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When Mom was alive, I felt like I didn’t have to. I had her. What else could I need?
“The two of us against the world, Rayne,”she’d say. Usually in conjunction with a trip to the grocery store or when we had to figure out how to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom.
The two of us against the world.
Until now. Now, it’s just me.
A door in the hallway opens just as I’m reaching the back door. I think it might be Alexis or Lana coming back, but instead, I hear Mitchell.
“They all went to sleep, so we’ll have to be quiet,” he says in a slurred whisper. From where he’s at, he can see the empty dining room but not me standing by the back door. “I used to have a whole sound system setup in the guest house so I could unwind once everyone was in bed, but Rayne put an end to that.”
I freeze at the sound of my name.
“That sucks,” Dustan says. “Lex was worried Rayne was going to try to come stay with us after their mom died. At least you have a guest house for her. We just have the guest room downstairs. We would’ve been bringing in a third roommate.”
Mitchell snorts. “The realtor called the guesthouse the ‘mother-in-law suite.’ ‘Loser sister-in-law suite’ is more accurate.”
I step back further into the shadows, tears burning the backs of my eyes. I knew Mitchell wasn’t thrilled I was here, but hearing it phrased so callously is a different level entirely.
I hold my breath until the men move into another part of the house. The moment they’re gone, I turn around to leave. To retreat back to my “loser suite,” knowing no one in this entire fucking house gives a damn about me.
Then I notice the keys hanging on the hook.
A shiny red keychain, the exact same shade as Mitchell’s car.
Before I can think too much about it, I snatch the keys off the hook and walk outside. His prized Porsche is in the carport instead of its usual resting place in the garage. All the better for Dustan and Alexis to admire it when they pulled up to the house earlier this evening.
I climb inside, adjust the seat for my shorter legs, and let the engine rip.
Maybe Mitchell hears the car rumble down the drive, maybe he doesn’t. I really wouldn’t know. Because as soon as I back out of the parking space, I slam on the gas and squeal away.
27
KIRILL
After Rayne left, I spent the rest of the evening with Ilya. He asked about her a few times, but I nipped those conversations in the bud every time.
Still, it’s making it even harder for me to deny the effect she has had on him. How much better he’s been doing in the last week…
Fuck that, though. I’m making the right choice. Shifting Rayne back into the “employee” box.Starting over. No matter how fine things might seem now, I know what it looks like when I let a woman distract me.
Of course, Daria wasn’t a woman. She was seventeen. Still a girl, and in any case, far too innocent for my world. I was only a year older, eighteen and well on my way to taking over the Bratva from my father—but my hands were already stained with blood a hundred times over.
Daria’s dad saw what she did not or would not see, and he didn’t want his daughter anywhere near me. He tried to forbid us from being together. My own father did the same.
“Forget about that bitch and focus,” my dad said not long before Ilya’s accident. “You don’t get to be some lovesick teenager. We’re always under threat. You can’t let down your guard with these monsters around.”
But it was too late. My guard was down. And the monster was already inside.
The difference is, Ilya paid the price for my mistake.
In the years since his accident, I forgot what it felt like to be so reckless. I forgot how it felt to be consumed with an urge you can’t deny, no matter the cost of indulging it.
Until Rayne.
I tip my glass back, letting the alcohol burn down my throat. “I don’t get to be some lovesick teenager,” I say, repeating my father’s words.
I hate the bastard, but he had a point.
