mine.”
He started to eat. His motions were just as measured and perfectly executed as everything else he did. “You’re alluding to the fact that you were subjected to an arranged marriage.”
“Yes,” she said defiantly.
The memory of Grigori Sokolov popped into her mind. She opened her mouth to say something and then shut it abruptly. This wasn’t the time. She had no information or evidence or anything else. She could not simply throw out a bald accusation. Especially when Sasha had already told her in no uncertain terms that she was nothing more than a child to him.
“What are you thinking?” He stabbed his fork in her direction.
“Nothing.”
“In my experience, women do not think of nothing,” he said with a snort. “They think of everything at once.”
“And yet you don’t believe anything we think is worthwhile,” she shot back.
“Not always.” He moved to his salad, beginning to eat in a rather controlled and vaguely circular pattern. “But I will maintain that women often make much out of nothing.”
“And men make nothing out of things that should be a big fucking deal.” Maria stood up and threw her napkin on the table.
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the dining room. She couldn’t be in the same room with that man for another moment. He was mean. He was rude. He was dismissive. He was bossy as a Tsar. And she had no more use for him at the moment.
Down the hall. Up the stairs to the second floor. This house felt foreign, and she was a stranger here, driving on the wrong side of the road. There were other people—Tarasov soldiers—hanging about, she knew. She could feel their presence, but she could not see them. It was like they were watching her and waiting for her to fail.
Chapter Seven
Well Sasha’s plans for seduction had certainly become much more difficult. Maria was prickly. He hadn’t expected that. He’d thought her a biddable sort of woman. Apparently he’d been a little off the mark, which was unusual. For the most part he could predict a woman’s behavior down to what she would say. This one was all over the map. She was naive and shy one second and bossy and bitchy the next.
He got up from his chair and poured himself another drink. The dining room looked almost sinister with the candlelight flickering over the dark painted walls. He carried his glass back to his chair and sat down.
Looking over the remains of dinner, he had to admit that the woman was pretty good in the kitchen. He had never been very fond of Italian food, but the pasta was perfectly cooked. The sauce was well spiced, and the vegetables were crisp and not mushy. Yes. Her domestic skills were perfectly fine, even though she was only twenty.
He lifted his glass to his lips and took a sip. Did he even know how old she was? Perhaps he had been making gross assumptions instead of trying to really get to know her.
“Are you sitting in here in the dark all by yourself?” Dimitri asked as he appeared.
The big Russian sat down and helped himself to the pasta. For some reason it bothered Sasha to see his friend sitting in her seat and eating what should have been her dinner. He shook it off. This was no time to be fanciful.
“Do you have anything useful to report?” Sasha demanded.
“Da.” Dimitri shoveled food into his mouth as though he were afraid it would vanish before he was full. “The manifests match the goods in the crates to the last letter.”
“Do they?” Sasha muttered. “And the Sokolov who claimed otherwise?”
“Disappeared.” Dimitri gave one shrug of his massive shoulders. “He probably went back to wherever those Sokolov cowards go when they’re confirmed to be liars.”
Something felt off about this explanation, but Sasha said nothing. The crates in his warehouse might be full of the right merchandise now. But he had seen for himself that they were not always so. This meant that someone else was lying to him.
“The food’s pretty good.” Dimitri waved a hand at the pasta. “Since when does Oksana know how to make decent Italian food?”
“Maria made dinner,” Sasha said tersely. “Oksana and the others left her high and dry here in the house.”
Dimitri snorted. “Well your bride acts like a princess in the Winter Palace.”
“Shouldn’t she?” Sasha tu
rned and glared at Dimitri. “She is my wife is she not?”
“Da!” Dimitri said quickly. “But she is Sokolov.”
“Now she is Tarasov.”
Sasha got up from the table, shoving his chair back and feeling irritable without knowing why. Perhaps he had been too hard on Maria. How could he expect her to act anything but paranoid and persecuted in a house where she was so obviously not welcome?
***
Maria struggled on her knees to light the fire in her bedroom grate. She had no idea where the thermostat was, and the place felt like a tomb. Her dress was smudged with ash, and she felt like stupid Cinderella trying to please her evil stepmother. Except she had Tarasovs with a superiority complex to deal with.
The kindling finally caught, and the pine needles began to curl up in the heat. She blew gently in order to get things going and then began adding smaller pieces of wood. She’d had to dig to the bottom of the wood box beside the fireplace to find anything suitable. She wondered who was responsible for replacing the wood in each bedroom and if there was a maid somewhere who was going to speak badly of her for causing more work.
“At my father’s house we just let the soldiers do these tasks,” she muttered. “Not a bunch of bitchy females more concerned with seeing if they can get the pakhan wrapped around their little fingers.”
“Is that what you think is going on?”
She jumped and slammed her head into the top of the fireplace. Falling backwards, she put both hands on the throbbing spot on the back of her head. Great. As if she needed to look even more incompetent. Sasha had entered her room and was smirking at her. At least she thought it was a smirk. It was difficult to tell with her brain still spinning from the blow she’d taken to the head. She closed her eyes and tried to regain her balance.
Then she felt a touch on her arm and realized that Sasha was kneeling by her side. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to startle you.”
