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again.”
    Deference.
Good.
It was more than Dmitri had expected. They were making progress already. “Very well. I believe our business is finished for now.”
    “I’ll keep you updated.”
    Dmitri closed his phone and stared out at a pair of swans circling the pond. Forgetting the men in the other room, he conjured the memory of the last night he’d spent with his fiancée and closed his eyes to the tightening of his body.
“Moya lyubov´.”
    N

atalya sat on the edge of her sister’s secondhand couch, grateful for the strong arm Sergei had looped around her shoulders. Not more than ten feet away, the nephew she hadn’t seen since the day he’d been born played with a fire truck on the kitchen floor. To say he resembled his father, the love of Kate’s life, was an understatement. Looking at Derek Slater was like staring at Erik’s ghost.
    She couldn’t take her eyes off the adorable little boy. Each laugh that interrupted their conversation tugged the same string that had knotted around her stomach when Brandon Moretti’s tawny brown eyes filled with sadness.
    Too much unwanted,
unexpected
, emotion for one day. For that matter, a lifetime. Between the sympathy he managed to wrench from her and the shocking way her body responded to his, if she survivedthe next handful of days without cracking it would be a miracle. When this was all over, she intended to take some serious R&R on a desolate island where she could regroup with uncomplicated trees. Maybe she’d coerce her partner in Russia, Alexei, into joining her. Spend a little frustrated sexual energy with a guy who actually did something for her. Someone she didn’t have to fake it with.
    Like Brandon Moretti.
    Natalya blinked as the wayward thought flitted across her brain. With it came the fantasy of Brandon’s mouth settling over hers, the heat of his body enveloping her. An uncomfortable ache stirred between her legs. Before the fleeting image could take root and balloon into the train wreck it promised, she jerked her gaze off Derek and honed in on the way her sister’s hands fidgeted with her wire-rimmed glasses.
    A telltale habit that warned Kate was nearing the end of her emotional rope.
    “Calm down, Kate.” Natalya’s gaze flicked over her sister’s drawn features. Despite the heavy makeup that gave her a cat-eyed appearance, Kate was still as pretty as she’d always been. Why she felt the need to hide her features with so much paint, Natalya had never been able to understand. It couldn’t even hide the fear shimmering behind those long false eyelashes.
    “Calm down?” Kate cried. She glanced over her shoulder at her son and lowered her voice to a hushed whisper. “When I’m supposed to be abducted in less than two weeks? Are you
insane
?”
    Removing the arm he’d wrapped around Natalya’s shoulders, Sergei reached across the coffee table that separated the identical plaid couches and clasped one of Kate’s restless hands. “Kate, you must trust us. We won’t allow it to happen.”
    Hearing Sergei speak English was as foreign to Natalya’s ears as the idea that Dmitri would ever speak it. Though she knew he’d been born and raised in the States, they’d spent so much time embedded with the
Bratva
, she expected his thick Russian. And while his English held theheavy accent required to maintain his cover, the very words jarred her focus.
    She stared at him, certain he’d sprouted two heads.
    He ignored her with fluency equal to his foreign languages.
    “I can’t get a position inside the club,” he continued, his thumb stroking the back of Kate’s hand. “I asked around, and Aaron has locked down security. But I won’t be far from you or Natalya.”
    “That’s so comforting.” Kate rolled her eyes. “I’m supposed to just sit back and wait for whatever’s supposed to happen to… happen?”
    “No,” Natalya rushed to answer. “I’ll find a way to get Sergei hired if it makes you feel better.” She slid a