Page 44 of His Prince
“Why are you wearing that?” Ivan asks when he takes in my t-shirt that is missing its sleeves and my shorts with one pant leg completely gone. Angel spared nothing. Even my socks have holes in them. I have someone delivering more clothes later, an emergency wardrobe, but for now, I’m stuck with this.
Although knowing Angel, he’ll find those clothes and chop them to pieces before I can even get them.
Perhaps I should warn the guards that he’s not to touch my things.
Knowing how they fawn all over Angel, though, I bet nothing changes. I’m just the man who pays their wages. Angel is the one they’re loyal to.
I scrub a hand down my face and stare at my brother, who is looking even more of a mess than me.
“Ivan. You have a stain on your shirt the shape of Alaska.”
“Do not speak to me of Alaska,” he grumbles and then takes a sipfrom his water bottle. “Now, we must talk about what you’re going to do about what I found.”
For a moment, I wonder if he’s talking about the woman in white, if he’s been seeing her too, standing outside the windows, looming like a willowy ghost, but I shake that thought away.
It’s nothing more than my mind playing tricks on me.
Guilt is a funny thing. So is grief.
“All you told me is that there is money missing,” I reply.
“Yes, minute amounts, but many of them so they’re adding up, and it’s being siphoned off. Whoever it is, is doing it through the massage parlors, I think. The weed dispensaries are clean. I’m still checking the laundromats.”
“This isn’t your job, Ivan. I have accountants for this. You know I’m not good with numbers.”
“Yes, I know this. You have always been terrible at math. But those accountants are not trustworthy. I know this.” He shakes his head and then sighs, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “I want to do more digging, want to speak to the men who handle your books in each business. They’re obviously up to something.”
“That will take forever. There are dozens of them.”
“Yes, but we need to rule everyone out to find who is taking this money from you.”
His eyes are wild behind his glasses, and I rub a hand across my chest, feeling the stress of it start to tighten, a winding band across my heart.
“I don’t know if I care.”
He bangs his fist on the table and sputters, “Mikhail, this is your inheritance. It was passed down to you. And someone is trying to steal it. You must find them. If you can’t trust these people, then who can you trust?”
I know this, I fucking know it, but I don’t know if I fucking care.
“Alright, alright,” I concede.
He blinks up at me and leans back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.
“I will not have the Ivanov name destroyed. Not for some greedy…nincompoop.”
“I don’t want that either. It’s why I married into the Costello family. Connections are everything.”
“They are, but they mean nothing if you have no money to buy them.”
I lean against the wall and force myself to care. I need to care. This is my burden, the family name, the one left to me when they all died. Whoever is stealing from me needs to pay. I need to find out who it is and hand them over to Georgiy.
Let him pull the answers from them. Methodically.
“This all started when you married Angelo. Perhaps he is the issue.”
I envision it, Angel siphoning money away from the coffers while cutting the ankles off my pants, but then dismiss it. He’s the devil, but I don’t think he’d steal. He has enough money of his own.
I realized this when I saw he hadn’t used the credit card I gave him on anything other than groceries. He’s spent only his own money on the garden, the paint, the rugs and curtains. He’s transforming this place and doing it all on his own.