Juliette hasn’t learned that yet. But I have.
My chest tightens, and an old pressure coils in my ribs. The kind that hits seconds before I drive a blade home or squeeze a trigger.
“You’re too young to date.”
“I’m seventeen, Bash,” she says, rolling her eyes again. “Not five.”
Matt leans back in his chair, mouth twitching around a smirk. “You’ve gotta let her live a little, man. Not every boy’s the devil.”
“I never said that Marc was the devil. But in my line of work, I’ve met charmers who make the devil look like a fucking altar boy.”
“Bastien!” Mamère snaps, scandalized.
Her voice slices through the air sharper than any blade I’ve held. I bite back the rest of what I was going to say, the heat still simmering behind my teeth.
Too far in front of her.
I reach across the table and take her wrinkled hand, the rosary still coiled around her wrist. I press a kiss to her knuckles.
“Pardon, Mamère,” I say. “Forgive my language.”
Her eyes narrow, but her fingers squeeze mine in that quiet, regal way she forgives—without words, but also without letting me off the hook.
My father sighs. “We can’t keep her in a glass box, son.”
Juliette’s voice softens, but she doesn’t back down. “I remember what happened to Aimee, Bastien. But I can’t stop living because she didn’t get the chance to.”
What she says isn’t cruel, but it hits hard.
Juliette was a baby when Aimee died. She didn’t see our mother fall apart piece by piece, trying to hold the rest of us together with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. She didn’t see the grief harden behind Dad’s eyes. Or how he never cried, but never smiled either.
I look at my baby sister—this fearless, defiant girl who believes the world won’t bite if she bares her throat.
But at this moment, she doesn’t resemble a baby at all.
She looks like a woman—brave and certain and strong in ways Aimee never got the chance to be.
I swallow hard and nod. “I want to meet him.”
She meets my eyes and nods right back. “I told him you’d want to. He’s okay with that.”
Matt leans back, smirking. “Poor bastard.”
Juliette grins. “I warned him you’d try to scare him.”
“Try?” I echo.
They laugh, and the tension lifts enough to let the room breathe. But I file Marc’s name away as a mark on a potential kill list. No one will hurt another one of my sisters while I’m still breathing.
Juliette corners me after dinner, arms folded, chin up, ready for a fight. Everyone else has wandered off for coffee and dessert, but she plants herself in front of me, a human barricade.
“You’re mad,” she says.
“I’m not mad. I’m protective.”
“Same thing with you.”
I lean against the counter, watching her. “You want me to be excited some teenage boy who thinks he’s man enough to take you out?”
