LITMIR.BIZ

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At least here I’m safe, fed and clothed.”

      And now that safety net was gone. He began to understand her motive.

      “I’m grateful to your grandmother,” she continued. “I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but there was a man who had also come to the apartment. If Mae hadn’t insisted on taking me, I’m quite sure my mother would have given me to him. My computer work these last years would have been purely as content.” Her faint smile was an inscrutable Mona Lisa of agonized acceptance.

      No. A sharp spike of repugnance slid deep into his gut at the idea of any woman being exploited that way. At fourteen. Ever.

      “She really doesn’t pay you?”

      “Please don’t be offended when I say this.” She angled her head with apology. “I think she looked on me as a sort of daughter. She didn’t pay me because you don’t pay family for working in the family business.”

      “If that’s how she saw you, why didn’t she leave everything to you?”

      “She said...” Luli sighed toward the ceiling. “She said that when the time was right, she would arrange a marriage for me. I don’t know if she was serious, but if I brought up money, she would get defensive and ask me if I would be happier scrubbing pots in the kitchen.”

      “No one else knows about this agreement?” Could it be called an agreement if Luli hadn’t been given a choice?

      “I’ve never told anyone. I don’t believe she ever did.”

      Because, no matter the lofty motives she might have had, holding Luli here like this was a crime.

      Or a complete fabrication.

      And his grandmother was gone. He couldn’t ask her if she had really kept a young woman as an indentured servant for eight years.

      “Mr. Dean—”

      “Gabriel.”

      “Mr. Dean.” Her voice made his scalp prickle, her accent so musical and warm despite her formal address. “I very much appreciate that you’ve given me this opportunity to explain myself.” Her gaze slid to the clock on the mantel, an ornate bronze piece atop a trumpeting elephant, likely from one of the Louis periods.

      “If you’re willing to continue this conversation, I would like to reset the timer on the laptop.”

      * * *

      He was impossible to read. Intimidating with his innate physical power on top of his wealth and influence. She had to continually remind herself to breathe. Inhale, exhale. No sudden movements. Predators were attracted by panic and the stench of fear.

      She suspected he deliberately let the seconds tick audibly in the silent room as a small form of torture to her. A test, perhaps, to see how nervous it made her.

      Poise was something she had begun cultivating as soon as she understood the word. She made herself hold his gaze, refusing to give up her small advantage until he agreed to her condition. If he thought what she had told him about herself was a complete fabrication, they would discover the hard way that it was true.

      His head jerked in an abbreviated nod.

      In a smooth, unhurried motion that hid the gallop of her heart, she went to the desk and opened the laptop with a single minute to spare. She used the opportunity of having her back turned to gather her composure. Her fingerprint unlocked the screen, but she had to enter a code at the same time and she had to get it right in two tries. She managed it, then navigated to give them another thirty minutes of playing chess on a minefield.

      As she turned, she found him on his feet. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. His shirt strained across the virile expanse of his shoulders and chest and tucked into the narrow belt to accentuate his lean waist.

      “More kopi?” She moved to the tray where the urn sat, more to avoid approaching him than a desire to be a conscientious servant.

      He brought his cup to the tray. “No, thank you.”

      A deliberate effort to approach her? His jawline was what some might refer to as chiseled. It was a clearly defined, angular structure from corner to corner, quite a fascinating study for an artist’s eye.

      Or the eye of a woman who’d spent her adolescence in something like a harem, surrounded by women and a few off-limits middle-aged men.

      Gabriel’s chin went up a degree so his narrow eyes looked down his straight nose at her. “How much do you want?”

      She dropped her hands to the sides of her dress, palms gently cupped, fingers pointed, but relaxed. No fidgeting.

      “This isn’t blackmail.”

      “If it looks like blackmail and smells like blackmail...” he scoffed darkly.

      “I don’t want it to be,” she clarified, making herself hold her ground despite the twitches of alarm pulsing in her limbs. “I’ve had ample opportunities to steal. I enjoy this position of trust with your grandmother because I’ve never betrayed her. I’ve worked for her in good faith, not to repay my mother’s debt, but to thank her for removing me from my mother’s power.”

      “And you no longer owe her that allegiance?”

      “I don’t owe it to you.”

      His expression didn’t change, but the scent of danger stung her nostrils, making her want to skitter away out of self-preservation.

      “Not yet,” she allowed, fighting to keep him from seeing how unsure and frightened she really was.

      “Oh, might I earn the privilege of your holding my fortune for ransom? Do tell me how.”

      That was sarcasm. She could tell.

      Saying nothing, she took refuge in her long-ago training, tucked her heel into the arch of her other foot and squared her shoulders. A smile of any kind was beyond her in this moment, but she kept her expression relaxed, stood tall with a long neck. She tucked in her butt and did her best to project self-assurance and limitless patience.

      “What kind of person are you, Luli of the deceitful intelligence?” He sounded scathing, but as his gaze swept down, she thought it caught on her chest, lingered.

      She became aware of the weight of cotton across the swells of her breasts. A prickly, heavy sensation made her ultraconscious that she had breasts. A tight, pinched sensation hit her nipples, making heat flush from the pit of her stomach up to her cheeks for no reason at all.

      When his gaze came back to hers, something flickered in his expression. Curiosity and something avid. Luli had known about him for years and had studied him online in the same way she read facts about bears and deadly vipers, without quite believing such a creature existed because she’d never seen one with her own eyes. Even so, she knew she ought to be terrified if she ever came face-to-face with one.

      She was terrified.

      But she continued to stand there. Had to. She held her ground because she had no other options.

      “I propose that I work for you in the same capacity as I have for your grandmother.”

      “Free?”

      “More or less.” She cleared the strain from her throat. She had known this would be a tough sell, given the anvil she had positioned over all that he was poised to inherit. “I would assist in the transition at no cost to you in exchange for other considerations.”

      “I have no reason to trust you. Clean up your mess—” He nodded at the laptop. “—and your debt to my grandmother is zero. You’ll be free to go.”

      The floor seemed to fall away from beneath her.

      “Where?” She carefully modulated her tone so her fear of abandonment wasn’t obvious. “I have no money. If I wanted to live as a refugee, I would have

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