Free You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 1) by Georgia le Carre

grins cheerfully. ‘Actually I wasn’t.’
    That baffles me. I stare at her face, clean of all make up except for a good spray from some homemade aromatherapy concoction from a plastic spritzer bottle.
    ‘Why not? I would have been terrified,’ I tell her.
    She looks at me calmly. ‘It’s called the universal law of action and reaction. When you live a life never hurting another being, you cannot be hurt yourself.’
    My mom squeezes Daisy’s hand and tells her how brave she is, but I just sit back in the chair and shake my head in wonder at my sister. Here we were sick with worry and frightened half to death about what had happened to her, and there she was abducted, held prisoner by human traffickers, and merrily floating about in fairyland.
    For a moment I wonder what would have happened if Zane had not intervened, then just as quickly I shove the loathsome thought away. May my sister always remain so innocent and blissfully ignorant of all the horrible things that can and do happen to millions of blameless creatures every single day. Her action and reaction universal law sucks big time, but she doesn’t need to know it.
    I smile at her. ‘A fairy was sitting on your shoulder, Daisy.’
    She smiles back. ‘A fairy truly was. That fairy’s name is Dahlia. Mom told me that you asked a friend to help. It was because of him that they got scared and dropped us off, isn’t it?’
    I nod slowly. Yes, the law of action and reaction was truly at play. If only she knew how it all really worked in this big bad world.
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘His name is Aleksandr Malenkov.’
    ‘Thank him for me,’ she says with the biggest, sweetest, most adorable smile.

    That night an email arrives from Aleksandr Malenkov’s solicitors. The attachment is a twelve page Non Disclosure Agreement. I sign it without reading it and the next day a courier comes to pick it up. That afternoon I keep my appointment at the clinic for the necessary blood tests, and since my period came early thanks to all the stress I also go on the pill.
    The test results arrive in a week and I send them on to Zane. The next day I say a tearful goodbye to Mom and Daisy and catch a flight back to England.
    Stella is happy to see me. She sits on the bed and provides me with a bossy but entertaining running commentary as I pack a small suitcase to take to Zane’s.
    ‘No, don’t take that. That makes your legs look like sausages. You have to take the red dress. That makes your boobs look twice the size they really are. Oh God, not that. It looks like you stole a tablecloth from a French bistro and stuck a belt on it. I was hoping you’d leave that behind for me, but all right, take that and the black ankle boots to go with it, etc. etc. etc.’
    When the appointed time comes for me to leave, she kisses me on both cheeks. ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me to go live with a boy,’ she wails in a baby voice, but her eyes are actually wretched.
    ‘One month will fly by in no time,’ I tell her.
    ‘It will for you. It won’t for me,’ she replies.

Yeah, reckless behavior…

Ten
    Dahlia Fury
    I t is not Noah, but Yuri who opens the door for me. ‘I’ll take your bags up to your room,’ he says wearing a funeral director’s expression.
    ‘Thanks.’ I hand them over to him.
    ‘The boss is on the lowest floor, minus 3. You can take the stairs.’ He jerks his head towards the stairs, ‘Or the lift down that corridor.’ He nods in the direction of the study where I met Zane the last time.
    ‘I’ll take the stairs,’ I say.
    ‘Keep going down until you reach the bottom.’
    ‘OK. Thanks.’
    A hefty, florid-faced woman in a black skirt and white blouse passes us on her way to the kitchen. She smiles politely at me and I smile back.
    I take the stairs and start walking down into the lower floors. I go past the two flights of stairs I descended the last time to go to the massage room and down the last one. It opens up to another black and