The Bastard’s Betrayal by Katee Robert
Epilogue
Sasha hadn’t been invited to the meeting with Vladimir Romanov. She was never invited to the tense meetings Rose and Anya and even Lorelei attended at times. Well, not Lorelei any longer. Not with her sister married off to a Capparelli.
If her family members were left to their own devices, they wouldn’t tell Sasha anything. They were too worried about bruising her or hurting her feelings. She couldn’t help that she worried about them, that tears got the best of her when her emotions were high. Now that Rose had married Dante Verducci…
Sasha’s family wouldn’t ask her for help. They’d be too busy protecting her to consider her an asset, and she wasn’t even sure they were wrong. The temptation to hide in her room until this was all over was nearly overwhelming. She couldn’t do it, though. She wouldn’t.
Which was why she was currently crouched on the other side of the door to the sitting room where her parents and Rose were holding the meeting. Not the one in the hall, where anyone could catch her. The door that went from one sitting room to another. They never used it, so no one thought to worry about eavesdroppers from this direction.
She pressed her ear to the door, closing her eyes to focus better on the conversation in Russian going on in the other room.
“My daughter can speak for herself.” Sasha instantly recognized her father’s terse tone.
“And yet I’m speaking to you, man to man.” A stranger. That must be Vladimir Romanov. Sasha shuddered at how cold he sounded.
Rose cleared her throat, and only someone familiar with her would recognize how furious she was when she spoke. “Marriage is off the table, Vladimir. To me or any of my sisters. I’m prepared to believe Casimir acted on his own…as long as he’s called home to Russian immediately.”
“You’re a foolish girl, aren’t you?” Vladimir didn’t sound impressed. “You don’t decide when we’re done, Rose Romanov. Jovan does.”
“You aren’t welcome in our territory.”
He laughed, a dry sound that made Sasha shiver. “Why would I need to stay here? New York is a short enough flight from Texas. Our welcome there will be considerably warmer. Ivan knows his place.”
“He wouldn’t,” Papa said.
“Wouldn’t he?”
Surely her father was right… Wasn’t he?
They were on good terms with Ivan. Better than either of the other Romanov branches in the country. Surely he wouldn’t allow Vladimir and his people to set up a base there, knowing it would be to the detriment of Papa?
Sasha moved away from the door and quietly left the room. Ivan might not, but his second-in-command would. Even being mostly left out of the business talk, she knew Ivan’s son-in-law wasn’t on the same good terms with Papa. He’d wanted Rose to marry one of his men, and when she’d refused, he held a grudge.
A horrible feeling took root in Sasha, and she hurried up the stairs to her room. She’d heard the reasons why Papa didn’t want Rose to marry Dante Verducci. Among them was the risk that Kirill would allow Jovan’s people to come and go through his territory. If there was a way to stop it from happening in Texas…
She had to do it.
There was no one else.
Her heart beat too hard as she scrolled through her phone to a contact she’d never used. Jiri Petrov. Ivan’s son-in-law and second-in-command. Before she could talk herself out of it, she hit the call button.
He answered on the second ring. “Da?”
“Jiri? It’s Sasha Romanov.”
Silence for a beat. “Sasha. What a surprise. What brings this call?”
Her throat tried to close, but she focused on breathing past it. It was all in her head. Throats didn’t actually close, not outside of an anaphylactic reaction, which she most assuredly was not having. “That deal you gave my sister? An alliance for a marriage to one of your men?”
“Da? What about it? Your father said no.”
Her vision swam, but she made herself speak the words that would save her family while damning her in the process. “I would like to renegotiate.”
