The memory of asking about it comes back to me. I feel a little honored that he’s decided to tell me about it. “Did you kill the person who did it?”
I feel the movement in the pillows as he shakes his head. “No. I didn’t see them.”
I bite my bottom lip thoughtfully as I continue to trace the line of the scar on his ribcage with the tip of my finger. “Does this happen to you a lot?”
“It happens enough. As I understand it, people have lived their entire lives without ever being shot at all.” I smile against his chest as it ripples from his soft laughter. “It’s part of the life, as I’m sure you know well enough.” He sighs. “Sometimes, it’s the worst part. Sometimes, it spills out and hurts other people.”
He goes silent, and I start to think about the box under the bed. The woman he loved enough to keep memoirs of her hidden away. Then I think about my mother… her drowning… and how everyone has always tried to tell me that it was just an accident.
“Before you,” he says, “I was engaged. She was the one person I thought I could let myself love. I was raised with this idea that you never really ‘love’ anyone. Not your father, not your mother. No one. There is no room for it in the brotherhood.”
I lift my head to look at him. “You don’t love your father and brother?”
“I respect them,” he says. “My father taught me to endure for the sake of the family. He taught me how to fight through wounds and blisters and broken bones. He showed me strength of the flesh and the mind. That was his way of showing me love. I have done the same for my brother. It’s… it’s our way.”
I don’t even know how to process that, so I stay silent, letting him tell the rest.
“Kira,” he continues, “I thought that she was the one person I could fill with things like love, hope, tenderness… I was wrong. I should have known that there is no room for that in the Bratva.”
I don’t really want to ask, but…
“What happened to her?”
He doesn’t answer me for a few seconds. Then, he just says, “About a week after I asked for her hand in marriage, she was taken from me. An assassin was looking for me and his bullet found her instead. I’ve since heard of similar stories within my family, the brotherhood. Love being ruined by some part of this life that bleeds over into it.”
He stops as if contemplating the statement. My heart suddenly feels heavy in my chest. “The truth, Isabella,” he says, “is that the only thing that’s guaranteed for us is pain. There’s no room for anything else, no matter what anyone might tell you. I’m not supposed to fall in love.”
That’s got to be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I press myself against him a little more and he accepts me, squeezing my shoulder. Softly, like he’s afraid someone will hear him, he says, “This is the first time I’ve talked about what happened since she died. I guess… I guess you are the first to crack my defenses.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know,” he confesses. “I don’t know if any of this is good or bad. It just is.”
I kiss his chest softly. Moving up to his lips. I don’t know what will happen in the morning or in the days to come. All I know is that for this moment, Alexei and I are all we have.
The last monthhas been good. Even I have to admit. Alexei has been giving me a little more freedom and I’ve started to rethink this entire move to escape.
I don’t know, still, if this is what I want, but I do know that I like being with Alexei. Even in the quiet moments when we’re just having dinner together or sitting and watching television late at night.
He’s an interesting person. He doesn’t talk a lot about what happened to him, even though I dress and clean his wound every morning. I don’t even know if the guy who shot him has beencaught. What I do know is that he doesn’t bring it home. When he’s home, we focus on each other’s company.
And… weirdly enough, I’m starting to see what Anya was talking about. Alexei is smart, kind, and gentle when he wants to be. I think he’s starting to melt the chill I had for him.
Early this morning, I roll over and the bed is empty. Dammit. Not again.
I sit up and stretch. The first vestiges of daylight peek in through the blinds. I get up to go to the bathroom. As I pass the bedroom door, I hear voices in the living room.
“Are you sure?” Alexei asks.
“We are. Pecora has a bounty on your head.”
Pecora? My… my father? What?
“It doesn’t make sense,” Alexei is saying. I move to the crack in the door, hoping to see something. Down the hallway, I spot Alex’s father pacing the floor.
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” he’s saying. “That snake has taken it upon himself to destroy his contract with me. This attack on you cannot go unanswered.”
I don’t need to hear any more. I rush to my dresser to get some clothes and get dressed. I need to get out of here and get to Dad before Alexei’s dad and his goons do.
