“The plan isn’t for us to use her. The plan is for us to protect her. She is the one person who could bring down his empire.”
“I have a feeling whatever you’ve cooked up is going to piss me off.”
Ignoring Kiran, I said, “Shah wants what we have on him and he is going to use her to get it.”
Shah lorded his control over his family and especially the niece he’d snatched from the streets.
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve never hidden that I wanted Danika. I have a feeling he’s going to offer her in exchange for his mother’s will. It’s the only thing standing in the way of his plans for his future.”
“I will kick your ass if you go through with it.”
“For you to kick anyone’s ass, you’d have to leave that cave you locked yourself in. Does Jayna know what a pussy she married?”
“Fuck off.” Kiran hung up.
I slid my phone into my pocket and made my way into the ballroom.
I probably shouldn’t have said the last part, but I’d let Kiran wallow for too long.
In the beginning, he was barely holding on to life. Then it was the excruciating physical rehab he’d had to survive. Now, he was just hiding, not only from Ashok, which he had to do, but from his wife. A person he should know would accept him in any form.
I pushed the thoughts of my brother back and watched the goddess across the ballroom.
Danika glanced in my direction for a brief second.
She was the opposite of the barely teen girl I’d known. The innocent who sat on the steps of her neighbor’s corner shop so she wouldn’t have to spend all day alone while her father worked. Gone were the simple jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. Now she wore designer from head to toe.
The one thing that hadn’t changed was the undeniable intelligence behind her eyes. Even back in the day, she was the smartest kid on the street.
I’d never understood why she’d followed me around when someone like her should have stayed far away from the street gang leader I’d been.
I couldn’t count the number of times she’d covered for me and my brothers when the cops had combed our neighborhood for a group of kids who’d fleeced lost tourists out of wallets. And because she was known as the good girl, the cops believed her every time.
Then one day, she’d disappeared as if she’d never existed. On the very day one mistake had changed the path of my and my brothers’ lives.
Now here Danika and I were, fifteen years later, playing a game where we were always aware of the other’s presence without outwardly acknowledging it.
It was safe.
For her.
And in the beginning for me.
After her father’s murder, Shah had made it his mission to scrub Danika’s past from existence, her father, her mother, and especially me.
I’d kept an eye on her from a distance, letting her carve out a life beyond anything she could have dreamed of as a child.
It had worked until a chance encounter between Kiran and Jayna changed everything. Their relationship had forced Danika to become the shield between Shah and his daughter.
When Kiran and Jayna eloped, Shah clamped onto Danika, going as far as having her followed at all times to keep her from making the same mistakes his daughter and his sister had made.
I nodded a greeting to a banker who owed me a favor and then shifted my attention to Danika again. She was talking to Ashok Shah. Her face was emotionless but her eyes blazed with anger. After a curt nod, Ashok walked away and Danika moved toward a city councilman who was up for reelection. The practiced smile was back on her face.
What I wouldn’t give to watch her use the self-defense moves I’d taught her as a kid to punch Ashok in the face.
Where the hell was Jayna? Was Danika playing interference again? I searched the room and found her standing in front of me.
“Are my eyes deceiving me, or is Nikhil King at an event in honor of Ashok Shah?”
“Is it really in his honor if he’s the one throwing the party?”
She shook her head and then hugged me. “What are you doing here, Nik?”
“I could ask the same of you. Weren’t you supposed to be in Greece for a few more weeks?”
“It was time to come back.”
There was something different about her tonight. As if her energy was lighter.
God, I hoped she hadn’t decided to move on. It would kill Kiran and finish what the crash hadn’t.
“You look good. We missed you. But this isn’t where I ever expected to see you. Didn’t you say it would take an act of God to get you in the same room as your father?”
“He’s not my father. DNA makes him a sperm donor, nothing more.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I realized Dani was taking the consequences of my choices and I was letting her. It wasn’t fair to her, even if it was the easier choice for me. It was time to lighten the load on her plate.”
Immediately, the protective urge I’d always had when it came to Danika surged forward. “What are you talking about? What is the bastard doing to her?”
Jayna set a hand on my arm. “Calm down—it’s nothing more than we already know. I just accepted she has spent the last three years letting Papa think he’s controlling her for my sake. It was time to let Dani have a life without restrictions.”
Danika and Jayna were close as sisters; they were each other’s closest confidants. Including keeping each other’s darkest secrets. After Kiran’s crash, Danika had grown even more protective of Jayna.
The relief I felt was short-lived as I caught on to the middle part of Jayna’s words.
“What do you mean, he thinks he’s controlling her?”
Jayna smiled, the first genuine smile I’d seen on her face in a long time. “Dani isn’t as weak as Papa assumes. Hell, I’ve even underestimated her. She’s playing him.”
“How is that?”
“Those are things for me to know and you to only hope to find out.”
“You’re such a brat.”
“Yep. That’s never going to change.” She slid her arm through mine and said, “Want to help me continue my brattiness and give me a hand in escaping this farce of a party?”
“What happened to not hiding behind your cousin?”
I looked across the ballroom at Danika. She watched me with as much intensity as I’d studied her earlier. Her eyes darted to Jayna and then to the door before returning to me. Then she motioned with her chin.
“I’m not. I said to that asshole’s face I was leaving with you. Dani is talking to a client or I’d drag her with us.”
“I doubt she’ll ruin her pristine reputation by going anywhere in public with me.”
Jayna smirked. “Don’t judge a book by the fancy cover, Nik. She may surprise you. The girl has more secrets than you do.”
“I seriously doubt that,” I responded, and led Jayna toward the doors leading out of the ballroom.
3
Danika
Saturday evening, after a successful but long afternoon of private showings in the gallery, I walked into my apartment ready to binge-watch the new season of my favorite K-drama curled up on my couch with a bottle of wine.