Page 95 of Emerald Vices
Katya rips her hand away and tucks it out of sight. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” I bring her arm closer to inspect it. “That’s a bruise. Are those fingerprints?”
Mila runs a gentle finger over the welts. “You should ice that, Kat.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” she insists. But her voice is far too high-pitched for me to believe her.
I cross my arms. “If Shura did that to you?—”
She gasps. “Of course Shura didn’t?—!”
“Someone grabbed you, Kat. Who was it?”
She’s pale and fiddling with the ends of her hair, which is a classic caught-in-the-act Kat move. “I was at a club with… colleagues. People were drinking. A guy got obnoxious. It was no big deal. Someone pushed him off of me, and I’m fine.”
“Who was the guy?”
“Who the hell knows?” Katya shrugs. “Some nobody who thought I was interested. I let him know that I wasn’t. End of story.”
I squint down at the ugly, purple bruise. “Are you sure that’s the whole story?”
“Would you stop making a big deal about this? I don’t need Shura to—” She breaks off mid-sentence. “Just don’t mention this to Shura, okay? He’ll overreact, as usual.”
“I won’t need to tell him. If I noticed the bruise, he definitely will.”
“Not if I avoid him until it’s gone.”
“Kat!”
She grins cheekily at me. “Knew I could count on you. Okay, enough about me. We’ve got to get Cinderella ready for the ball.”
“We’re not done talking about this,” I warn with a point of my chin toward her wrist.
“Yes, yes, to be continued. Now, up you go. Time to get dressed.”
Between Mila and Kat, they help me into the dress. After I’m zipped up, they steer me in the direction of the mirror and step aside with “tadas” and jazz hands aplenty.
The dress really is gorgeous. It has an empire waist that flows over my bump. The sheer sleeves sit off-shoulder and make me feel like a grown-up fairy princess. I look quite nice, actually.
“Are you a knockout or what?” Katya chides, nudging me on the shoulder. “This dress is gorgeous.”
With his trademark flawless timing, the door opens and Andrey walks in. “It’s not the dress,” he remarks the moment he lays eyes on me. “It’s the woman wearing it.”
Katya meets my eyes in the mirror. Swoon, she mouths.
She’s not wrong.
“But there is one thing that’s missing,” Andrey adds, revealing a stack of three velvet boxes from behind his back.
“Ooh” Kat cries, clapping her hands together. “I smell jewelry.”
Andrey snaps open the latch on the biggest box to reveal a gorgeous necklace dripping in diamonds and green emeralds. “I thought it would complement your eyes.”
I can only gawk at it, open-mouthed and breathless. “It’s stunning.”
He opens the remaining two boxes, containing a bracelet and a matching pair of earrings. Both pieces are made up of the same combination of glittering diamonds and large emeralds.
“Andrey, this is too much.”