LITMIR.BIZ

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you need.”

      The way he’d said that... The way his gaze dropped to envelop her body before returning stonily to hers...

      Did...did he mean something personal? Intimate...?

      Before her thoughts caught fire, he disabused her of any ridiculous notion this was in any way about her. “No matter how strong, resourceful and successful you are, and though you’ve been coping exceptionally well being both a mother and a businesswoman, you will experience a huge improvement in the quality of your and the twins’ lives when you have me as a fully committed partner in raising them.”

      She shook her head, feeling punch-drunk. “You come here...and just dictate to me...about the quality of my—”

      “I came here, your territory still, but a less personal one, after your reaction to my showing up on your doorstep last night, because I thought you might feel less cornered here. It’s also why I didn’t have you brought to me.”

      That made her locate her faltering verbal skills with a vengeance. “Oh, how considerate of you. I should be grateful you didn’t have me dragged to your territory, and instead chose to invade my professional space, getting my whole company abuzz with speculation, launching a hundred rumors, undermining me and generally disrupting my life?”

      “I figured whatever I did, it wouldn’t meet with your approval, so I did what I thought least threatening to you.”

      “Great rationalization, but...”

      He continued speaking as if he was playing back a recording. “Starting tomorrow, I expect to be allowed in to see my daughters without resistance or ill will. I would very much prefer, for their sake and yours, if we do this on the most amicable terms possible. I hope you won’t force me to resort to more drastic measures.”

      Having finished the speech he’d come to deliver, he turned and walked away. She could only stare after him, feeling as if she were sinking in quicksand.

      Before he stepped out the door, he paused, turned. “I’ll come by your house a couple of hours before the twins’ bedtime.”

      Kassandra waited until he closed the door after him, then collapsed on her chair like a demolished building.

      As everything seeped into her mind and its full impact registered, she reeled harder. Not only with the disaster in progress she could see spiraling out of control, but with how much of a stranger he’d become.

      Those first hellish months after he’d kicked her out of his life, she’d been anguished by how his feelings for her had withered, then reversed. But with him so distant and clinical now, she finally believed he’d never felt anything in the first place. She didn’t count at all to him, neither in the past nor in the future he had so carefully planned for them all.

      The future she couldn’t let come to pass.

      She couldn’t let this automaton near her daughters. His new programming might dictate it, but if there was anyone Eva and Zoya were better off without it was him.

      But she couldn’t stop him. He had the legal and personal clout to do what he wanted. She didn’t have a leg to stand on, let alone a weapon to fight him off with.

      But...that wasn’t true. She did have weapons.

      At least her best friends did. Selene, Caliope and Naomi had access to three of the most lethal weapons in the world. Their husbands. Each man was at least as powerful as Leonid was, if not more. He’d have no chance against their combined might.

      Fumbling for her cell phone, she called Selene. As soon as she answered, she told her she was adding another call to Caliope, then repeated the process with her, adding another to Naomi, too, merging the calls.

      The three women, once they were part of a four-way conference call with her, chorused anxiously, “What’s wrong?”

      “Everything,” she choked. “I need Aristedes. And Maksim. And Andreas.”

      * * *

      Six hours later, Kassandra looked around her office, her cheeks burning.

      Her friends hadn’t even asked her why she’d needed their husbands. After making sure she wasn’t in any immediate danger, they’d all hung up. She’d expected them to get their husbands to call. They’d actually sent them over in person.

      And here they all were. Aside from Leonid, the three most imposing and hard-hitting men she’d ever seen.

      According to Aristedes’s concise explanation, as soon as their wives had told them to drop everything and fly to her side, they’d each jumped on their jets and crossed the continent from New York to her. And they didn’t seem bothered in the least by being ordered around like that to do her bidding...or rather their wives’. If she didn’t love her friends so completely, she would have envied them having such unique men wrapping themselves so lovingly around their every inch. Their fairy-tale relationships had always emphasized how abysmal her situation with Leonid was.

      Loath to impose on them more than absolutely necessary, she rushed to recount her dilemma.

      But as she talked, the men looked much like three souls who’d walked into the middle of a foreign movie, clearly lost.

      “Hold on a minute.” That was Aristedes, shipping magnate and Selene’s, her oldest friend’s, husband. It had been through Selene’s marriage to him that all of them had become best friends. Caliope being Aristedes’s sister and Maksim’s wife, and Naomi, Selene’s sister-in-law and Andreas’s wife. He sat forward with a spectacular frown marring his impossibly handsome face. “You’re talking about Leonid Voronov?”

      She’d confided in her best friends about Leonid when she’d told them of her pregnancy. Since they told their husbands everything, she’d assumed they’d told them. But it was clear, if Aristedes’s reaction was any indication, that her friends considered her secrets sacrosanct.

      It meant this meeting just got more agonizingly embarrassing, as she had to explain everything from the start.

      After she did, Maksim, the one who used to have a personal relationship with Leonid, stood up, rage distorting his equally impressive face. “You mean you told him you were pregnant, and he didn’t only kick you out of his life, but implied he’d prefer you terminated your pregnancy?” As she nodded warily, he growled, “I’m dealing with that scum of the earth. He’s a fellow Russian and it’s on me you met him at all. I invited the louse to my wedding.”

      “Settle down, Maksim.” That was Andreas, Aristedes’s younger brother and the most dangerous of the lot. “If there’s punishment to be doled out, we’re all getting a piece of him.” He swung his icy gaze to Kassandra, making her almost regret recruiting their help. Andreas had once been involved in organized crime, and remained as lethal, if not more so, now that he’d gone legit. “But this guy says he’s back to atone for his mistakes. Any reason to believe he doesn’t mean it?”

      “Oh, I believe he means it,” she groaned. “As much as I believe the road to hell for me and the girls is paved with his good intentions.”

      Aristedes pursed his lips, propping an elbow on a knee. “But if he’s owning up to his responsibilities, perhaps you should give him some leeway, in a limited wait-and-see fashion, without making any promises or changes in your lives?” Aristedes looked first at Maksim and then Andreas. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we were all once in more or less his same position, and we would have given anything for a second chance with the women we love and the children we fathered, or in Andreas’s case, the child he was named guardian of.”

      Maksim’s dark fury ebbed as he considered his brother-in-law’s point of view. “Now that you put it that way, I can’t even think what would have become of me if Caliope hadn’t given me a second chance. One I didn’t think I deserved and she had every right not to give me at the time.”

      Heart contracting at the turn in conversation, she choked out, “None of your situations was anything like mine

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