My phone buzzed. Out of habit, I’d left it with my hog while I’d been with Jean, my hiatus from the matrix still going strong. But like a dickhead, I’d forgotten to turn it off.
A text lit up the screen.
Unknown Number:Nomad, it is time to come in. Do not make me find you
Unknown number, my arse. I didn’t recognise it, but the tone went straight through me. Like Alexei Ivanov’s dead-eyed stare.Do not make me find you.He fucking would as well. I wasn’t daft enough to believe I hadn’t seen him all this time cosIwas just that good.
It was a weird thing that something settled in me as I ditched the phone and turned my hog north, towards Whitness, where the founding chapter of the Rebel Kings made their home. That a vaguely threatening order from a literal hitman calmed my tits. But that was life—weird as fuck and never boring.
I miss him.
Not Alexei. The other Russian, and this time, I didn’t fight it. I gunned my engine and hit the road, hoping some time with my brothers would ease this fucking pain.
[ 3 ]
VIKTOR
My nephew’s hands were small. Like toys. His limbs were short too, but the boy climbed the orange tree like a monkey.
“That one.” I pointed to a fruit hanging low enough that my sister wouldn’t wring her hands, but high enough that the thrill of his ascent meant something to his young mind. “Do not squeeze it too hard.”
My nephew followed my instructions and retrieved the orange.
He dropped from the tree at my feet and placed it in my hand. “Are you going to eat this one?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
My response was predictable, and boring, enough that the boy lost interest and scampered away. I turned the perfect fruit over in my palm, transfixed in a way that was still new to me. My mind used to be faster than this. Sharper. These days, my thoughts were quicksand. One misfired synapse and I was lost for hours.
You like it.
I did not. My inability to engage reminded me too much of something else, and the healed track marks on my arms itched like bugs. Throbbed—animated—as if the phantom scratch Icraved was real. How annoying that the sting of that needle tormented me more than the hit it would bring. Howinfuriatingthat a few months of forced opioid abuse had left me so weak.
You aren’t fucking weak, Vik.
I slow-blinked, turning my face to the sky, the spring sunshine seeping into bones that never seemed to get warm anymore. That voice. Perhaps it haunted me as much as the weaponised cravings rotting inside me, but I did not mind. I’d never seen the man who owned it beneath skies any colour but grey, but the late evening sun put him on my mind anyway, clinging to a rare thing that made me smile. If I could not rid my life of all addiction, he was the one I would keep.
The rough husk of Ranger’s voice faded, not as slowly as the sun, but as dusk settled in, to me, they were one.
Cold, I took a seat on the patio steps and considered the orange in my hand. It was bright and heavy, typical of the naval crop my sister and her husband had spent so much of the winter fussing over. It would smell good if I pierced the rind. It would taste good if I ate it.
I threw it at the wall.
At my feet, my canine companion raised her gaze to me, her brown eyes unfathomable. Seconds later, the phone in my pocket erupted with texts.
Jake. Of course. There was no one else. Only ghosts in my head.
He’s not dead.
Neither was I, but some nights I felt it.
The buzzing of my phone became impossible to ignore. I dragged it from my pocket. Spanish words greeted me, lots of them, and a frown creased my face as I scratched Lida’s ears and tried to decipher them. Learning to speak languages that were not my own was a skill I’d honed to perfection. Reading them was different. If it wasn’t Russian or English, my brain melted,and Jake knew it well enough to use it against me for his own amusement.
Jake:You should eat what you steal
I replied in Russian.
Viktor:It’s not stealing. It’s mine
