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Georgie—her husband. It was strange to me that she married a man who wanted to be called Georgie like some five-year-old in a Stephen King novel. His name didn’t fit his face either. He was a hulking man with dark curls from his Jewish mother and the booming voice of his Italian father who’d also passed down his moving company legacy into Georgie’s capable hands.
That legacy inevitably meant the furniture my sister had sent over to my new apartment was secondhand, castoffs that would have ended up on the street for either the city to claim or some struggling recent university grad to drag back to their apartment.
A secondhand mattress I’d cover with my dead mother’s linens.
An old sofa that had been destined for the curb.
A cracked, six-drawer dresser with only five drawers that worked.
A kitchen table with paint stains.
My throat started to burn, but I swallowed against the lump and made enough room to say, “Thanks,” hoping I didn’t sound as ungrateful as I felt.
It wasn’t Joy’s fault of course. It was my own for being too young and too arrogant to see what everyone else had tried to tell me about Nicolai. I was now one of many—a small club of Nicholas Ivanov’s castoffs who had eventually aged out of his interest, left destitute and jobless with the promise that running our mouths would make our pathetic situations even worse.
What a treat.
I wondered if they’d all been so unceremoniously dumped right before the holidays or if I was just lucky.
Most of them were English, though. I’d seen a few of his sorrow-faced exes from time to time, watching us from behind a café counter. He seemed to enjoy frequenting their places of business, and at the time, I’d believed they’d been the ones to break his heart.
Now I knew he was just a sociopath who enjoyed emotional torture.
I had never been more grateful to see the wintery gloom of New York in my entire life.
“…come over for dinner. I can take you shopping soon. I left you with some stuff for your kitchen, but Uncle Raymond said the stove was giving the last tenant issues, so you’ll probably be stuck with the toaster oven and microwave for a while. Izzy and Isaac are excited to see you, though, so I hope you can make time for them once you settle in.”
I blinked, coming back to the conversation partway through, and I tried not to wince. I loved my niece and nephew as family, but the most experience I had with kids were the ones I had been tutoring in London. They were well off, half of them from some old, titled family. Their parents tossed money around like it literally grew on some bush in their backyard.
They attended lessons, said thank you, and went on their way.
No bonding necessary.
My niece and nephew knew me as the foreign uncle who’d send them random care packages from England. What the hell would they possibly expect from me now?
“Can you not look like I’ve just asked you to lick the bottom of a shoe? They’re my children,” Joy snapped.
I let out a quiet rush of air and shook my head. “I’m sorry. This is just…a lot. I didn’t think I’d end up here.”
“Because you never listen—”
“Can we please save the lecture until I’ve slept a full night?” I begged, knowing it was probably unfair.
I owed her more than I was comfortable with, and I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to repay her. Especially since it was obvious her resentment over the way I’d left was still fresh and painful.
Instead of arguing, Joy deflated, and the look she gave me was so full of pity it hurt. She reached over and laid a hand on my knee and squeezed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t say a word. I just nodded, then turned my gaze out the window and tried not to lock eyes with the stranger in the car next to us.
Chapter2
Ten miles took forty-five minutes, which wasn’t something unfamiliar to me. London traffic was just as bad if not worse. If I hadn’t been exhausted and ready to throw myself into the Hudson, I might have suggested the subway, but for all that it was wasting money I couldn’t afford to pay back, the cab saved my sanity.
At least it saved it until we pulled up to the building.
From the outside, it looked just like any other block of apartments in Brooklyn, sitting on the corner leading to everywhere and nowhere. But I saw the cracks. I saw the busted windows and the homemade insulation trying to stopper up the gaps. I saw the way the edges of the stone steps were crumbling and the way it took the person at the door three tries to get it open.
Uncle Raymond’s building wasn’t as tall as some of the others, and its pale stone walls met the rich brick of a second building without any finesse. The stoops were very much the same though—sort of old and dilapidated with more lack of care than history in the cracked stone.
