She nods like she doesn’t care, but she swallows hard after, and her gaze drifts past me to the ledge.
The city yawns beneath us.
My attention snaps to her feet. To the angle of her body. To the way she’s standing like she’s thinking about edges.
I take another step closer without meaning to.
“Why do you look relieved?” I ask.
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
She scoffs, thin. “Maybe I’m relieved you’re not going to complain about a laptop for six months.”
“I don’t complain.”
She rolls her eyes hard. “Why’d you tell me to come up here anyway—trying to end me?”
Her smirk hits, and my stomach tightens like a fist.
“No, Beda, if I wanted to end you, you’d know it.”
Her body stiffens.
“I brought you up here because I use to jump between buildings when I was younger.”
She looks around the city skyline. “You would jump? Do you own these buildings?”
I move around her slowly, a predator with time, until I’m behind her. Close enough that my chest brushes her back when the wind shifts. I let one hand slide down her arm, capture her wrist, lift her hand like I’m teaching her how to aim a gun.
Her breath hitches. Her body goes tight and alive.
“Da, all except that one,” I breathe by her ear guiding her hand to point to a building in the distance. “That one I share with a Beaumont.”
Her head turns back and up sharply. “You? Share?”
I can’t stop the chuckle that escapes. She turns in my arms. Her eyes lock on mine, swallowing me for a moment before catching my lips, she steps back.
“Why jump? Not afraid of the fall? Of dying?”
I shake my head slow. That’s an easy answer. “No. Death is part of life.”
I step around her, closer to the ledge.
The wind whips my face as I lean over, peering at the rooftop across the alley like it’s just another sidewalk crack to step over. Forty feet down is concrete and blood-splattered headlines. Between here and there? A jump and muscle memory.
I’ve been jumping off things since I was ten—back when falling meant scraped knees instead of broken necks.
She stands behind me, arms folded, skeptical as hell.
“Are you trying to say you’re what—willing to die?” she asks, voice sharp.
I glance over my shoulder. Smirk. “Life’s about living. If you die, you die. Shit happens.”
She narrows her eyes. “So nothing and no one matters?”
I shrug. “People are as temporary as things. Even family. There’s always a replacement. They’ll survive without me. Parents make extra kids forspares. The Bratva has a hierarchy for when the Pakhan gets his brains blown out.” I lift one shoulder. “No one’s irreplaceable. You live, then you die. Everything in between… that’s the only part worth anything.”
