Free Heir to a Dark Inheritance by Maisey Yates Page A

imposing. Every inch the master of the castle. She didn’t know why she found it so fascinating. Didn’t know why she found him so fascinating.
    He moved past her with that effortless grace of his. The deadly silence of a predator. It didn’t seem possible that a man who was so large, so tall and broad, could be so quiet when he moved.
    She followed him out into the dark hall and a shiver ran over her body, creeping up her arms, her neck. “Got a flaming torch you can tear off the wall and use to light our way?”
    Alik paused and turned, his expression cast into shadow. The shivery feeling got a bit more pronounced. He extended his hand and placed it flat on the wall, and then…the lights came on. And the expression revealed on his face could only be called
smart-assed
. “I could do that,” he said, “but it would be so much easier to simply find the light switches.”
    “That would have been nice to know about earlier, so I wasn’t walking through this medieval heap in the dark.”
    He turned away from her and started down the hall again, his back, wide and muscular, filling her vision. “Why on earth would I live in a place that didn’t possess modern conveniences? I’ve been homeless. I’ve been in prisons. I’ve donemy time without modern luxury, and I find it isn’t my favorite.”
    “You’ve been in jail? How is it that the court deemed you a more fit parent than I am?”
    “I don’t think it was a question of who was more fit, so much as who was more related. But, if it soothes you, the court didn’t see any criminal record.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “First of all, I doubt the Russian Mafia keep a record of every snot-nosed street kid they’ve locked up for a few days to teach a lesson to. Second, I’m skeptical that any of the guerrilla military factions I found myself on the unfriendly side of reported my prison time to the United States—or any government. Also, records and things like that may have been sanitized by some grateful rulers and the occasional victorious revolutionary.”
    She stopped in her tracks and he kept on walking. “Wait a second. What is it you used to do?”
    “What I do now for corporations? I used to do that for governments. Or, as I said, revolutionaries. Whoever offered the money.”
    “You were a mercenary.” For the first time, she realized that the little prickle of hair on her arms, that vague sense of danger, wasn’t ridiculous. Alik Vasin was, or had been, a very dangerous man. And she had just married him.
    “I suppose that’s the job title, though I was never too bothered about being specific with that. Didn’t exactly fill out tax forms. But that’s another thing I won’t be advertising to the courts.”
    Jada curled her fingers into fists, her nails digging in her palms. “I don’t imagine there’s a box to check for that on official forms.”
    “Not so much.”
    “How did you…how did you get into something like that?” She was curious, even though she knew she shouldn’t be.What she should be, was running away, and yet, for some reason, though that feeling of danger emanating from him remained, she wasn’t afraid of him.
    “I told you, I was an orphan. I crossed paths with the Russian Mafia quite by accident one day when I was picking pockets. After teaching me a sufficient lesson,” he said, one long finger drifting over a scar that ran the length of his jaw, “the man I had attempted to rob asked how I’d done it so well. You see, he didn’t feel me lift his wallet. He was told by his guards, who were walking behind him. Who I was walking in the middle of.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I explained to him my process. The way I waited for the crowds on the street to be at a certain peak, how I waited for my mark to be at a certain point in their stride. And I told him, that when I was about to go for the grab, everything slowed down, and it was just effortless. He liked that.”
    “And he had you picking