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She’s captivated by her, adores her with every single cell that makes her who she is. So much so that I could feel it vibrate in my own body. It took every ounce of control I could grab to shootnextto Rachel’s head and not right at the back of her neck.
I need Rose to find the Volkov brothers, and I need Rachel alive to control Rose. They should both be dead—one for never loving me like she should have, the other for receiving that love I deserved.
“That went pretty much according to plan.” Lik’s relaxed voice cuts through my thoughts and I turn to him. I adore his voice. It’s as good as warm whiskey on a cold night; it’s as sweet as honey and makes me want to lick him all over.
His eyes are narrowed on the bullet lodged into the hardwood floor. “Except that, maybe.”
“I told you she’d have a gun,” I reply calmly.
“Never said you’d be the one firing it,” he mumbles.
He rubs a hand against his chest and crinkles his nose. If I wasn’t still fuming from the ocean-eyed, cursed siren that just left my house, I would find it soothing enough to forget about all this. How can a man so temperamental be so cute?
“So, she doesn’t like being told what to do,” he nods. “I see it now. You did try to warn me. And you said she was good with a gun, but she didn’t shoot me.”
He walks to me as soon as I sit on the sofa. I put the safety in place on Rose’s gun, but I can’t get myself to put it away. It’s warm, and I want to keep imagining it’s because of how tight she was holding it.
Lik stands between my legs. He grabs the gun and puts it on the table before running his fingers through my hair, messing up my gelled-back style.
“She’s beautiful,” he admits. “You didn’t mention that.”
Lik has been pretending to be friends with Rose for two weeks, and it’s the first time he mentions it. He’s been taking his task seriously. To find something we could use against her. I always knew about Rachel, I just never realized how deep it was. Not until he texted me about it today. I didn’t waste a second. I found where she lived and got her as soon as she crossed her front door.
My boyfriend is right. Rose is beautiful, and I didn’t mention it to him.
She is as beautiful as a sunset. You see it every day, you know it’s coming, and you can expect it all you want, yet it still touches your heart. It forces you to appreciate its beauty. It surprises you differently every time. It brings emotions out of you, but you’re not even sure why.
Some people spend their lives photographing the sunset every evening, observing how the minor differences and shifts affect everything around it. The colors, the shadows, the light in your eyes blinding you just enough to forget about yourself but not enough to push you away. The sort of light you want to look at until you’re burning up. Some people are so passionate about the sunset, they chase it all their lives just to come back empty-handed. You can’t catch it; for you can’t capture such beauty.
And the thing with the sunset? It affects every single soul on this planet—even my boyfriend, who has never touched a woman in his life.
“I should have known,” he carries on. Not much can stop Lik when he starts unweaving his thoughts. He’s a chatterbox. Someone has to make conversation in our relationship.
Hands still in my hair, he brings my face to his warm chest and keeps playing with the strands while he talks above me. “I should have known because her twin is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”
It makes me growl against his chest, but I still don’t say anything. Jake White is identical to Rose, only the male version. Lik has met him before, though he’d never met Rose. I know he’s always found him attractive, and he would have chosen him over me any day of the week, if only Jake were gay.
“You know her well, Sam. There are many things you can use against her. I can already see that she hates being in a weak position. She clearly doesn’t like being saved; we can use that to our advantage because she won’t go to anyone for help. This is your revenge, and you deserve it.”
He got that one right. If there’s one thing Rose hates, it’s being saved. She resents being seen as a victim, as someone needing help from a kind soul. She doesn’t beg; she doesn’t fold. She would rather die out of stubbornness than call for help. One day, it’ll be her demise, brought in by yours truly.
She didn’t let me help her when I found her. Six months later, I still can’t sleep at night wondering about the lies Viktor Volkov must have told her to keep her. The head of the Volkov family is smart, cunning. The worst is…she listened. She almost had me killed, and for that, I want to kill her. If I didn’t need her to find the brothers, I would have her warm, barely beating heart in the palm of my hand. I would watch it desperately try to take its last beat, and laugh in her face that she should have loved me. That she should have chosen me and not them.
Lik is talking above me, and I can hear his heartbeat accelerating as he gets worked up for me. I can feel his soft hands running up and down my neck, messing up my hair. My big arms are curled around his smaller frame. He’s not skinny in the slightest, but he looks small next to me. He talks, and he talks, but my thoughts drift to something else.
Rose didn’t have an ounce of emotion in her voice when she understood I had a contract on the Volkov brothers. I didn’t try to keep it a secret, because the bloody genius would have figured it out one way or another. She can’t be just a pretty face. No, she also has to have a brain that works in the most complicated way I’ve ever seen.
She wasn’t affected by the fact that I’ve been hired to kill them. I never knew her relationship with Aleksei.
But I know she chose Viktor over me.
And I want to know why she was hiding her emotions. Is she mad? Is she afraid for Viktor? Of him? Does she want to protect him? Or does she want to get her revenge on the man who held her hostage for almost two years? Who fucking knows how it works in that head of hers.
“Sam…Sam!”
I realize Lik has been trying to get me out of my thoughts, but I’m not sure for how long. I look up to him and his hands slide out of my hair, I can feel strands tickling my ears and I know he’s made a mess, as usual.
“You’ve gone silent again,” he sighs.
