Free Russian Mafia Boss's Heir by Bella Rose

wonderfully soft bread. Closing his eyes, he chewed blissfully and wondered where the hell everyone was.
    “There you are,” Mrs. O’Connell said, stepping into the room. “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to come home at all today.”
    “Where’s Tori?” Mikhail inquired absently. “Upstairs?”
    “No. Tori asked me to tell you that she went out.”
    “Out?” Mikhail put the bun back on the plate. “What do you mean she went out?”
    “I would assume that the young lady got a little tired of waiting around the house for you to pay her any attention,” Mrs. O’Connell said primly. “You know, I told her when she first came here that you were a wonderful man with a good heart.”
    “You did?” He was a little dumbfounded and perhaps a bit miffed that the woman would say such ridiculous things about him to his wife. She made him sound soft. He wasn’t soft. “Am I to understand that you have somehow revised this opinion?”
    “Revised it?” Mrs. O’Connell’s voice grew shrill. She was actually wagging a finger at him. “You’ve ignored that poor woman since the day you married her! If there’s a reason for it, that’s fine. But you should at least tell her! It’s killing me to watch her walk around here looking so forlorn and rejected.”
    “So you encouraged her to go out?”
    “No sir, I did not. She came to me and said she was lonely and wanted to visit with her friends. Since neither one of us had any reason to expect you home within the week, she didn’t tell me when she would be back, and I didn’t ask.”
    Mikhail was staring at the woman as though she’d grown a second head. When had she ever been so rebellious? Honestly, he couldn’t recall her ever being cross with him or even raising her voice. And the woman had been working for him for more than ten years now.
    “I’m sorry for disappointing you,” Mikhail said stiffly. “It was not my intention. Unfortunately, Stanislas has been unusually demanding with my time lately.”
    “Why would that man make demands of a newly wed man?” Mrs. O’Connell wondered out loud. “Especially since he knows the woman being stiffed on your time is his own daughter!”
    “I couldn’t say.” Mikhail grimace. He did have his suspicions though. And most of them revolved around the Orlovs and Stanislas’s unfathomable obsession with killing Vasily. At some point, Stanislas was going to order Mikhail to do something that his conscience would not allow.

Chapter Ten
    “I don’t think we should be here,” Mara whispered in Tori’s ear. “Look at all of the guards. Dimitri is going to kill me.”
    “Oh hush.” Jamie frowned at their friend. “Sometimes you are an insufferable goody two shoes. You know that?”
    “I am not!” Mara actually sounded outraged. Her high pitched voice even garnered some attention of the male variety as more than a few men turned to stare at them.
    Tori couldn’t help but laugh. “Mara, you have to admit that Jamie is sort of right. I used to equate the two of you to the angel and devil sitting on my shoulder.” Tori nudged Jamie. “No guessing, I’m sure, as to who was the angel.”
    “I really don’t appreciate that,” Mara grumbled.
    Tori led the way through the Vasiliev casino. She’d only been there once before, and that was with Stanislas for some official party or meeting. So all of this was new to her too. She was just trying to pretend that it wasn’t.
    “Shall we gamble?” Jamie asked, sounding eager. “I’ve always wanted to play roulette. It seems so exciting and sexy, you know?”
    Mara cleared her throat. “Roulette is practically the only fair game in the house. The odds are always fifty percent for both the player and the house.”
    “Then let’s play that one!” Jamie grabbed Tori’s arm and began dragging her toward the roulette tables.
    It didn’t take a whole lot of persuasion.
    At the nearest roulette table, the girls bought in at a hundred dollars a piece.