“But it’s really tasty, Papa. I need to find the recipe for this.” I stuffed my pockets with two more cookies and remembered. “Oh, wait. Shit. He’s in Volgograd. You want me to go there?”
“No, just get your ass in front of the building. Dmitri will pick you up.”
“Yes, boss.” I snickered. “And Papa, don’t forget what you promised me.”
There was silence on the other end of the line before he started again, “I won’t.”
“Good,” I replied somberly and bit into another cookie. “These are honestly amazing.”
“Cookies,” I heard him murmur. “I’ll see you at home.”
Five Years Ago
My hands became numb approximately fifteen minutes ago, but was I retreating back into the house, and throwing away the cigarette I was holding between my fingers? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
I guess freezing your ass off was a better option than being in the same room as my family, where my mother faked happiness, my twin hid the twitching in his hands—itching for the next fix—and my sister didn’t have the saddest eyes this world could’ve ever seen. Tristan was supposed to arrive tomorrow, and we could all then descend into the beautifully woven lie of a happy family. It didn’t really matter that my eyes kept flickering to the house at the bottom of the hill. That my soul wanted to be with hers.
I needed to see her, touch her. I needed to know she was still alive.
Because she wasn’t here. She hasn’t been home for a very long time and nobody was fucking telling me anything. It’s been almost a year since the last time I held her. A fucking year and not a single word from her. Theo told me she was on an assignment, but all of my senses screamed that he was lying. I just needed to know she was alive, that’s all.
Nothing else and nothing more.
What a fucking disaster our lives have become that I would be happy if she was at least alive. Not hurt, but alive, because I knew that wherever she was, she didn’t stay unscathed. The last time I saw her, she was sinking deeper, drowning in the despair, and I didn’t know how to help her.
I thought… I fucking thought showing her that somebody cared about her, that somebody loved her, would pull her back. That the voices and all of the faces would quiet down if she could find a piece of her mind by clinging to me. It would, however, seem that kissing her in the middle of the road, wasn’t the best idea. She thought I lied to her, that I showed her affection just because we were technically engaged now.
I mean, there was that, but the idea of her being with me forever, and me belonging to her did something to my chest. Didn’t she know that my blood danced inside my veins every time she was nearby? Did I somehow read the signs wrong? The way she looked at me, the way she talked to me, she felt it.
This.
Us.
She must have felt it, otherwise she never would’ve kissed me back. She still ran away, but I knew that there was something there. My heart didn’t beat like this for anybody else. Then why the fuck was she hiding away from me? And not only from me; even Ava hadn’t heard a word from her, and that alone was putting a thousand crazy thoughts in my head.
It was her birthday three days ago, on February thirteenth, and all of my hopes went flying through the window when I realized that she wouldn’t be coming home yet. If she was alive.
I fucking hoped she was alive. I needed a chance to make all of this right, to make all of us right. I needed Cillian to stop snorting coke every five minutes, and to actually be sober for a change. I had to take her away from this world, or to destroy the monsters that were destroying us. I just needed time, and I needed her to come back.
The cigarette in my hand almost burned down to the filter, and I threw it into the snow, immediately reaching for the packet in my coat pocket, taking another one out. Smoke filled my lungs, the burning sensation in my throat warming me against the bitter cold.
“Those could cause cancer, Brother.” I turned around at the sound of Cillian’s voice. He was leaning on the wall, his arms crossed against his chest.
“Because snorting coke is much healthier, isn’t it?”
“At least I get to forget this shit for a little while.” He shrugged. “Pass me one.” He crossed the short distance between us and took the pack of cigarettes from my hand.
“And what happens when the reality hits again?”
“Then,” he lit the cigarette up, the tip brightening up as he pulled the smoke. “I take another hit. And another, and—”
“Another,” I cut him off. “And what happens when the hits aren’t enough?”
“Then I’ll find something else that can hit me harder, faster, because being fully present through this fuckery that is our life, truly isn’t worth it.”
“Kill,” I warned.
“I’m fine. It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. Nothing about this fucking situation was fine. My twin brother was a drug addict who, by the way, didn’t want to admit that he was one. My sister was just a kid, forced into an engagement with a person she couldn’t stand. My mother was behaving as if our father saved baby turtles on a daily basis, and Tristan tried to fuck his way through North America. I didn’t need a mirror to see my demons dancing around me. I could feel them without one.
“What are you doing here?” my brother asked. What was I doing here? Hiding, sulking, thinking. His dark hair fell over his eyebrow as he looked at the same spot I was focused on before. “Do you think she’s okay?”
“She fucking better be.”
“But what if she isn’t?
“No.”
“But Kieran—”
“I said, no. She is okay. She has to be okay.”
My chest burned, but it must have been the cigarette, right? It was the heartburn because I didn’t eat anything. It wasn’t choking me because I was thinking of her lifeless body somewhere, all alone, thrown to the wolves. No, no, it wasn’t that.
Cillian kept quiet, but I could feel his eyes on me. Truth to be told, I didn’t know what I would do if she really was dead. The radio silence from the Asters was making me uneasy. Even Nikolai hadn’t passed by in a very long time, and I wasn’t sure what his arrangement with my father was anymore. Both of them held power over two very strong criminal organizations, but there was no doubt that Nikolai held the reins of a much stronger horse.
“Are we expecting anybody today?” Cillian asked, and I turned toward the pathway leading to our house. The evening fog was slowly settling onto the bay, but I could clearly see the lights of a car, driving up to our gate. I couldn’t see the plates nor the type from the front porch where we stood, but with our house being the only one on the hill, they were most definitely coming here.
“Father’s associates maybe,” I murmured, but Father never brought his business here, unless it was Nikolai and his goons. For all of his mistakes, he never wanted our mother to know the true span of monstrosities he was capable of.
The gate opened slowly, and neither of us moved a muscle, awaiting to see who was coming. They weren’t a threat, that’s for sure, otherwise the guards would have alerted us already. Was it somebody familiar? The windows of the black Audi were tinted and I couldn’t see who was sitting inside, nor did I know who this car belonged to.