Betrayed (Undercover #3) Read Free Page A

I said, my voice high and tight. “It started with sex. He—” I flushed. “He—” I couldn’t meet his eyes.
    “ WHAT?! What does he do?”
    “He...he’s rough with me,” I croaked, squeezing my eyes shut in humiliation. “He holds me down!”
    “And I bet that makes you drip right down your thighs,” said Vasiliy.
    I opened my eyes and my hand flashed out before I knew what I was doing. It cracked across Vasiliy’s cheek, leaving a red handprint. My eyes widened and I froze there, waiting for the inevitable retribution.
    “Good,” said Vasiliy, and sat back in his chair. He rubbed his cheek. “You hit well, for a little American thing. Make sure you do that to him, if he steps out of line.”
    I stared at him, utterly confused.
    “I had to see if you were telling the truth,” said Vasiliy. “If you really had feelings for him. I’m sorry.”
    I drew in a long breath. It had been another test. And in the shaky aftermath of the adrenaline, I realized it was my out-of-control feelings for Luka that had saved me. If I’d just been acting, he would have known it. “How can you live like this?” I asked in a ragged voice. “Suspecting everyone. Searching your own son for bombs. Interrogating everyone in case they’re a spy?”
    He sat back in his chair and stared at me. “It’s no life,” he said. “No life at all. And that is why you should leave my son.”
    I swallowed. Now, we’d come full circle. This was the conversation I’d been expecting to have when we first walked into this room. Only now, things were much more complicated. Now, I knew that he had his suspicions about me, even if they’d been allayed for the time being.
    He lifted his hands and indicated the house. “Look at my beautiful, expensive prison. When I die, Luka will become the main target. And he and you will live like this, too.” He nodded at my stomach. “When you give him a child, you’ll have to drive him around in a car with bulletproof windows. Until he’s old enough to go to boarding school—then you’ll send him to England and see him every few months. Are you ready for that?”
    I felt as if I wanted to be sick. I didn’t know which was worse: the future he was painting or the knowledge that it was all impossible because I was going to betray the family before any of it happened.
    “We have enemies, Arianna. The CIA—they’re a corrupt bunch of bastards. The Russian authorities want us behind bars. The rival gangs want our business.” He looked me right in the eye. “They’d kill and gut Luka, if they ever got their hands on him. But you, they’d do worse to.”
    I nodded slowly.
    “This is not a game. This is not exciting or dangerous or just like in the movies. This is real. If you stay with my son, I worry that you will be killed. And that you will get him killed.”
    I opened my mouth to tell him that I would never hurt Luka. And then realized that that would be a lie. I was going to hurt him in the worst way possible.
    “If I have learned anything, since his mother died,” said Vasiliy, “it is that trying to get Luka to do something is impossible.” He gave me a look that was almost friendly. “Boy has head like a bull.”
    “Just like his dad,” I said softly.
    He smiled at me. “As you say. So. You will have to be the smart one. You will have to break up with him.”
    The sick feeling I got in the pit of my stomach wasn’t horror at what he was saying. It was the creeping knowledge that he was right. I wasn’t cut out for this life. Even if I could survive it, I couldn’t be sure I could change Luka and save him from the darkness that had made his father into this coldly calculating machine. And even if there could in theory be some happy ending for the two of us, the whole thing was impossible. In days—maybe as soon as tomorrow—I’d betray him.
    I nodded my assent to Vasiliy. He refilled my glass for a sad farewell toast.

 
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
    “What did he