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“Trust me, poppet. This is far from over.”
“Why?”
“Because you have something of mine, and I want it back.”
Cold dread filled my heart at her words as my gaze caught my sister’s.
I asked the question I already knew the answer to. There was only one thing she could want, but there was no way in hell I was giving it to her. Not in a million years.
“Kenzi.”
“Go to hell,” I snarled. “She isn’t yours.”
Another icy laugh that left my skin chilled.
“Oh, but she is, and I’ll be coming to collect her very soon.” The words were nearly cooed. A stark contrast to the malicious laugh that had nearly frozen my heart. “Be a good girl, Kenzi.”
Then the line went dead, and chaos erupted.
Kenzi’s body stiffened at the woman’s words, and I realized too late exactly what had happened. Rolling out of the way, I missed the punch she threw at me by centimeters.
Fuck.
Her body had gone into fight mode, and all she saw was the enemy. That was what they had molded her to be, and the woman had just flipped on the switch. Or at least I thought she had, but none of the moves she used to take anyone down did anything more than incapacitate them.
“Kenzi, wait,” I pleaded, clutching my stomach where she had managed to land a solid kick when I had tried to take her down. Dead eyes stared back at me. Her crystalline gaze muted and cold. I didn’t have a chance to say another word before she was gone, taking a piece of my heart with her.
What I did know, though, was that I wasn’t going to give up on her.
I had let my sister down once already, and I would be damned if I did it again.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
1 MONTH LATER
Istood over the freshly dug grave site, my hand clenching Ava’s tightly, but she hadn’t once complained. Tears streaked down her porcelain face for a woman she had never met. My Little Red might have turned into a little psychopath, but she never lost her ability to empathize.
My father stood to my right, his face hard and impassive, unwilling to break down in front of his men as he watched them lower his long-lost wife into the crypt. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized how truly lucky I was. Compared to him and Ivan, I had gotten so much more time with her. Time none of them would ever get.
Ivan stood on the other side of my father. If it wasn’t such a somber event, I might have laughed earlier when he tried to approach Ava. The only reason she hadn’t decked him was out of respect for my father.
It was nearly summer in Russia, but the wind was still biting cold. The graveyard was nearly filled to the brim with the men and woman who had come to support theirPakhans. Even Tomas, who had once sworn to me he would never step foot in his home country again, was here, standing just behind me with Vas and my brothers in arms.
What I wouldn’t do to turn back time to save her, but then I wouldn’t have all of this. I wouldn’t have Ava, the goddess beside me, and that was unacceptable. Seamus and Kiernan had joined us as an extension of our alliance with the Kavanaughs, but Liam had stayed behind to keep an eye on Katherine, who, despite the progress she had been making, wasn’t clear to fly long distances.
“You know,” my father mused once the pomp and circumstance was finished. “Your mother used to sing to you in the womb.”
Ivan groaned, but I just smiled.
“Bayu Bayushki.” My father beamed at me. “She sang it to me every night.”
“I tried to keep that tradition going when she—” He swallowed hard. “But Ivan and Antony told me I sounded like a tone-deaf opera singer that had a cat’s yowl for a voice.”
Ava snorted.
“And that was being generous,” Ivan muttered. My father winked at Ava and me.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
