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Dom had been gone for a good while as soon as he found “the one”—aka the one he kidnapped, and they fell in love and lived happily ever after. Cullen too, although I was sure his story was a lot more fucked up, because, well, it was Cullen.
And after the two eldest Preacher brothers found the women they were going to spend the rest of their lives with, of course they wanted their own space to do just that.
It had just been Wilder and me living in the house we’d grown up in since then. For months, we’d been on our own, an adjustment, since it had always been the four of us, but it hadn’t been bad. I had my twin, and life had been good. The four of us were still a unit, still pulled jobs, made bank, and were good at being the bad guys who probably weren’t so bad at all in the grand fucking scheme of things.
But now, all that had changed.
Wilder had gotten his own place with Zoey. And I understood that’s how life worked, but it didn’t make it less shitty. Just because I understood, didn’t mean I liked it.
Because being alone meant that hollowness came up full-force.
So here I was, alone in the house we’d grown up in for the first time in my life. But this wasn’t the first time I felt bone-deep loneliness. I always felt a type of emptiness despite having my brothers around, that heartbreaking void that always stayed with you, that refused to let up. It was a bitch, a motherfucking soul-sucking demon.
And no matter how much I pushed it aside, no matter how many beers I drank to numb it, no matter how many random fucking fights I picked, or how reckless I was during a job… nothing really ever worked.
And it was all because of one thing. One woman.
God… one woman who owned every single part of me even all this time later.
That was the sum of why everything changed.
Fuck.
I drank more and more and more.
But change wasn’t a bad thing. It was the natural order of things.
So here I sat, on the couch in the darkened living room, the TV dark, and getting drunk by myself once again. I was a sorry, sad piece of shit; that was for sure.
I tipped the beer bottle back and finished off the dark ale. My plan was to get good and shitfaced, so drunk I couldn’t even walk straight to my bedroom after it was all said and done. And although I knew better than to drink while in this foul mood, it was the only thing I could do, the only thing I had control over. The drinking always led to me thinking about what I was trying desperately to ignore… to forget.
Her.
Nadja Romonoff.
The only girl I ever loved. The one who broke my heart, because she left, because her hardcore criminal father who was involved in the bratva—the Russian mafia—said we could never be together. She was promised to another, already given away to strengthen the mafia alliances he had.
She was her father’s pawn.
He made no secret that he’d kill me slowly, painfully. And he’d enjoy it.
And then she was gone.
I didn’t know for sure what happened, but I knew enough about how her father was to know if we didn’t stop seeing each other on our own… he’d do it for us.
That or she made a deal with him for my life.
I was still breathing, so that was the only explanation. She left to keep me alive.
She slipped away in the night like a damn thief with my heart. It was ironic really, me in the profession I was, Nadja stealing my heart and leaving me no choice but to fucking grieve over it.
And I had been grieving. For so fucking long. Because I knew I’d never have a chance of finding her. If her father hid her away, there was no amount of any resources I could come up with that would bring me closer to her.
I held a torch for that girl for the last five years, ached for her, obsessed over her… loved her even though I should have moved on.
But life was a cruel bitch. I knew that at a young age, and still even as an adult. You couldn’t get happy without being hurt.
I was glad my brothers found what made them whole. I’d never have that, not with anyone, because no one would compare to her.
I closed my eyes and rested my head back on the couch, letting the alcohol flow through my veins, hoping like hell it numbed me. But it didn’t. Nothing helped. I couldn’t push the pain back; I couldn’t ignore the loneliness. I was stuck in my own personal hell.
Fucking bullshit purgatory.
But at least I had Wilder there. And now that was gone too.
