Page 25 of Blood Code

But he opened the window for me anyway.

“Xeniya, you need to get on birth control.”

“How do you know I’m not on birth control?” I asked.

He flashed me a look that said: Are you kidding me?

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “You went through my trash?”

He smiled, completely unfazed. “I go through your everything.”

“That’s not comforting, you know,” I said, climbing out the window and glancing between him and the trellis I was about to climb down.

“I don’t care. Get on birth control.”

He gave me a gentle kiss before I climbed down his wall.

Chapter Eight

Xeniya Morozova

Age 35

Iwas at work… ignoring my fiancé yet again. Every time I looked at Severin, disgust burrowed into my chest and sank its claws deep into my organs. Whether that disgust was for him or myself, I couldn't say.

I may have felt a tiny bit guilty about all of his injuries.

Only a tiny bit.

But I wasn’t supposed to feel guilt about my dolls. They deserved everything they got.

“I need to get myself together,” I muttered as I poked around the files on my cloned computer.

“Yes, you do,” Kazimir said, propping his feet up on my desk and leaning back, a self-satisfied smirk climbing his face.

I shook my head, ignored him, and opened a new file. After a few minutes of poking around, his impatient huff finally drew my attention. I looked up from my computer. He wore a peacock-blue suit, almost as if he were mocking me for always calling him a peacock.

“Darling, is there something you need?” I asked.

He lifted an amused eyebrow. “You’re being very dull.”

“I’m working, you know, trying to find the mole in the Russian mafia,” I said, clicking into another file.

My cell phone rang, and we both looked at it, lying in the middle of my desk.

He snatched it up. “Ah, who is Sera?”

“Don’t you dare answer that.” I lunged for the phone, trying to pull it from his hands, but he held it out of reach, and this asshole had a long armspan. “Kaz,” I said, dropping my voice an octave and lacing it with darkness.

Kaz’s face blanched, and he handed the phone over immediately. “That was serious.”

“Yes, it was,” I snapped, then returned to my work, ignoring him and Sera alike.

Today, I scoured the financial records. The Man in Black and Blackwood were two of the highest names on my list, but I couldn’t bring myself to search for either of them, for two very different reasons.

Instead, I searched for shell companies linked to the Order or anything that looked unusual. Aleksandr helped fund the Order, and I wanted to find out how and stop it.

If I could make the Russian money run dry, I could deal a big blow to the organization. The Order had other wealthy donors, of course, but replacing that funding would take time. Eventually, though, they would replace it.