“Don’t blame yourself or Alliance. I was living with the man the last several months of his life, and I didn’t clue in.”

“Still . . .”

“Fine, beat yourself up. But do it in your room, I need to get ready for dinner.” Trina stood and shooed them both out.

The bodyguard keeping tabs on Trina sat at the end of the hall. He looked up as Lori and Avery stepped out of the room.

Lori kept her voice low. “You’re good for her,” she told Avery.

“We’re two women who would never have met outside of you and Sam. I’m grateful.”

“I am, too.”

Avery spun in a circle, then laughed. “Why did I walk out of the room?”

“Divorce brain.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s your mindset once your marriage is over and you have to do everything by yourself again. It leaves you walking in circles.”

“I thought maybe it was early Alzheimer’s.”

Lori knocked on Trina’s door.

When she answered, Avery pushed through. “Left my key in my room.”

“Goofball.”

Steak in Texas . . . nothing beat it. Though having too much was like having a bad potato in Idaho, or nasty cheese in Wisconsin—it just shouldn’t happen. Lori attempted to avoid feeling drunk on red meat and one glass of wine. Like Avery and Trina, she wasn’t going to overdrink and lose her edge during this trip.

But the steak threatened to cut the ice off her bones. Not to mention Diane and Andrea were some of the loveliest women she’d met in her life. Considering her job, Lori had met many, but these two were either Oscar worthy in their acting abilities, or they genuinely embraced what their late sister had put into motion.

Diane Hall and Andrea Upton had left their husbands and their children at home. Much as Lori hated booting Reed to the side, this dinner was about Trina. So Reed and Trina’s bodyguard were at a table directly across from them . . . visible, but not listening or part of the conversation.

It had taken a bottle of wine and two bites of steak before everyone at the table relaxed enough to talk.

Andrea was the youngest of the three sisters at forty-eight. Diane was fifty, and Alice had been fifty-three when she passed.

“She was too young.” Andrea cut into her steak. “If she’d still been married to that son-of-a—”

“Andi!” Diane cut her off.

“Ruslan was the worst thing to ever happen to this family.”

“Fedor didn’t like his father. You’re not offending me by speaking your mind,” Trina told them.

Andrea continued, “If Alice had still been connected to that man, I would swear he had something to do with her death.”

“Cancer isn’t something you can pass along like a cold,” Diane told her.

“That man never got along with anyone, ever.”

Lori sipped her water. “How long were they married?”

“Nine years. Nine brutal years.” Diane poured more wine into her glass.

“Brutal?” Avery asked.

Andrea and Diane exchanged glances.

“She’s dead, Diane. It’s not like we’re spreading gossip.”

Lori glanced at Trina and Avery.

Diane finally spoke. “Alice never went public with anything.”

Lori felt her appetite waning.

“Alice was a strong woman,” Andrea exclaimed.

“She always struck me as a woman who didn’t put up with a lot,” Trina told them.

“But . . . she wasn’t always. When she and Ruslan first started dating, it was all wine and roses and stupid tokens men think turn heads.”

“It worked,” Diane reminded her sister.

“Yeah, until they were married. Then those trinkets became demands.”

Lori sat forward. “What kind of demands?”

“Ruslan wanted to take her place on the board. But no matter what he said or did, that wasn’t ever going to happen,” Andrea said.

“Why?”

“Because Daddy wouldn’t let it.”

“Your father is gone.” Lori knew the Everson estate enough to know the oil company went to the daughters.

“Gone, but reached beyond the grave to demand that his daughters stayed on the board as long as they were alive. Not their husbands, and not their children so long as we were sane and alive.”

“Which our sister was both right up to a few weeks before she passed,” Diane added.

“Daddy didn’t want any man marrying one of us and taking over.”

“But Ruslan didn’t get the memo,” Lori concluded out loud.

“Exactly,” Andrea told her.

Trina finished her glass of wine off. “That still doesn’t explain why Alice left me anything.”

“It didn’t shock us,” Andrea told them.

Trina leaned forward. “Then explain it to me, please. I knew your sister for less than a year of her life. Yes, Fedor and I were married—”

Lori felt the lawyer in her kick in. “Trina.”

Trina didn’t listen to the plea in her voice and continued. “Yes, we were married, but the honeymoon wasn’t even over. Why me?”

Diane released a long-suffering sigh. “Because Ruslan couldn’t get to you.”

Trina lifted her hands in the air. “Okay, so don’t give it to her son, who none of us saw doing what he did . . . but why not just leave it to one of you . . . or both of you?”

Andrea and Diane looked at each other before the younger sister answered for both of them. “We’ve asked ourselves that more than once. We’re not entirely sure.”

Lori felt her spine tickle. “But you have a theory.”

Silence spread over the table like fog.

“Two . . . neither of which you want to hear.”

Trina pushed her uneaten steak aside. “Enlighten me. I’ve been through too much in the past three months to have shock take me out now.”

“We don’t think Alice ever considered the possibility of Fedor passing before her. If she gave you the estate, it would encourage him to stay married to you.”

Trina put on her game face. “Was that a question?”

Diane diverted her gaze to her plate. “She thought it was awfully convenient that you and Fedor married so quickly after you met.”

Lori kept an eye on Trina, ready to jump in with one stray word.

“We didn’t see a need to wait.”

“Because of Alice?” Andrea asked, her eyes honed in.

Trina sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Fedor loved his mother. He wanted to see her at peace. Waiting to get married would only have prevented her from attending the wedding. That would have been cruel for everyone involved.”

A look of acceptance washed over Andrea’s face, an expression that told Lori the woman read through the lines and walked away with respect for the woman delivering it.

“So Alice wasn’t convinced their marriage would last,” Avery spoke when everyone had stopped talking. “So leave the whole damn thing to Trina?”

Diane laughed. “Yeah . . .”

“To keep it away from her ex-husband.”

“Yep. Fedor protected his mother from his father. We think she wanted Fedor to continue protecting women until he learned to protect himself.”

“Fedor wasn’t that weak,” Trina defended.

“Perhaps.” Andrea and Diane exchanged glances.

Lori noticed when Avery reached over and grasped Trina’s hand. “What is your second theory?” Lori asked.

“Alice wanted the target off her son . . . and us.” Diane looked beyond her shoulder to the table where Reed and Trina’s bodyguards were sitting. “If Fedor was still alive, there wouldn’t be a threat, but with his death . . .”

Lori shivered. “Trina is Ruslan’s target.”

Andrea turned to Lori, smiled. “But . . . and here is where I hope all of you listen and don’t ask too many questions.”

“I’m an attorney, I always ask questions.”

Diane laughed, drank the rest of her wine.

Andrea spoke for the both of them. “A mother as wealthy and wise as our dear sister Alice always did her homework. She knew the reach of her daughter-in-law’s friends. And knew, ultimately, that Trina would be safe.”

“And considering there are two very large and I’m sure very armed men sitting behind us, she wasn’t wrong,” Diane added.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Reed caught the whites of Sasha’s eyes as they walked into the lobby of the hotel. She slipped into the hotel bar while he and Carl, Trina’s bodyguard, walked the women up to Trina’s suite.

Lori had made it clear she needed to talk with Trina alone before the meeting with the board. Once the three of them were in the room, he made his excuses and made his way to the hotel bar.

“Here to buy me a drink?” Sasha asked, tipping her amber-filled glass in his direction.

Reed waited until the bartender moved away to get him his beer. Watered down liquor was a better idea than anything hard he might be tempted to slam. “You work for Petrov.” It wasn’t a question.

Her sigh might be seductive to a man who didn’t already feel the need to protect another one.

“I work for the highest bidder, just like you.”