I smile when he sees me and raise my tumbler of whiskey. “Tristan.”
“Aleksander,” he bites out.
Oh yeah, he’s very pissed. I recognize that all too familiar darkness that lives inside both of us, courtesy of the monster who sired us.
“Would you care for a drink?” I offer.
He sits down in the leather armchair across from me. Hendrix purposefully stands behind him, protecting his back.
Setting my glass down on the coffee table, I flick my gaze to Hendrix. “Knight.”
In typical Hendrix assholery, he gives me the middle finger. I show him with my wide grin what a dumb fuck he is. The man has the maturity of a ten-year-old.
Cutting through the pretense, Tristan leans forward, elbows to knees, all serious. “You wanted my attention, you got it.”
“Funny that, but we’ll get to your redhead in a minute,” I reply and say to Hendrix, “Heard Serena isn’t too happy with you.”
He’s quick to come back with, “She was very happy this morning when I was dick deep in her ass.”
His crass comment erases my grin, not because I’m going to jump to defend Serena’s honor, but because a woman deserves some goddamn respect from the man she’s sleeping with. “Help me out because I’m a little confused.”
Tristan acts like he’s already bored. “Isn’t that normal for you?”
I pick my glass back up and envisage throwing it at his head. “Katalina will be displeased to find out that you’re slumming it with a waitress?—”
Tristan talks over me. “I don’t give a shit what Katalina thinks.”
“—here on a scholarship granted by his family,” I finish, taking another swallow of whiskey while nodding at Hendrix. “Miss Carmichael must be something extraordinary to have you and Constantine sniffing after her. She’s not Society.”
I despise every word coming out of my mouth, and I despise the both of them even more for making me lower to their level.
“You and your brother seemed very interested in her the other night.”
I hate that I was that obvious, so I counter with, “Interesting that she’s now living in your house when she just leased an apartment.”
The air grows thick with animosity. “Seems Serena’s been running her mouth about shit she knows nothing about. The girl isn’t mine or Con’s. She’s Hendrix’s.”
I love how lies just tumble off his tongue like honey, but I play along to see how far he’s willing to go with them. The stiff leather of the couch squeaks when I recline back into the cushions. “She doesn’t mind you fucking other women in front of her?”
“She doesn’t watch. Not her style,” Hendrix flippantly answers.
“Sounds like she’s fair game then.”
An unexpected chink in Hendrix’s armor rips wide open. He looks like he wants to lunge over the coffee table and beat the shit out of me. He’s acting like he actually cares about Syn. I’d laugh off such a notion, but I see his jealousy written all over his pompous face.
“Are you really that desperate forallmy sloppy seconds?”
Jesus, this motherfucker and his posturing. “Fuck you, Knight.”
“Was there a point you wanted to make at the library or do you just like stalking innocent women?” Tristan says.
In my periphery, I catch Aleksei standing under the archway, silently watching while eating a sandwich. I pray he doesn’t do anything that will make things go nuclear. Like pull out his gun.
“Miss Carmichael is far from innocent if she’s his,” I retort and regret it as soon as I say it.
Tristan bounds out of the chair. “We’re done.”
All this righteous fury over a woman he just met. Where was his anger when our father murdered Aoife, his best friend and the girl he claimed to love? He should have done something to save her, and it makes me livid that he’s here, breathing air and living his life, when Aoife never got to live hers.
