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Kirill bent his head, taking in my wild, roving eyes as he pushed my hanging hair out my face. “How bad?”
“He’s in trouble with some people, bad people. Something to do with money, losing everything . . . my trust fund.” I finally met Kirill’s probing gaze. “It’s all gone. There’s nothing left. Everything my mother left me. Gone.”
He tensed. “Everything?”
I nodded miserably. It wasn’t even the worst part of the shit show tonight had become.
Kirill gathered himself like he always did and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. There’s still time to apply for scholarships—”
“In what?” I cut in. “I have no talents, and I’m not smart. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.” My voice was ugly and pathetic. “And it’s not just the money he’s lost. There’s more. Borrowed money, loans, I don’t know how much. Huge amounts . . . more than he can find to pay back. He’s got to give them something, or they’ll hurt him.”
“Karma’s a bitch,” Kirill said flatly, his tone unapologetic.
He’d hated my father since the first day I’d come to school with a black eye over two years ago, and their relationship hadn’t improved.
“It’s not himself he wants to give them.” The quiet confession was like a bomb detonating.
“What the fuck?” Kirill pushed away from me, a violet storm of energy collecting and exploding out of him.
My dull tone was at odds with the whirling dervish of Kirill’s anger. “He needs something to give them while he gets the money. Some time to make sure they don’t hurt him.”
He paused his pacing, his hand bunched into painful fists. “Who did he borrow money from? Did he tell you?”
“He said it was Russians. Gangsters or something. The mob, I don’t know. Mafia, out of New York. He said the name Viktor. He said Viktor would take me as a down payment. Who the fuck is Viktor?” I couldn’t breathe. It was as if an invisible noose was being lowered over my head. “I’ll run. I’ll leave tonight. Henry’s scattered, and he’s not thinking clearly. If I go now, I can be pretty far by morning. I need to borrow some money.”
I was pacing too now, and Kirill grabbed my arms to stop me. He guided me back to a seat, and I folded into it.
“They call themselves bratva,” he said quietly. “A brotherhood of bastards.” I was about to ask him how he knew when he let out a long sigh and scrubbed his hand over his face.“You’re not going anywhere, Molly. You can’t leave your mother.” He folded his long body and captured my eyes with his. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You’ll take care of it . . . how?” I blinked at him, confused.
“My father. I’ll go to my father. Ask him to help.”
Ice washed through me at his words, and I shook my head. I didn’t know much about Kirill’s father, only that they didn’t speak. I knew his mother had taken him away when he was young, and they’d eked out a hardscrabble existence in Woodhaven, across the tracks from where I lived.
My house on the hill and my father, Henry Madison, local investor and millionaire, had all been a lie. He was a crook and a criminal willing to toss his daughter to the wolves to buy himself time to run. Kirill had never had a penny to his name, but his life was honest.
I blinked away tears of shame.“No. You can’t. I won’t let you,” I said, knowing I was fighting a losing battle. There were few people as stubborn as me, but Kirill Lewis was one of them.
We should never have been friends—the rebellious rich girl and the track star scholarship kid. Somehow, despite that, we’d become more than friends. We were family. If I knew anyone in this world, it was Kirill, which was how I knew he wouldn’t listen.
“It wasn’t a question, Molly.” He knelt before me and wrapped his long arms around my legs.
I craved his touch.“You shouldn’t ever go there, even in your mind. That is not happening.”
“What isn’t happening is you paying for your father’s crimes. No one will lay a hand on you, Molly. No one. Nothing matters more than that,” he said, meeting my distraught eyes. “Don’t you know? You’re mine, Mallory, and mine only.”
“He’ll use this as an excuse to get back into your life. All this time you’ve been resisting will have been for nothing,” I said, clutching his shoulders.
The grief in his eyes matched mine. There’d been a terrible loss. Something had been stolen from us in the dark while we weren’t watching—the bright and shining future we’d been planning.
“It doesn’t matter. We have no other choice. I’m going now. No point putting it off.”
He stood, and I jumped up. He looked resigned and so much older than nineteen as a strand of moonlight illuminated his face—a face so dear to me. His too big nose and high cheekbones. His pale skin dotted with beauty marks. His slashing dark eyebrows too regal to belong to a teenager. All those disjointed features were precious, every single one.
He was so tall, but his body hadn’t gotten the message. He was too lean, a reed in the wind. His face was severe, his dark eyes too knowing for his age. He was a teen caught between boyhood and the future, his body trying desperately to catch up. Every now and then, I caught a glimpse of the man Kirill Lewis would become, and it made me shiver.
I couldn’t wait to spend my life with him.
