Fool Me Once (First Wives #1)

“Were you expecting someone else?”

His call was so unexpected she stopped walking when she should be running. “My flight was late, I fell asleep . . .”

“I was worried.”

The wind in her lungs rushed out.

She started walking again and found herself flat in the middle of a massive chest.

Looking up, her heart beat for entirely different reasons. “Mr. Petrov.” She took a giant step back.

“Ms. Cumberland. I was hoping to speak with you.”

Behind Trina’s father-in-law were his two cronies. Massive men who screamed Don’t fuck with me in multicolor.

“I’m late for a meeting.” She attempted to walk around him.

He blocked her.

“Lori?” The voice came from the phone.

“I won’t take but a moment,” Ruslan told her.

“You can make an appointment with my secretary,” she told him.

He laughed. “I make my own appointments.”

She stepped to the side.

One of his musclemen blocked her.

Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin and straightened her arm that was holding the phone to her head.

Although the hair on her neck was straining, she looked around and noticed several meandering people close by. New York was a good many things, but it wasn’t full of wimps. If she found herself being dragged out of this building screaming, someone would jump in.

“I have nothing to—”

He lifted a finger to her lips, touched her.

She backed away.

“My dear Alice wasn’t thinking right when she passed.”

She opened her mouth.

He lifted a finger to it again.

Lori jerked her head aside.

“I’d hate to see everything you’ve built collapse because of my poor, sick wife.”

Her teeth grew cold. “Ex. Wife.”

“In the eyes of God, we are still married.”

“What do you know of God, Mr. Petrov?”

His smile unsettled her.

“I know which one of us will see him first.”

Keeping her face neutral was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

“Is that a threat?”

He looked her up and down . . . slowly. “I’m clairvoyant.”

“No,” she told him. “You’re just an asshole.”

Both his hit men stepped around her.

Ruslan stopped them with a hand in the air.

He leaned in.

She held her ground until his lips were close to her ear. “We will speak again.”

Ice ran down her spine.

Ruslan Petrov brushed past her and out the door.

She took a step forward, felt her knees shaking as adrenaline dumped into her system.

“Lori? Talk to me, damn it. Lori!”

She glanced at the phone in her hand, confused. Then she realized that she’d been on the phone. “Reed?”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Did you hear all that?”

“I heard enough. Where are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m headed into my meeting. I have to go.”

“Did that man threaten you?” Reed’s frantic voice matched the pulse under her chest.

“It’s not the first time that’s happened,” she lied. The elevator doors opened. “I’ve got to go.”

“I don’t like this.”

“We can talk later.”

“How long is your meeting?”

She started to answer when her phone lost the call as the elevator shot to a higher floor.




His skin itched, and not in a good way.

Reed scrambled through papers on his desk until he found a blank notebook.

The tone of the man Lori was speaking with meant business. Russian accent. Reed heard the name Petrov.

And that man had threatened Lori with her life.

That, Reed heard loud and clear.

What kind of man did that?

Reed typed in Katrina Petrov and started his search all over again.




Lori had caught her breath by the time she reached Mr. Crockett’s office . . . five minutes late.

The secretary walked her back to the office, where Trina sat on the other side of a desk, hands folded in her lap.

“My apologies,” Lori said as she walked in. “My flight was delayed.”

Mr. Crockett stood and rounded the desk, extending his hand. “It happens. Glad you could be here in person.”

Lori turned her attention to Trina, who sat wide-eyed and fidgeting. She kissed her cheek. “Where is your security?” Lori asked.

“In the garage with the car.”

“Ladies, we should get started,” Mr. Crockett interrupted them.

Lori lifted a hand, stopping him.

“I just had a rather uncomfortable confrontation with your father-in-law in the lobby. I’d like to see your security by your side at all times when you’re out of the house.”

Trina’s face lost color.

“Call your guy, ask him to wait in the lobby up here.”

“Is everything okay?” Mr. Crockett asked.

“Trina needs a little more protection these days, all things considered.”

“Of course. Would you like to use my phone?” He lifted the receiver.

Trina removed her cell phone, sent a text. “I have it.”

“Shall we get started?”

Lori drew in a fortifying breath, pushing Ruslan Petrov from her head. She opened a legal notebook and readied her pen.

He started by opening the document containing Alice’s will. The usual rhetoric of what the document was, all the right words put in the right places to appease anyone questioning whether Alice was of sound mind while writing it were in place.

“It is my will that my estate, after the above-mentioned stipends for my staff, is bequeathed solely to Katrina Petrov. My controlling interest in Everson Oil is bequeathed solely to Katrina Petrov, where she will be welcome to take my place on the board with the guidance of my sisters and their advisers. If it is not in her interest to do so, she can waive said right and hold that position for her future.”

Trina interrupted. “I don’t know the first thing about being on any board.”

Mr. Crockett put the papers down. “Alice wanted to give you the option and an occupation. She wasn’t the kind of woman that liked to see others in the shadows of their husbands.”

“Like she was with hers,” Lori said.

“Exactly.”

He tapped the papers. “Everything is spelled out in detail. What to do if the oil company needed to disband. How and who you could sell your shares to. The reality was Alice wanted her share of the company to stay in her family.”

“So why didn’t she leave it to Fedor?”

Mr. Crockett blinked silently. “She worried that it would pass to Ruslan one way or another. Giving everything to you ensured it wouldn’t.”

Lori reached over, grasped Trina’s hand. “If the estate had passed to Fedor, and something happened to him, Daddy would have jumped in and protested.”

“They were divorced.”

“That wouldn’t stop the man,” said Mr. Crockett. “Now that the estate is in your hands, he has no choice but to accept it.”

Lori shivered. “I somehow doubt that is going to be the case.”

“Outside of him finding the gun Fedor used with your fingerprints on it, Ruslan doesn’t have a case.”

Trina’s jaw dropped. “I . . . God almighty, would he try and pin that on me?”