I pick up the dress and toss it in her lap. “Too bad you just agreed to my rules, and we made a deal. You listen to me, and I’ll keep you safe. In turn, I won’t touch your appearance unless it’s vital to keeping you safe, and you help me on the casino floor.”
She narrows her eyes, holding the dress up to get a better look at it. “Doing what? I’m not spreading my legs to keep you from cutting my hair. That is not ensuring my safety in the slightest.”
“Did I say you’d be working the floor that way? No. But everyone who works here is going to think that. You will blend in with the other girls, make yourself positively unnoticeable if you can manage it, and we’ll work together to figure out who is trying to kill you.”
The hairdresser pokes her head back in. “Can I leave or…”
I wave her away. “Go, but don’t tell anyone you were up here.”
She scrambles away, and I hear the front door close with a heavy thud a few seconds later.
“There, she’s gone. You got your way this time.”
She wads the dress and tosses it on the bed. “Fine, but I need to get some sleep right now. It was a long night of riding in that car, and I didn’t get any.”
I head toward the door, my back to her. “Maybe if you stopped complaining long enough and closed your mouth, you might have gotten some.”
“Fuck you,” she calls.
I turn and face her. “Fuck you back. I don’t like you, you don’t like me, and that is fine. We don’t need to be friends to make this work. So, keep your shit together. I’ll do the same, and the second I can unload your ass back to your brother, we part ways for good.”
I make it to the doorway, but she says my name, which makes me pause since I couldn’t remember if I told her or not.
I glance over my shoulder at her, waiting for her to speak.
“You got your way this time, but I won’t be so easily manipulated again.”
To that, I only smile and close the door behind me as I go.
4
SELENA
I got myself into this mess.
Worse—I throw myself back onto the bed and cover my face with my hands—I asked for this “help.” Does my brother know how his friend is treating me? Would he even care after I let him down so royally when he came for my help? Maybe sending Michail to fulfill his promise to the letter in the most painful way possible is payback,.
I shove the dress farther away from me and groan before heaving myself up again to find my toothbrush, face wipes, and pajamas. I need sleep, and I need it badly. Who knows what my new protector has in store for me? I can’t risk being off my game from too little sleep when it’s time to find out.
When I exit the bathroom, freshly washed and ready to climb into bed, the dress mocks me. It screams “you did this to yourself” as if I haven’t already figured that out.
If I grabbed my belongings and walked out the door right now, would he let me go, or has he already created some grand scheme in his mind? From what little I’ve seen of him, he’s definitely a planner.
I grab my dirty clothes and place them near my suitcase while I consider Michail. Kai and I haven’t spoken a lot over the past few years. Even less since I took over the council. So everything I know of his friend has been gleaned since he stalked me on the subway.
Thinking back, he’d been very good at finding me, at blending in despite his almost otherworldly beauty. The man has bone structure made for movies or modeling, and yet he hides it, keeps himself hunkered down and hidden. An interesting dichotomy which I need to figure out lest it be used against me later.
I climb into bed and settle the covers over my lap just as the door opens, and he walks in.
“Don’t you kn—” The words die in my mouth as I get a look at him.
He carries a tray with food and a glass of water to the end of my bed and leaves it. But it’s not the food that’s left me dumbstruck. It’s the low sling of his cotton pajama pants outlining his bottom half. All of his bottom half. Also, all the bare skin above since he’s not wearing a shirt. He doesn’t have any tattoos that I can see, but there are scars all over him in various shades of white and pink, also various sizes. He’s riddled with them but doesn’t seem concerned about hiding them from me.
Just as I don’t bother hiding as I slide my gaze down his torso to the sharp cut of his hip bones and back up again. Goodness gracious. He plays the chameleon even better than I’d given him credit for if he hides all this muscle under his clothing where no one’s the wiser.