Page 27 of Desperate Measures

“No, thank you.”

I wasn’t much of a drinker. Truth was liquor went right to my head, and I was too much of a control freak to enjoy that feeling of looseness imbibing alcohol afforded.

“Mind if I have one?”

I shook my head, a useless attempt to clear the clouded thoughts swirling in my mind, watching as he poured two fingers' worth of single malt into a crystal tumbler.

The glass caught the light, its edges sharp and clear, but it felt like I was staring through a haze.

The sound of the whiskey pouring, smooth and deliberate, filled the otherwise silent room, and I couldn't help but feel the weight of that silence pressing down on me.

Every drop that hit the glass seemed to echo, filling the space between us with something I wasn’t ready to confront.

Okay, so as a teenager, I had a crush on Liam back when he was working for my father’s company.

When Margaret called me earlier today, calling in the marker I owed her, I was not expecting her to confront me with this.

I mean, how could I have known she was going to propose I repay her by marrying her hot brother?

No, I had no idea if he was in on it. He hadn’t said a word the entire ride up in his private elevator.

Not a single glance, not a single flicker of emotion. His face had remained as impassive as ever. Like he was the one in control, and he knew it.

Like the power dynamic between us had been established already. I couldn’t quite understand it.

I was no wilting daisy, waiting to be plucked. I was a Volkov.

And yet, all I could do was sit there, gripping the edge of my metaphorical seat, trying to breathe through the tension that had settled between us.

It was thick, almost suffocating.

My need to hide my failure from my family that night in the club had led to this, and I wondered if I wasn’t a total idiot.

What did you do, Micky?

But I was right. If my parents knew what happened, they wouldn’t stop until all they left of that club was scorched earth, even if what had almost happened was mostly my fault.

I didn’t want to live like that. I didn’t want to be a prisoner. My parents loved me, but sometimes their overprotective tendencies went overboard.

Like the time Dad donated twenty million dollars to my high school to build a new soccer field so I could play on the team and have a bodyguard on hand at all times.

Or when he erected a brand new dorm building on my college campus in under a year just so I could live there with the right security team.

That was how my life had always been. And now that I worked for the man, well, my father was even more over-the-top.

I had to fight to earn my position, something he respected, but Adrik Volkov wasn’t the kind of person anyone denied.

He meddled.

I knew he kept tabs on me through my uncles and the rest of the staff.

I even requested not to work on his floor.

It was difficult enough, trying to get people to take you seriously as a woman in business.

But when your father was the Dark Wolf, it was worse.

So much worse.