Chapter One
Nina
Sneaking out of the house was not my sister’s best idea but I decided to follow her anyway.
“Come on, Nina,” Susanna urges, motioning me to climb out the window. She’s already on the other side, looking confident in her silky dress. At eighteen, she thinks she owns the world now. At nineteen, I feel like I still don’t know anything. But Susanna was always the one to lead us despite being the younger sister. “It’s your birthday. We should go out and have some fun.”
“I like that idea but Mom won’t be happy with us. She says the world out there is dangerous. And Alek will be pissed if he finds out we did something stupid. And you know Alek isn’t someone to mess with.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Who cares what Alek thinks? He’s been caught up in his marriage for the past two years now to even think about us. He was supposed to be like a father to us and now he doesn’t even care.”
“He still cares,” I mumble. Susanna gives me a pointed look and I can’t help but sigh. She has a point. Once Alek met his wife, Katya, she’s all he can think about. He hasn’t had much time for me and Susanna any longer, even though he was the one to raise us after our dad died when we were only ten and eleven.
“Come on,” she says. “Mom is dead asleep this time of night. She’ll never notice us gone. We can make it back home in time. I want to have some fun. I just turned eighteen a few weeks ago. I’m officially an adult. It’s time I take this world by storm.”
Susanna being an adult is a dangerous thing. She’s always been stubborn and now that she’s legally an adult, she’ll never listen to anybody ever again.
But I know I’m expected to listen to her, even though I’m the older one. It’s always how we’ve operated.
So, because of that, I slip my leg over the windowsill and drop down onto the ground. “Happy?”
She flashes me a pretty smile. “Yes.” With her blonde hair and pretty looks, my sister is a force to be reckoned with. Of course, her blonde hair is dyed. Mom pays a lot of money so Susanna can go bleach her hair every few months to keep it that way. Money has never been a problem for us as our dad was rich and left behind a lot of assets after he died. But lately, I’ve noticed a strain on our mother’s face that was never there before. Susanna hasn’t noticed. She’s always been too caught up in her own world.
I tuck a piece of my natural brown hair behind my ear and nod. “Let’s do this.”
After technically stealing Mom’s car, we arrive at a nightclub in the heart of the city.
“It’s supposed to be one of the best nightclubs in all of New York,” Susanna tells me as she finds a spot to park the car. It’s a few blocks away from the nightclub since New York parking has always been a pain and you can never find anything close to your destination. Ever.
“And you know this… how?” I ask. I shiver when I get out of the car. It’s a chilly night. Fall is approaching and with that, change. I can feel it in my gut that something major is going to happen this year even though I have no idea what it could be.
“I looked it up,” she says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the entire world. “And the internet never lies.”
I scoff. “The internet is full of lies.”
“Nina, shush. We’re going to have a fun night tonight. Can’t you just trust me?”
“We’re not even twenty-one yet. Can we really get into this place?”
“They can stamp our hand. I don’t care about drinking. I just want to dance the night away with my sister.” She links our arms together.
“Ok,” I say slowly. “But why didn’t we go to one of Alek’s nightclubs? Wouldn’t that have been safer?”
She gives me an incredulous look. “And risk him finding we’re at a nightclub? You know he would never stand for that.”
“But you just said he doesn’t care about us any longer.”
“He still cares enough to punish us for sneaking out to a nightclub.” We start walking down the sidewalk. Thankfully, the streetlights help illuminate everything, making the street less scary. This is an upscale part of the town but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any dangerous people lurking in the shadows.
Our father belonged to the Bratva. That much me and Susanna know. We also know that Alek does the same work as our father. He’s never told us much but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s a dangerous job. It’s why Alek is so protective of us. He has enemies that would want to hurt us. In fact, that’s already happened.
Alek kidnapped Katya Ivanov two years ago but ended up falling in love with her. The problem was, Katya’s brother, Dimitri, was pissed. He ended up kidnapping me and Susanna to hurt Alek. Thankfully, Katya convinced her brother to let me and Susanna go, so we remained unhurt. But it was still a terrifying situation.
I know things have been tense between Alek and Dimitri ever since. They have a sort of temporary truce since Alek is married to Dimitri’s sister but things are brewing underneath. I just know it. Every time me and Susanna have gone over to Alek’s house, there’s a strain in the way he carries himself. He’s anxious about something.
Me and Susanna were not the nicest to Katya when Alek first married her. In fact, we were pretty bitchy to her. But Katya and I have become friends over the past two years.
For Susanna, however, she’s still cold to Katya but at least she’s not as terrible to her as when they first met.
