Tomorrow, I’ll have to face the full weight of it all. Tomorrow, I’ll have to figure out what love means when it’s tangled up in so much more.
But tonight? Tonight, I’ll let myself be held. I’ll let myself hope. And I’ll fall asleep in the arms of the man I may very well be in love with.
CHAPTER 29
THEA
Two weeks pass in a strange, calm quiet.
No word from the Bratva. No threats from Kolya. No emergency council meetings or midnight phone calls that send Gabriel’s men scrambling.
Just silence. It should be comforting. It’s anything but.
Gabriel spends long hours in his office on phone calls, coordinating with men in his organization. I’ve overheard some of the calls—they’re about subjects I don’t understand and likely don’t want to. He comes to bed late, leaves early, and moves through the house like a man who knows that all of this is likely to end any day now.
And will likely end with a bang.
“What’s the status with Kolya?” Liza and I are folding linens in one of the guest bedrooms, late morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. “I mean, is he screwed? He has to be. Gabriel outed him for what he did.”
I shift in my seat. I’d like to think it’s that simple.
“Nothing. I mean, we haven’t heard anything. Gabriel hasn’t said a word about him.”
And I’ve been too afraid to ask. What if it all fizzles out? What if the council doesn’t believe the evidence, or even worse, doesn’t care? What if Kolya’s got me in his sights and is ready to finish the job he started decades ago? After all, he knows who I am, where I am.
Liza narrows her eyes skeptically.
“You need to know what’s going on. You need to be kept in the loop. God, it would drive me crazy to be in the position that you’re in now.”
I let her words hang in the air. What the hell am I supposed to do, barge into Gabriel’s office and demand answers? Maybe I should.
“How’s Sissy?” I ask, eager to change the subject.
Liza smiles weakly. “Good. She’s in LA, believe it or not. Working for some talent agency.”
“And she doesn’t know where you are? What’s happening?”
She looks away for a long moment, as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Then she sighs.
“The truth is, we barely talk these days. She’s so busy with work. And any time I manage to get her on the phone, she’s always too busy to talk for more than a few minutes. Lots of one-word answers.”
“Sorry to hear that. You two always seemed so close. Or at least, you always seemed to be on the same team against me.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she says. “It was… look, we both dealt with the situation in our own way.”
“Sure seemed like the same way to me—making my life a living hell. Calling me fat in every way you both could think of.”
She glances out the window for a long moment, then turns her eyes back to me.
“Thea, I know you don’t believe me when I say I’m sorry. But I am. I really am. You can do with that what you want. I feel terrible about the way I treated you, and I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you that I did it because I was scared.”
“That’s why you abandoned me? Because you were scared?”
“Because I wanted to be safe,” she says. “I wanted my daughter to be safe. And yes, I was scared—scared of looking you in the eye and telling you I wanted you gone. So, I did the cowardly thing. I left you alone. And I don’t expect forgiveness. But if it’s any consolation to you, I did get punished.”
I cock my head to the side. “How do you mean?”
“Sissy. She didn’t want to leave you alone. I had to talk her into it. She thought it was cruel. And she was right. Looking back, all I cared about was trying to return to normal, whatever normal looked like. I finally convinced her to go along with the plan, telling her it was the only way she’d be safe. And when we went through with it, she didn’t stay with me afterward. That’s when she left for California.”
