“So you’re a rich kid, then.”
“Because I had an au pair?” She looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Because you know what the word means in the first place.”
“So do you.” She folded her arms across her chest, refusing to let me win an argument, no matter how small and insignificant. “You don’t look rich to me, though.”
“I’m not an example for anything.” I collected dirt, enjoying the texture of the grains against my finger pads. I consumed the world in larger quantities than the average kid. Read, listened to, and watched things every second of the day. I treated life with the same practicality I did my wristwatch. I wanted to turn it over, unscrew the pins, and see how it worked, what made it tick. I’d already promised myself I wasn’t going to be like Mom. I wasn’t going to be eaten by the rich. I was going to eat them, if need be.
“Guess I’m rich, then.” She picked up another small stone, rubbing her thumb over its smooth surface. “You’re not?”
“Would I sleep in the cemetery if I was rich?”
“I don’t know.” She ran a hand through her uncombed hair. It was full of dead leaves and debris and knots. “I guess I don’t think everything is about money.”
“That’s because you have it. But you don’t look it. Rich, I mean.”
“How come?” she asked.
“You’re not pretty,” I said smartly.
That was her cue to leave. I’d successfully insulted her. Given her a verbal middle finger. But instead, she spun in my direction. “Hey, do you want some lemonade and stuffed cabbage?”
“Didn’t you just hear me? I called you ugly.”
“So what?” She shrugged. “People lie all the time. I know I’m pretty.”
Christ. And she was still standing there, waiting.
“No, I don’t want lemonade and stuffed cabbage.”
“You sure? It’s pretty good. My maid makes them with rice and minced beef. It’s, like, a Russian thing.”
Alarm bells reverberated in my head, all the exit signs flashing in red neon lights. Stuffed cabbage leaves were Mom’s specialty, when we could afford minced beef, which wasn’t very often. And if this girl offered to bring food here, that meant she lived nearby.
“What’s your name?” I asked, my voice deadly calm.
“Arya.” There was a pause. “But my friends call me Ari.”
She knew who I was.
She knew, and she wanted to make sure I remembered where I stood in the food chain. My maid, she’d said. I was just an extension of my mother.
“You know who I am?” My voice sounded rusty, thick.
She flipped her endless hair. “I got a hunch.”
“And you don’t care?”
“No.”
“Were you looking for me?” Did she just want to taunt the boy who waited downstairs for his mother to finish catering to her?
She rolled her eyes. “As if. So. Lemonade and stuffed cabbage?”
Saying no would have been silly. I was a hustler, first and foremost. Emotions weren’t a part of the game. And she was offering me food and drink. Whatever I thought about her didn’t matter. It wasn’t like we were going to become best friends. One meal wasn’t going to douse a six-year-old flame of hatred.
“Sure, Ari.”
Famous last words.
This was the beginning of everything.
CHAPTER FIVE
CHRISTIAN
Present
“You gotta be shitting me.” Arsène stabbed at a piece of ahi tuna with his chopsticks at the poke bar later that evening. I’d been too eager to tell someone about my day, so Claire had had to settle for a quickie in a nearby hotel during lunch and hadn’t even gotten a nice takeout out of it. “You can’t represent this woman. You know Conrad Roth. You feel strongly about Conrad Roth. Conrad Roth is the man who ate your lunch.”
I pushed the seaweed in my bowl from one corner to another, letting his reasons—all valid, logical reasons—roll off my back. Vengeance did not have any rhyme or rhythm. It was karma’s unrelenting, sexier sister.
The days might have been long, but the years were short. Conrad Roth had shaped and molded me to be the man I was today, and the man I was today wasn’t someone he wanted to cross. There was no way I could turn down the opportunity to see him again. To show him that I was back in his home field of the Upper East Side, wearing his brands, dining at his restaurants, fucking the same gently bred women his precious daughter had gone to school with and called friends. The scum of the earth had risen from the filth and dirtied up his pristine world, and he was about to take a closer look at the monster he’d created.
I was no longer Nicholai Ivanov, the bastard son of Ruslana Ivanova.
I was brand new, shiny and reborn. Clad in Tom Ford suits, a cunning smile, and well-practiced trust fund–baby mannerisms. People like Ruslana Ivanova would never chart in the world of Christian Miller. They were invisible. Props. Not even a short paragraph in my story. Not a sentence, even. Something between brackets—only if they accidentally broke one of the pricey vases in my living room.
“He won’t recognize me,” I clipped out, noticing the two young women who’d served us were whispering among themselves animatedly, writing their phone numbers down on pieces of paper.
Arsène’s face contorted in abhorrence. “You’re as discreet as the pyramids, Christian. A six-foot-two giant with distinct turquoise eyes and a crooked nose.”
From Conrad’s open-handed hook almost two decades ago, no less.
“Exactly. What he remembers is a scrawny kid he saw a few times during summer break before I needed a damn shave.” I pointed my chopsticks at him.
I was lying. I didn’t think Conrad Roth remembered me at all. Which made taking the case all the easier.
“You’re playing with fire,” Arsène warned.
“Doesn’t matter what I play, as long as it’s always to win.”