he informed, skipping over what he intended to do next because he was still deciding.
He stretched out his arms so his left hand, no longer wearing the ring she’d put on it, settled behind her shoulder. He’d put the ring in his pocket along with the ones she had worn. Her returning them surprised him. She must have known what they were worth. Why wasn’t she trying to use them as leverage? Not that it would work, but he expected a woman in her position to at least try.
He dismissed that puzzle and returned to her question. “If someone wants to influence me, they offer something I want.”
“And since I don’t have anything you want...?” Little flags of color rose on her cheekbones and she stared out to sea.
He almost smiled, but the tightness of her expression caused him to sober. Had he hurt her with his rejection earlier? He’d been brutal because he wasn’t a novice. You didn’t enter into any transaction wearing your desires on your sleeve the way she did.
But how could she not be aware that she was something he wanted? Did she not feel the same pull he was experiencing?
How did she keep undermining his thoughts this way?
As an opponent she was barely worth noticing. A brief online search had revealed she had no fortune, no influence. Her job was a pedestrian position as data entry clerk for an auto parts chain. Her network of social media contacts was small, which suggested an even smaller circle of real friends.
Mikolas’s instinct when attacked was to crush. If Grigor had switched his bride on purpose, he would already be ruined. Mikolas didn’t lose to anyone, especially weak adversaries who weren’t even big enough to appear on his radar.
Yet Viveka had slipped in like a ninja, taking him unawares. On the face of it, that made her his enemy. He had to treat her with exactly as much detachment as he would any other foe.
But this twist of hunger in his gut demanded an answering response from her. It wasn’t just ego. It was craving. A weight on a scale that demanded an equal weight on the other side to balance it out.
The porter returned, poured their wine, and they both sipped. When they were alone again, Mikolas said, “You were right. Grigor wants you.”
Viveka paled beneath her already stiff expression. “And you want the merger.”
“My grandfather does. I have promised to complete it for him.”
She bit her bottom lip so mercilessly it disappeared. “Why?” she demanded. “I mean, why is this merger so important to him?”
“Why does it matter?” he countered.
“Well, what is it you’re really trying to accomplish? Surely there are other companies that could give you what you want. Why does it have to be Grigor’s?”
She might be impulsive and a complete pain in the backside, but she was perceptive. It didn’t have to be Grigor’s company. He was fully aware of that. However.
“Finding another suitable company would take time we don’t have.”
“A man with your riches can’t buy as much as he needs?” she asked with an ingenuous blink.
She was a like a baby who insisted on trying to catch the tiger’s tail and stuff it in her mouth. Not stupid, but cheerfully ignorant of the true danger she was in. He couldn’t afford to be lenient.
“My grandfather is ill. I had to call him to tell him the merger has been delayed. That was disappointment he didn’t need.”
She almost threw an askance look at him, but seemed to read his expression and sobered, getting the message that beneath his civilized exterior lurked a heartless mercenary.
Not that he enjoyed scaring her. He usually treated women like delicate flowers. After sleeping in cold alleys that stank of urine, after being tortured at the hands of degenerate, pitiless men, he’d developed an insatiable appetite for luxury and warmth and the sweet side of life. He especially enjoyed soft kittens who liked to be stroked until they purred next to him in bed.
But if a woman dared to cross him, as with any man, he ensured she understood her mistake and would never dream of doing so again.
“I owe my grandfather a great deal.” He waved at their surroundings. “This.”
“I presumed it was stolen,” she said with a haughty toss of her head.
“No.” He was as blunt as a mallet. “The money was made from smuggling profits, but the boat was purchased legally.”
She snapped her head around.
He shrugged, not apologizing for what he came from. “For decades, if something crossed the border or the seas for a thousand miles, legal or illegal, my grandfather—and my father when he was alive—received a cut.”
He had her attention. She wasn’t saucy now. She was wary. Wondering why he was telling her this.
“Desperate men do desperate things. I know this because I was quite desperate when I began trading on my father’s name to survive the streets of Athens.”
Their chilled soup arrived. He was hungry, but neither of them moved to pick up their spoons.
“Why were you on the streets?”
“My mother died. Heart failure, or so I was told. I was sent to an orphanage. I hated it.” It had been a palace, in retrospect, but he didn’t think about that. “I ran away. My mother had told me my father’s name. I knew what he was reputed to be. The way my mother had talked, as if his enemies would hunt me down and use me against him if they found me... I thought she was trying to scare me into staying out of trouble. I didn’t,” he confided drily. “Boys of twelve are not known for their good judgment.”
He smoothed his eyebrow where a scar was barely visible, but he could still feel where the tip of a blade had dragged very deliberately across it, opening the skin while a threat of worse—losing his eye—was voiced.
“I watched and learned from other street gangs and mostly stuck to robbing criminals because they don’t go to the police. As long as I was faster and smarter, I survived. Threatening my father’s wrath worked well in the beginning, but without a television or computer, I missed the news that he had been stabbed. I was caught in my lie.”
Her eyes widened. “What happened?”
“As my mother had warned me, my father’s enemies showed great interest. They asked me for information I didn’t have.”
“What do you mean?” she whispered, gaze fixed to his so tightly all he could see was blue. “Like...?”
“Torture. Yes. My father was known to have stockpiled everything from electronics to drugs to cash. But if I had known where any of it was kept, I would have helped myself, wouldn’t I? Rather than trying to steal from them? They took their time believing that.” He pretended the recollection didn’t coat him in cold sweat.
“Oh, my God.” She sat back, fingertips covering her faint words, gaze flickering over her shoulder to where his left hand was still behind her.
Ah.
