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And now? Now I have to know Sin’s story.
There’s a knock on the door before Kris strides into the room. I scowl at the interruption.
“What’s the point of knocking if you’re just going to walk in?” I snap at him. Kris’s eyes fall to my hand, absently touching my scars, before he looks up to meet my gaze. He knows what they mean, what they are. His sleeves are rolled up to reveal clear skin on his arms, but I happen to know his scars aren’t visible to the naked eye like mine.
The first son received a different kind of abuse than the hated daughter, but Father left his mark on both of us.
“How did it go? What did you learn?” he asks even though we both know he could pull up the security for himself.
“He didn’t give me much, but that’s no surprise,” I answer, and Kris grunts, pulling up a chair opposite my desk.
“I didn’t ask if he said anything, I asked how it went and what you learned.”
It bothers me how well he knows me. He’s been trying to pry more lately into the business, into my mind. I don’t appreciate it.
He knows I’ve always been a closed person. It hasn’t been until recently that he’s been asking more questions and generally being a fucking nuisance, about my personal life as well as the business. If I didn’t absolutely need him, if he wasn’t my brother….
“You seemed a bit off when you walked out,” he continues, and I force myself to not shift in my seat.
“He called me a cunt, twice,” I reply, knowing it’ll get him off my case. Kris chuckles in understanding.
“So he’s figured out one of your buttons already. Nice job, Ging.”
I nod at his arm. “What happened with your arm anyway? Someone get the jump on you?” I bite back and am immediately rewarded with his glare. Ah, yes. We do know how to push each other's buttons, that is certain.
“Minor miscalculation,” he grits out. “Now, enough about this fucker. We have a date for the shipment. Meeting’s already arranged for the other stuff. Two weeks from today for 622.”
I sit up straighter in my seat.
“So soon?”
He shrugs. “Apparently, time is a factor. They can’t delay any longer, or we’ll miss the window and the account.”
I nod thoughtfully before pulling the key from my pocket to unlock my desk drawer. Starting to rifle through it, I feel rather than see Kris’s eyes on me.
“Galina,” he says, his accent thick over my given name as he continues in Russian, “We’ve always avoided politics. We should refuse this time, too. Keep doing what we do best. Why change a good thing?”
I frown at hearing our mother tongue, responding in English.
“You know as well as I do that if we refuse this, the Dutch government is going to shut us down. This is our Hail Mary.”
“Then we move. We’ve done it before and survived it all. We should stay out of this nonsense.”
I pull out the small notebook from my desk drawer then lock it back up before standing.
“When we did this, we both decided that I would run the business side,” I tell him, my voice sure and even. “I’ve done right by us thus far, huh? So fuck off, and trust me, okay?”
Our eyes clash, and I see his eye twitch before he nods curtly.
“Fine. And the one in the dungeon?”
Sin.
“Leave him for the day. Tomorrow, I’ll see if he’s ready to talk and try a few different techniques.”
Kris nods again then walks off. I doubt I’ve heard the last of it, but I know he won’t go against me. He knows as well as I do that we don’t have a choice this time. This job… Well, it isn’t our usual business, but it's a lucrative one. One that could change the shape of the company completely.
If we can pull this off, we’ll have all the government support we need. Off paper, at least, which is all that really matters.
