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Fast.
Nothing was more dangerous than that.
With her bright blonde curls topping her head in a way that made her look like fucking meringue, Svetlana was lucky they weren’t dripping purple—Da had no issue punishing women who were disrespecting Ma, and tipping the violet borscht over his hostess’ head was the least he was capable of doing.
The meal had been long, but when we retired to a drawing room that looked like something Tsar Alexander could have jacked off in, I was sad we had to continue the charade of getting along.
Robin egg blue walls, all with heavy moldings that were a bright, gaudy gold, lots of paintings of fucking dogs in old frames that screamed money, if not class, in a place like this, with furnishings that made me wonder if they’d break if we took a seat on them. And Inessa? Oddly enough, she suited the place.
She was like a crystal figurine in a crystal palace.
Untouchable.
It was weird. Unnerving. She had none of the recklessness I’d expected, nothing that told me she was actually sixteen.
I moved over from the doorway, tracking her as she took a seat beside the fireplace in a spindly chair that she fit in well. With her tailored dress in a creamy peach color that offset her beautiful hair, and made the green of her eyes pop, she was so fucking still, it creeped me out.
When I was closer, taking the stool at her side and stacking my elbows on my knees, leaning over as I did so, I stared at her shoes, knowing full well that no sixteen-year-old would pick them. They were tall with a small platform. Nude.
Fucking nude.
Who wore that shit unless you were Kate Middleton?
A couple of my crew had kids her age, and they were into neon shit and fucking Snapchat… It made me wonder what they were hiding, and if she was so quiet because her parents had told her to be, which would make sense. She couldn’t be happy about the wedding, could she? No kid wanted to be forced to marry a guy she’d never met.
But when I finally shot her a look—maybe it was the light from the fire that did it—I saw something on her arm.
Something that, when she saw where I was looking, had her reaching over to cover the skin.
Bruises.
Figured.
I sighed heavily. “Oh, girl.”
She swallowed. “Please, don’t say anything.”
What could I say? “I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have talked back.”
The wooden words had me flinching. I knew another kid who’d said that to me once upon a time… It had made me do some stuff I regretted. Had made me want to be a protector when that wasn’t in my nature, and look what happened? I’d wrecked my entire fucking life.
For a second, I felt tongue-tied. Violence was a part of my life, and Inessa’s too, it seemed. But we tended to shield our kids, at least the men did in front of Da. He’d kneecap them if he found out there were kids being beaten in the Family by our crew.
Once they became ‘made men,’ it was different, but until that point? Kids in the Five Points didn’t need the authorities to protect them. Not when they had their very own boogeyman protecting their asses.
I stared down at my feet. “Not much consolation, but Eoghan’s a good man. He won’t treat you that way.”
“He didn’t come here tonight.”
Yeah, I could see why that was going in the con column. I couldn’t exactly blame her for feeling that way either.
I cleared my throat. “He’s away on business.”
Her jaw tensed, but I saw that register—knew she knew I wasn’t lying—and also knew she’d more than suit my brother. She understood the score. That was rare, even with daughters in our world who were kept in cloud cuckooland by overprotective daddies sometimes.
“I thought your father was lying.”
