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“What about your brother?” she asks.
I stiffen, kicking myself mentally again for bringing Sascha up. “What about him?” I ask guardedly, knowing I’m going to regret it. Just thinking about him brings a world of pain crashing down on my head, and talking about him leaves a jagged hole in my chest. Like someone reached in and ripped my heart out with their bare hands.
“Is he older or younger?”
“Older,” I state curtly, keeping my answer short to emphasize my desire to change the subject. But Alina doesn’t seem to be picking up on the fact that I don’t want to talk about him.
“Did he get out like you? Are you two close? What does he do for a living?”
Her rapid-fire questions are like bullets to the chest, and I grit my teeth. Sascha is the last person I should be speaking about with Alina. “My brother’s dead,” I growl, shutting down the conversation with my blunt response.
Alina’s startled eyes grow sad. “I’m so sorry,” she breathes, and I wonder if she’s thinking of Viktor and what might have happened to him in the ambush, if she might suffer the same pain she can see I’m feeling. But if she is, her words give nothing away. “You must miss him.”
I just nod, looking down at my hands.
Whether Alina thinks my father killed Sascha or he died some other way, she doesn’t say. She looks too scared to ask, and I prefer it that way. I would rather she assume incorrectly that my father killed him than to lie right to her face.
Though, I suppose, indirectly, our old man does have something to do with Sascha’s death. I doubt my brother and I, would have fallen in so easily with the Nezhit if our father hadn’t been such a piece of shit—if we hadn’t needed to make ends meet in a town like Boston before we could find a legal job with decent pay.
Silence falls between me and Alina. She picks at the hem of her dress as I lean back on one elbow to stare darkly into the flames.
What a mess.
I need to be more careful around Sergio’s daughter. I need to keep my guard up, because she’s far too curious and too easy to talk to, and if I say the wrong thing, I could bust my cover wide open.
Though, after tonight, I wonder if I might even need a cover.
Neither of us broaches the elephant in the room—or cave, rather.
Who were the men who ambushed us? And why were they there? I feel like I have a good idea of their reason to attack—considering my past with the Sakharov family—but I wonder if Alina suspects. I get the impression that her father lets her in on very little about his business, and with that restriction comes an ignorance of the violence they cause.
Whether or not her family survived is another question I’m sure we’re both dying to know, each for different reasons. I find myself torn between hoping Sergio is already dead and regretting that he might be when I wasn’t the one to put him in his grave.
Vengeance is a poison in that way, filling me with a hatred I don’t usually possess. It feels wrong to be in Alina’s presence, wanting to do everything I can to keep her safe and at the same time wishing her father dead.
“Did you… see what happened to the other car?” Alina asks, breaking the long silence.
It’s like she plucked the question from my mind, and I lift my eyes to look at her, worried she might have read my thoughts. She sits close to the fire, intent on soaking up its warmth, but her mind is clearly worlds away as she looks out at the dark night around us.
It calms me to know she wasn’t reading my dark desires on my face, and at the same time, it fills me with an unbidden sense of a deeper connection, that we’re both so perfectly on the same page. I push the emotion aside. Of course that’s what’s on her mind. Why wouldn’t she be thinking about the well-being of her family after what happened?
Sitting up, I rest my elbows on my knees and use a stick to stoke the fire, sending sparks up to the sky. “I couldn’t see much of anything,” I admit. “Though, it sounded like the firefight carried on for a while after we made it down the hill. But that’s all I could make out.”
Alina nods, her eyes shifting to my face, and in her gaze, I can see the anxiety she’s trying to keep locked away. “Do you think they survived?” she murmurs.
Guilt tightens my stomach at having wished her father dead just moments ago, and though I still hate him with every fiber of my being, I can’t help but reassure her. “I’m sure they’re alive. Your father wouldn’t have become who he is without being really hard to kill. Besides, they had more warning than we did and knew what was going on. Our car would have fared much better if we hadn’t been behind the curve.”
Alina nods, sniffling lightly, and brushes impatiently at a tear. “Thanks.”
Nodding, I go back to poking the fire, bringing more oxygen to the flames. “You should try to get some sleep,” I suggest after another long pause. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Okay.” Curling up on her side so the longer edge of her dress covers her thigh, she rests her head on her arm. She watches the flames for a short time more before her eyelids start to droop, and she eases into unconsciousness.
Only after her breathing slows, growing soft and steady, do I allow myself to study her face more closely. She looks peaceful in her sleep, her pale skin taking on a golden glow in the firelight. It looks soft, tempting me to touch it—just to make sure it’s still warm, of course. But I won’t because I don’t want to wake her.
Her lips part slightly, their pink fullness so kissable. Her perfectly shaped brows press into a delicate frown, forming a cute, uneven line between them that I’ve never noticed before. It makes me want to know what she’s dreaming about. Whatever it is, it’s troubling her.
Even so, she looks beautiful, her eye makeup elegant as it sparkles softly in the firelight, her thick lashes dark against the crests of her cheeks. When the scowl smoothes from her forehead once more, I release the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
