The kind of beauty that creeps up on you, stealing your breath away. Strong and fierce and passionate, until it’s all you can think about.
“Rafe?”
Jerking, I look up. The paper crumples beneath my grip. “You think she’s lying.”
Kit nods. “Silas refuses to believe it. But all the evidence is circumstantial. It just… it doesn’t make sense to me. That’s not the Anastasia we knew.”
Perhaps not then.
“People change, Kit,” I murmur, holding the paper out. “Just because we don’t want to believe it doesn’t make it wrong.”
And I know he doesn’t want to believe it. He still sees the Anastasia we once knew.
I toss the paper back to him. “You’ve always been the soft one.”
My twin raises an eyebrow. “Tell that to the men.”
I snort. The men under our command are more scared of Kit than Silas and I combined. “One little testicle removal and none of them will even look at you.”
He grins. “It was a little more than that, if I recall.”
The man in question was an abusive fucker, and we took great pleasure in removing him from our pool of associates when we found out that he was beating seven bells out of his wife at home. A useful warning to the others, too. Not to step out of line.
I cross my arms. “I still have to go. Call it avoidance all you like, but the work doesn’t do itself, you know.”
Silas oversees all of our business interests. Our family is richer than Croesus, thanks to a long history of savvy investing, and he inherited our father’s skill. My twin prefers his music to the family business, but he gets involved when he needs to, cultivating his rather unfair reputation as the scariest Tate brother. Theshadow, they call him behind his back.
Fucker.
But me? I’m theface. The point of contact for our men. And whilst it’s quieter than normal, thanks to us reorganizing everything to make space for Anastasia, there are still a dozen demands on my time.
And if it’s convenient that it keeps me out of her way, then that’s just a bonus.
“She doesn’t want to see me, Kit.”
My words are quiet, and he sighs.
“This is not how it was supposed to be.”
None of this is how it was supposed to be.
We should have been together. If she’d stayed. If she’d trusted us. But instead, she ran.
She broke Kit’s heart. My twin become more withdrawn, more silent. Even his music room turned silent after she left.
And Silas. Silas turned cold, as though ice had spread from every place she’d ever touched him.
As I get into my car, switching on the engine, I catch my own reflection in the mirror. And I wonder what changes she pulled from me.
22 – Stasi
“Stasi.”
I turn from where I’m wiping down the skirting boards. “Yes?”
Ellen looks a little ruffled, unusually so. “I wanted to get the silver downstairs into the kitchen so I can clean it. Could you help me carry it down?”
I blink. “Sure. I can help with that. All of it?”
