Tabula Rasa

Chapter 6

Just over 24 hours later, Calina buckled the seatbelt across her lap and sank into the plush leather chair. "Can we afford this?" she asked, glancing around the small cabin of the luxurious private plane.

Yelena peered at her over the top of the trashy magazine she was reading. "We're flush right now, didn't you hear? Anya found another one of Dreykov's caches."

"The stupid svoloch didn't exactly hide his tracks," Anya explained without looking up from her laptop or pausing the clack of her fingers across the keyboard. "He must have been so sure we would never betray him."

"And his hubris, is our payday," Yelena finished. "We've got enough to fund the next few ops, plus more to keep us all in the lifestyle we've never been accustomed to. You'll be getting another bank deposit soon."

"Thank you," Calina replied. The money siphoned out of Dreykov's scattered fortune equated to freedom for Calina. It gave her a safety net to pay her bills and indulge her new habit of online shopping while she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. Yes, the money was dirty as hell - obtained through blackmail, arms deals and all manner of other criminal deeds - but the Widows were owed it. They had bled and suffered and sacrificed to help create Dreykov's empire.

It was a lifetime of backpay, and she felt zero compunction spending it.

"Anya just needs to route it through a few dozen offshore accounts first. Then you can take your boring lawyer out for a boring meal to celebrate."

Calina rolled her eyes at Yelena. "For the last time. He is not boring. And he's not mine."

He wasn't hers. Not exactly. But he was...a friend.

Maybe.

He'd asked her out for drinks last night. To meet his own friends. That had to mean something, didn't it? His offer had sounded casual, but not insincere. He hadn't just been asking out of politeness. Not when he'd said it standing close to her, with that beautiful smile on his face and his thumb brushing against her arm over and over...

"Earth to Calina," Anya called, jerking her back to the present.

"Huh? What?"

"I said, who is the boring lawyer?" Anya asked.

"He's not boring!" Calina growled. The two women opposite her exchanged glances with each other before bursting out laughing.

"Wow, I've never seen you so worked up before," Anya remarked.

"Yes," agreed Yelena. "It was always so annoying when we were kids. Nothing would rattle you."

"But this lawyer does..." Anya said, fishing for details. She'd even closed her laptop - a rare occurrence. She hardly ever gave anyone her full attention.

It made Calina talk - not about her growing feelings for Matthew. She didn't fully understand those herself. But she shared everything she'd told Yelena in the coffee shop - all the subtle things she'd noticed about Matthew that didn't add up. And a few more clues that she'd noticed in the last week.

"He has scars. Quite a few of them." His suits had hidden them from view, but up on the rooftop the other night, his arms - his beautifully sculpted, strong arms - had been bared.

And they'd revealed another of his secrets.

Maybe he thought she wouldn't notice them in the dark of the rooftop. And to be fair, she hadn't spotted the subtle, well-healed marks, despite spending long furtive moments gazing admiringly at his muscles.

But when she'd run her fingers down his skin in the guise of stargazing, she'd felt the unmistakeable lines. "They felt like knife wounds. Deep slashes."