AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How is this useful?” I fling my arms wide and my wrist smacks into the door frame. Pain ricochets up my arm, but I ignore it. In the other room, Noelle gasps at the thud.
Piper looks towards the sound and then back at me. “Just give me more time with her. If she can’t tell me anything about Benjamin, then I’ll… I’ll let it go.”
“Yeah, right,” I snort.
“I will! You think I’m delusional, but I’m not. I’m only poking around here because I really believe she might be able to help us find Benjamin.”
“I know you truly believe it. I just also happen to know you’re wrong.”
“Then let me be wrong!” she cries out. “Let me stay here. If you’re right, I’ll tell you. Actually, I won’t even need to. You’ll be chanting, ‘I told you so’ before I can get the words out.”
“I’m not here because I want to be right. Of course I don’t want to be—” I grab her arm. “Come on. This has gone on long enough. We’re leaving.”
She jerks away from me. This time, her arm slides free and she stumbles back a few steps. “I’m not leaving her.”
Sirens blare outside, penetrating through the thin walls as if the ambulance is roaring down the hallway towards us. “And I’m not leaving you here,” I fire back.
Piper stares at me and then shrugs, as if to say,What now?
The decision appears in my mind fully formed. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Piper safe. If that means bringing Noelle’s comatose body with us… fine.
“So grab your friend,” I grit out. “She’s coming with us. She can stay at my house temporarily. But if she knows what’s good for herself, she’ll stay out of my fucking way.”
Piper is shaking her head before I can even finish. “Noelle is scared. Being around you—in your house—is not going to help. I’ll stay here with her and then—”
“Get kidnapped right along with her?” I lean forward, forcing her green eyes to gaze directly into mine. “That’s what you’re choosing right now, Piper. And what you choose for yourself is what you choose for my baby. It’s what you choose forme,too. You’re choosing for me to lose both of my children. Don’t you fucking see that?”
I want her to argue. To get angry and fight back. But instead, her eyes go misty. She reaches out to touch my cheek, but I shift away.
“Timofey,” she rasps, “I miss him, too. That’s why I’m doing this. So you don’t have to lose anyone else. I’m doing this so—”
My phone rings, and I don’t even look before I answer it.
Anything to get out of this conversation. To give myself a minute to tuck these feelings into the box where they belong.
Benjamin is gone. There’s nothing I can do about it. Revenge is the only path forward.
I press the phone to my ear. “What?”
“What on earth are you doing in the slums?”
I stiffen and look back over my shoulder. I’m surprised when I don’t see Sergey standing behind me, a haughty scowl on his face. When will he stop being this shadow over my life?
“You followed me,” I growl.
“Easy now,” he croons. “Yes, I followed you from the meeting. But I’m just here to talk. Not judge your choice in… I presume you’re here seeing a mistress?”
Of course that’s what he thinks. Sergey had more than his fair share of women on the side. From time to time, I saw them leaving the mansion early in the morning, sneaking out of the guest room while his wife was asleep in the master.
“You couldn’t have found a woman to fuck a little closer to home?” he snorts. “Then again, you probably didn’t want me finding out about her. Don’t worry, son—your secret is safe with me.”
“Nothing is safe with you.”
If he hears me, he chooses to ignore it. “Are you going to come down and talk to me or do I have to keep skulking around in your shadow?”
Piper is looking at me, her brow knit together in a question I don’t want to answer.
I don’t want her to pity me. I also don’t want Sergey to know she’s here with me. And I don’t want to leave her here alone.
