Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99191 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99191 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
“You’re going to be my wife.” The words felt strange to say aloud to her, as if he were claiming her. He’d told Aiden that he’d allow Keira to make her own choice—and he would—but he’d never given his word that he wouldn’t orchestrate events to drive her to the altar at his side.
She shrugged. “That’s what I hear. No one asked me.”
Dmitri crooked a finger at her. “Come with me, Keira. Yours and mine is not a marriage that starts with bended knee and declarations of devotion. You know that.”
For a moment, she looked so incredibly sad, then she made a visible effort to wipe all expression from her face. She did an admirable job, until only a hint of it lingered in her hazel eyes. She stood, bracing as if going to battle.
Movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and he turned to find Mikhail. One look at the man’s face and Dmitri knew the O’Malley men had found Keira. Time to leave. He captured her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “It seems I’m being called away. Until next time, moya koroleva.”
She gave him a grin that was downright lethal. “Dmitri Romanov, marrying me is going to be the worst decision you ever made.”
* * *
With the chaos that had erupted around Aiden’s missing sister, dinner ended as soon as it started. Charlie was almost pathetically grateful to be escorted up to a room and left out of the whole damn thing. She’d signed on for this, but there had been an overwhelming amount of information to absorb in twenty-four hours.
She needed time to adjust.
She was tempted to call her dad and use him as a sounding board the same way she’d done all through her childhood and most of her adult life. Not anymore. Not since she was branded a dirty cop. That closeness with her dad—that trust—was something she mourned almost more than anything else she’d lost as a result of what Romanov had done.
Not just Romanov.
She yanked off her dress, wishing she could yank out her memories as easily. She’d been naive, maybe, for thinking that all cops were good cops—that the NYPD would fulfill her deep-seated desire for a real family. Oh, rationally she’d been aware that some of them crossed the line, but she hadn’t really thought that when push came to shove, they would turn on her like rabid dogs because she didn’t fall in line and take the bribe money.
The things they’d done after she lost her badge…
Charlie headed for the shower, needing the stinging spray to clear her thoughts. She kept thinking she wanted justice, but that wasn’t strictly the truth. The truth was that she wanted the ones who’d hurt her to pay. Getting a cop indicted was damn near impossible—something she’d been glad of when she wore the badge. It was very easy for civilians to only see the bad cops, the ones who couldn’t be trusted. It was even easier for them to paint all cops in the same light.
They didn’t know how goddamn hard it was to go out into the streets night after night and hold on to her honor. How difficult it was to trust the law to do what was right—and to see the times when the law failed. Theirs wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked more often than it didn’t.
Until she got on the wrong side of it.
She scrubbed harder with the sponge. Sometimes it felt like there were two people living in her skin—the one who still had stars in her eyes, believing that the good guys always won, and the one who saw the world for what it really was. The good guys didn’t always win. They didn’t even usually win.
The ones with power did.
She stepped out of the shower and dried off, looking around the room for the first time since she’d been led here. This is what power looks like. There was nothing overtly proclaiming that the person who lived here had more money than God, but the knowledge was there just the same. It was in the high-end furniture stained a delicious dark brown, and in the thick carpet beneath her bare feet, and in the luxuriously high thread count of the blankets she ran her hands over. There was the old saying that if you couldn’t beat them, you should join them.
Well, she’d done more than join them.
She’d gone and gotten into bed with them.
Her phone rang as she pulled a ridiculously expensive pair of pajamas out of one of the many bags that had mysteriously appeared in the room while she was in the shower.
Charlie’s chest tightened at the sight of her dad’s number, despite the fact that she’d considered calling him earlier. The last thing she wanted to do was fake a smile and pretend everything was fine. But then, that’s what I’ve been doing for years. What’s one more time? She smiled—it was so much easier to fake a happy tone if she was grinning—and answered. “Hey, Dad.”