Kitchens are the heart of a home. Our mother showed love from the kitchen. Upstairs, in the penthouse, the kitchen is the hub of the suite. It’s where everyone gathers, where our lives intersect in a non-bratva way.
And that’s still true, but the way I felt about it had changed after Dima left. After everyone but me had coupled up.
It had become a place I avoided rather than gravitated to.
But now my kitchen has that feel. Not that alienating one. The feeling of home.
Chelle may be small, but she’s a powerful force of nature. She fills space with her personality.
I want to renegotiate our deal. Make her stay for longer. To agree to move in and brighten my kitchen for the rest of her life.
“We need some music,” she tells me.
Despite already orgasming twice today, my dick gets hard again, remembering the way she danced in her bra and panties at her house.
I turn on my speakers and pick up her phone. “Do you have a playlist on here you like?”
Her smile nearly drops me to the floor. Wide. Generous. Grateful. “Let me see it.” She holds her hand out.
Rather than offer it to her, I step up right beside her, putting an arm behind her back and holding the screen out for her to unlock the phone and pull up her playlist. “Thank you,” I say when she’s found it, and go to her settings to sync. “Also, I know your passcode now.”
It’s guilt that makes me tell her. She doesn’t know I spied on her in her own kitchen. That I had Dima do the full-stalker package on her. She at least ought to know that I’m the kind of guy who memorizes passwords when they’re used in front of me.
She shoots me a look across the kitchen, but the music has already started, and I can see it take hold of her. There’s a little nod to her head. A tiny bounce to her shoulders. “Should I be worried?” She grates the rind from a lemon onto a small plate.
“Probably,” I tell her, returning to my job at the chopping board. “My brother is one of Russia’s best hackers. I tend to assume any information is my business since I can get to it.”
“Dima?”
I like that she remembered his name. I slice all the olives and scoop them into a small bowl for her.
“Dima. He’s the most dangerous of us all in his quiet way.”
She appears interested. “So, could he hack into, like, my email?” She slices the bare lemon in half and squeezes the juice into a measuring cup.
I make a scoffing sound. “In about five minutes’ time.”
“Is that how you knew about my dad?”
I don’t particularly want to discuss this, but she deserves the truth. “From digital research, yes.”
“That’s… creepy.” I watch a shiver run down her spine. “Just how organized is your organization?”
“I won’t discuss it with you, remember?”
She absorbs this. “I guess I just… well, it seems bigger than what I thought before. I should’ve put it together with this building and everything.”
I change the subject. “So, what’s the deal with your mom? Why isn’t she here helping you with Zane?” I knew from Dima’s research her mom was remarried and lives in Dallas but nothing else about her.
She rolls her eyes. “My mom doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “It is what it is. She left us when I was ten and Zane was six. She remarried and moved to Texas. End of story.”
It suddenly makes sense to me why Chelle is so determined to take on the world by herself. She hasn’t been able to rely on the people in her life who should’ve had her back.
I experience a fierce need to be the guy she can count on, but even as the desire fills me, I know she wouldn’t accept it. She doesn’t want me, and she doesn’t trust me. She only wanted sex if it fulfilled a bargain.
“What can I do now?” I ask.
“Pull the bag of spinach, grapes, and red onion from the refrigerator for the salad.”
“These go together?” I pull out the ingredients and a mixing bowl.
She eyes it distastefully. “You don’t have a salad bowl?”
“I just moved in, remember? You can order me one of those, too.”
This earns me a smile. “Yeah, you need a lot of stuff for the kitchen.”
“Whatever you need,” I tell her.
She shoots me a look I can’t quite decipher, but her phone rings, interrupting our music. She stiffens when she sees the screen, which makes a violent streak of awareness course through my body.
“Hey Zane.”
I force my fists to unclench. It’s just her brother. No one to kill.
Zane’s talking loud enough for me to hear through her phone. “Where are you?”
“Why?”
“Where are you, Chelle? You have to tell me.”
“What’s going on, Zane?” She turns her back to me, which bothers me more than I care to admit.