“Not me.” I point to him. “If you ever call me those things I’ll slap you.”
He pauses in his task of rearranging the wood to his liking, and glances at me over his shoulder. To say the man is in his element like this…playing house…would be an understatement. He’s attractive like this, taking care of things around the cabin,making time to play card games with me at night, sitting by the fire before bed while I work on my needlepoint and he flips through his phone.
I don’t think any of my brothers know how to chop wood, much less how to make a fire with it. They have people who do that for them. Who do everything for them. Artem isn’t like that. He gets his hands dirty doing the work others won’t bother to do for themselves.
“I would love to see you try, Babygirl.” He laughs and goes back to moving the wood around.
I deadpan. “Seriously, Artem. Don’t ever call me those things.”
He drops the last bit of wood into place. “Has someone done that before?”
I lean against the railing of the porch. The cabin is set far into the woods. Other than trees and dead leaves carpeting the forest floor, there’s nothing around for miles. Winter is right around the corner, and all the birds have smartened up and left already. It’s quiet.
And a lot of thoughts you think you buried tend to make their voices heard when it’s this quiet.
“Elana.” He touches my cheek. “Who said such things to you?”
I shake my head, wishing it would dislodge the memories and get rid of them all together.
“Not to me.”
“What then.”
“My father called my mother those names. He never let me forget how I was born. That she was his mistress.” I look off into the woods. “His whore.”
Artem grabs my chin, dragging me back to him. “Your father was an asshole.”
“That’s an understatement.” I huff. “When I was little, I didn’t understand why he’d even let me come over if he hated me and mom so much. But when I got older, I understood. He liked to flaunt me in front of his wife. Most of the time, she’d just leave until I went back home. Eventually, she left for good.”
“None of that was your doing. His evil games with his wife, that was on him, not you.”
“She hated me so much. I could see it whenever she looked at me, like I was the spawn of the devil.”
“Well, you are his daughter, so she wasn’t completely wrong.”
He looks so serious when he says it, it takes me a second to realize he’s teasing me.
“Funny.”
“Yes, I thought so.”
“I suppose it’s the devil’s blood running in my veins that made my brothers not hate me? They could have turned me away when my mom died. They could have completely cut me out when our father died. But they didn’t.”
“No. They wouldn’t. Your grandfather taught them many things, and loyalty to blood is one of them. You’re their sister, period.”
“And look what it got them. A war with the DeAngelos. I mean, Kaz had to get married.”
He leans his ass against the railing and folds his arms over his chest.
“How’d you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The war. How did you get Marco DeAngelo to target Megan and Mira? How did you know Mira’s boyfriend had been stealing from Marco?”
“I didn’t.” I frown. “First time I met them was when Michael had a gun pointed at me.”
“And you knew Tony was going to take you to that restaurant and let his brothers use you as bait?”
