Gianni nods. Then, after a hesitant moment, he asks, “How bad is it?”
“How bad is what?” I ask in the most soothing voice I can force.
“Whatever these guys are into.”
I swallow, then shake my head. “It’s not good.”
“Fuck.”
I hug my brother and leave to go back to the penthouse. The sun is up and the world is rising with it, which means traffic, but I race around it.
None of this is Gianni’s fault. If anything, I blame myself. For getting involved with Ransome, for diving deeper out of thrill. And now? Now my siblings are in danger and it’s so, so much worse than I let on.
I get back to the penthouse and race up the stairs. I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to them. Ransome needs to know just what we are dealing with. He needs to know everything, no secrets or reservations.
Tristan wants to bepakhan.The onlypakhan.And he’ll stop at nothing to get rid of Ransome.
Once I’m inside, I call out. “Ransome!”
No answer.
I rush to the bedroom. He’s not there.
I go to the bathroom. Nothing. Office, nothing. Ransome is nowhere in sight.
I try calling him. Once, twice, all shoved straight to voicemail.
“Goddamn it!” I throw my phone on the bed. Of all the times for this man to be stubborn and unavailable, this is the worst. He needs to know, and he needs to knownow.
Otherwise, there’s no telling how much danger he’ll be in, too.
57
RANSOME
Deny call.
Amara is blowing my phone up, no doubt worrying about where I am. In my defense, she was gone when I woke up this morning, and I got up pretty damn early. If anyone should be concerned about the location of the other, it’s me.
But my gut tells me she is with her siblings. And right now, I have bigger problems on my hands. One problem, really.
Tristan.
Things have always been tense with us. We’ve had Romeo and Tybalt energy since we were young. And now that we’re both fighting to be on top, a battle is cresting.
But it’s not like the other fights we’ve had, where we knock each other around to brag about who truly rules the streets. This is a war. The cold blood running through my veins, prickling up my spine, tells me that much.
I’ve been sleeping with both eyes open lately. I’m distracted at work. And I’m constantly worried about Amara and her siblings,something I am not used to feeling for anyone but my immediate own.
She is now a part of that. And the beast in me is bending the bars of the cage.
My tires come to a screeching halt on the smooth asphalt in front of my dad’s mansion. It’s a sprawling estate at over twenty thousand feet, and he holes up in about a hundred square feet of it. An office where he works, eats, sleeps, all of it. Save for the times he goes to the back porch to smoke a cigar because my mother won’t let him do that in the house, he lives in that office. Doing what, I have no idea.
“Ransome! We weren’t expecting you!”
My mom is in the kitchen when I walk inside. She is already dressed to the nines as usual. I swear she sleeps in a full face of makeup, not so much as rolling to the side just in case at any point in time she has to leap from the bed and be Anton Rozanov’s lovely wife.
I don’t have time for small talk, but I know better than to skip giving my mom a hug.
