“It was nice to meet you, Cooly. I consider you a friend because you helped me out so much but I ain't trying to involve you in my mess. I gotta go.” I hung up.
I looked at the gold ring on the dresser, the double-headed eagle staring back at me.
Mocking me.
What was this?
Irony…
Or fate?
“Bad fucking luck,” I muttered.
I grabbed the nearest thing my hand found—a glass lamp from the nightstand—and hurled it at the wall.
The crash felt satisfying for exactly one second.
Then I grabbed something else.
The sound of shattering glass filled the room like applause.
“FUCK!”
The scream ripped out of me.
I swept my arm across the dresser. Lotion bottles flew. A jewelry box cracked open, earrings scattering across the floor like tiny screams.
The ring—that stupid, heavy Bratva ring—clattered to the floor.
I kicked it, watching it skid under the bed.
“Three years!” I shouted, pacing naked across the room. “Three fucking years I been invisible!”
Now everything was fucked.
I had wanted more time.
Three years wasn’t enough to forget the baby I lost.
My brother was going to get his wish. Zaire had begged me to come back.
He said Malachai had lost the little bit of mind he had left.
Said Malachai had been sitting outside his house.
A house nobody was supposed to know about.
When I first ran from Malachai, my brother had played pussy when I called him. Too scared of Malachai to help me. Told me to fuck off and never call again.
But now he was begging me to come back.
Apparently, Malachai was furious at Zaire and my father for not helping me when I ran.
The man was a walking contradiction.
I had been struggling with the question of when I would return.
I knew eventually Malachai would find me.
