Page 35 of Dangerous Promises

I lower my voice.

"I'm angry, Dad," I say, waiting for a response that will never come. "Angry in the way that you always used to be. What does that mean?"

I tuck my hair behind my ear. I am both proud and terrified to be following in my father's footsteps. Anger was always his weapon. Perhaps a curse.

Anton lost Aunt Emma and he devolved more into sadness than anything else. Always the more gentle of the two between him and my father, and he never wavered even with everything he lost.

My monitor beeps and so I go about the rounds of administering my dose for the day. Second nature muscle memory takes over my injections as I keep talking to Dad.

"I'm telling a lot of lies, too," I whisper to him. "If you wake up…"

I pull back and wait, smiling to myself when nothing happens other than the rising and falling of his breath. I dispose of the needles into a sharps container while Dad's coffee and toast go untouched, sitting wasted again.

There's a lot of noise outside this morning. Lots of Rushkoffs spread out on the lawn, mostly packing up supplies and leaving to do something I'm not allowed to be involved in. They will be back. They always are.

I've kept as much distance from Alexei as I can while he's been invading my property.

Staying away is the only option when getting close to him is out of the question. The closer I get the more likely I'll be to do something stupid. Like try and kill him in plain sight. I need to be smarter than that.

Which is why anything I chose to do had to be from a distance.

Something that could be labeled a coincidence.

Something that they might not know was me until it had already happened.

A knock on the door steals my attention. One guard takes a message before speaking. "Sage, your uncle wants to see you."

I poke my head through the door into Anton's office to see what I'm in for. Anton paces the floor and fitfully shakes his head while Freddie stands stoically behind the desk. He spots me first and gives me a cringed expression, which tells me I'm in for an uncomfortable chat. I briefly consider running away instead. It's been a while since Anton called me into his office to admonish me. So this should be interesting.

I enter, closing the door gently behind me and approaching Anton's desk with my hands clasped behind my back and sporting my best innocent smile.

"Uncle Anton?"

Anton looks up once and narrows his eyes. He seems both startled by my presence and like he was expecting it.

"Anton, you're pacing," Freddie says, reminding him with a hand to stop and calm down.

Anton throws him a confused expression before nodding. He takes a deep breath that seems to focus him, and then he looks at me.

"I'm just going to jump to the point," Anton says. Walking behind his desk, he retrieves an empty brown package from a drawer and places it on the desk with a slam.

Ah, shit.

My panicked eyes go wide, darting to the package and then back up to my uncle, hoping my face hasn't given away my thoughts. But Freddie looks even more embarrassed for me so I assume that it has.

Lesson: throw things away in the big bins outside.

"Want to explain this?" Anton asks, tapping a finger on the package.

"I don't know what that is," I lie. I can't play dumb and hold this innocent expression for very long. My lip already trembles trying to fake a smile.

Anton's jaw tenses. "I'm only going to ask one more time," he says, remaining calm as he tries to stare me down. "Do you want to explain this?"

No way am I giving in. The only choice is to double down. Hope they can't pin this on me. Well, not just yet anyway.

I shrug. "And I'm being honest with you, uncle, when I say I've never seen that before." My voice is saccharine and sweet. Something I'm usually not. So that's probably what gives me away.

Anton breaks, grabbing at his hair as he cries out. "Sage, for the love of God!" He drops into his seat in frustration. "After that scene at their house, I cannot afford for you to be going rogue again." He grunts while biting his lip. "You are not supposed to be fighting this death promise. I can't have you attacking him in broad daylight on his property, and I can't have you luring him into traps on ours. I have made that perfectly clear!"