Page 62 of Sinner's Sacrifice

Fine, she could do that. “I would rather you waited in your car. You’re a big guy and whenever I’m around you, my internal danger meter goes off and doesn’t stop until you leave.”

He glanced at her with one eyebrow climbing his forehead. “You think your friend will feel the same way?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say anything for almost a minute.

“Look. Yvgeny is more than my cousin, he’s been a brother to me since we were kids growing up on our family’s farm. He asked me to make sure you and your friend arrive at his hotel safely, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“But—” she began.

“If I make you nervous, think about how nervous I’ll make anyone who might want to hurt, annoy, or harass you.” He gave her a bright smile that didn’t reassure her at all.

“I don’t understand why he asked you to do anything,” she muttered under her breath. The man didn’t make any sense to her.

“Because you’re one of his people.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Family first,” Baz said. “That’s a saying where we come from. People we trust, people who work for us, and people who work with us, all end up as part of the family.”

“Like the mob?”

“I guess. Sort of.”

“So, what happens if Yvgeny asks me to do something I don’t want to do? Or if I go to the police with evidence of any illegal activities? Will I end up wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the Hudson?”

Baz shifted in his seat before he answered. “Depends on what he wants you to do and what you tell the police?”

Holy shit. “How reassuring,” she said in a tone so dry it should have caused a drought.

“Are you going to go to the police? Have they already asked you to inform on him?”

She sighed. “I have no plans and no.”

Perhaps she sounded more tentative than she thought because he pressed this issue. “But if you witnessed him kill someone, you’d do it?”

She couldn’t tell Baz that she’d already witnessed Yvgeny murdering someone, and that she’d helped. Going to the police would be foolish.

“Only if it was someone who didn’t deserve it,” she finally said.

Baz glanced at her with a wide, happy smile on his face. His canines were filed to sharp points, just like Yvgeny’s. Weird.

“Why did you guys do that to your teeth?”

Baz rolled his eyes. “Why do young people do anything? To irritate our parents, of course. A whole bunch of us did it together.”

“Like some kind of identifying mark or tattoo?”

“We wanted to look scary.”

“Well, you achieved that,” she muttered.

The clinic came into sight and there was even a parking spot on the street. Baz pulled the car into the space and they both got out of the vehicle.

The clinic was busy, but Sam went straight down a hallway with doors every few feet on both sides. They were numbered from one to eight.

The hallway dumped them into a smaller area with two desks, both manned by people typing on computers.