“Do I look asleep to you?”
“No.” Gerard, my head of security and the general manager of my life, steps into the room. I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here. A glance at the clock tells me it’s been two hours. “Your sister is here.”
“Which sister?”
“Eva, Mr. Morelli.”
I toss the book I’ve been not-reading onto the side table. “If you left her standing by the door—”
“He didn’t, Leo. Don’t be mean.” Eva comes into the room, pulling her gloves off one by one. Gerard takes her coat, and the two of them exchange a look that makes me want to fire him on the spot. I don’t give in to the urge. He’s too good at his job, and finding people who won’t spy for my eldest brother, Lucian, is a bigger task than one might think. In the five years he’s been with me, Gerard hasn’t fucked me over once. I let the Constantines think Trenton Alto, Lucian’s man, is the one who’s closest to me.
I let the Constantines think lots of stupid things.
“Diet Coke?” Gerard asks.
“Yes, thank you. Hi.” Eva bends down next to my chair and kisses my cheek, then settles herself on the long sofa across from my chair. “I heard some news about you.”
I wait until Gerard is gone to answer her. Not because I don’t trust him—I have to, if I’m going to have him in my house most of the time—but because it’s obnoxious as fuck to have to leave mid-conversation. Gerard would never admit that. “You have to stop talking to your friends about how handsome and irresistible I am. It’s fucked up to entertain conversations about your own brother like that.”
“Not that kind of news.” Gerard appears with a can of Diet Coke, which he presents to Eva. She cracks it open and takes a long drink. “I heard you started a new venture to fuck around with the Constantines.”
“I wouldn’t call that a new venture. More like old money.”
She snorts. “So you didn’t have a meeting with Phillip Constantine tonight?”
“Oh, I met with him. It just wasn’t new. The man is so forgetful it took two months to plan the fucking thing.”
“Leo,” she warns.
“Eva,” I warn back. “You came to my house in the middle of the night to scold me for this?”
“I wouldn’t dream of scolding you. No one scolds the Beast of Bishop’s Landing and gets away with it.”
I roll my eyes at her little joke. “You’re the only one. Now move on from your scolding.”
Eva balances an elbow on the arm of the sofa and pulls a throw blanket over her legs. I lean forward in my chair to take the pressure off my back. My jacket was fucking killing me by the time I got home from my adventure with Phillip Constantine.
And Phillip’s daughter.
“I’m not scolding. I just wanted to talk about it.”
“It’s a long story.” I rub both hands over my face. “Long ago, in a city much like this one, there were two families—”
“Leo.” Eva’s voice has softened and gone wary. I hate when she does this. It’s the voice she uses when she’s worried about me. No one needs to be worried about me. Not now, and not ever. “Who’s this about?”
“The Constantines.”
“You know what I mean. Is it me or you?”
“Very bold of you to assume I’d pick on Phillip Constantine just to avenge my favorite sister.”
Her dark eyes search mine, and old pain over the ridges of my spine flares to life. “If it’s about me, then it’s not necessary.”
“If it’s about you then it absolutely is necessary.” Rumors of my uncontrollable temper have largely been exaggerated. Anger is a tool, except when it’s not. Right now it’s a dog straining at its leash. It growls and snaps its teeth whenever I think about what happened to Eva. No, that’s not right—whenever I think about what Lane Constantine did to Eva. “They have to learn, sister mine.”
Eva puts her Coke down on the table and folds her hands in her lap. “Lane is dead.”
“Everyone in the world knows that.”
“He can’t learn a lesson from you if he’s dead. And he especially can’t learn a lesson through his senile brother.”
I laugh at that. “Phillip Constantine isn’t senile. He’s just absent-minded. His signature on my contract will be several times more useful to me because of it. His little invention is going to make me a fortune. How could I turn it down?”
My sister narrows her eyes at me. “If I know you—and I do know you, let’s not forget that—then he didn’t offer you anything. You made all the offers.”
“I’m getting bored with all these hypotheticals.”
Eva sighs. “Are you sure it’s not about you, too?”
“What, me and my charmed life?”
Her eyes sweep over the way I’m sitting in my chair and she purses her lips. “Yes. You and your charmed life, if that’s what you want to call it.”
I get up and go to stand by the fireplace. “All that’s nothing to me now.”
A frown from my sister. “But it’s bothering you today. Don’t tell me it’s not. I can tell when you’re lying.”
The heat from the fire is pleasant on my arms and legs but a mild and unsexy torture on my back. “I would never lie to you.”
She considers this. “You can stretch out on the couch, you know. It doesn’t make a difference to me. I can bother you if you’re lying down.”
“I’ve been sitting a long time.”
“Really, Leo? It’s nothing to you? You really never think about it?”
It is a funhouse mirror of bullshit. Pain and confusion all the way down. Do I think of it? No. I never, ever do, except when I’m conscious. Except when I’m aware of anything touching my skin, which is fucking always. “Never.”
Eva shakes her head. “Fine. I don’t need you to admit it to me. What I do need you to do is leave Phillip Constantine alone. Leave this project of yours alone.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
She drinks the rest of her Coke, then balances the empty can on her knee. “But?”
“But I’m not leaving Phillip Constantine alone. He signed my contract tonight.”
“Forget the contract.” For the first time since she walked into this room, it occurs to me that she looks tired underneath her makeup. Exhausted. Winter’s short days take it out of her, and everything with Lane didn’t make it easier. “Happiness is the best revenge.”
“You’re not happy.”
“I’m happy,” she insists, and in her insistence she reveals the full, ugly truth—that she’s not happy. That her heart is broken. That she wakes up in the night feeling gut-punched and raw. “I am.”
Now I do stride over to the couch and sit down next to her. “Lane broke your heart, and I will be fucked, honestly, if nobody pays for it.”
“I knew that was a risk when I got involved with him.” A sheen of tears wets Eva’s eyes, but she blinks them away before they can fall. “I knew what I was getting into.”