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“So Archie is the big hope,” Mila says in disgust. “Can we even trust him? He betrayed us once. What’s stopping him from doing it again?”
I smile cruelly. “I have his daughters. Both of them.”
Then I descend the hill to my victorious army.
Mila and I climb into the Hummer in front of Dima’s. We drive away from the fire, leaving it as an orange glow against the night sky behind us.
As the silence settles, I glance at my sister. Her face is a mask of steel. She stares into the middle distance ahead of the truck as we eat up road with a careful blankness. I know how hard she’s fought to keep her mind that blank. That empty.
The past can’t hurt you if you don’t let yourself remember it.
“Mila?”
“Hm?”
“Is this what you want to be doing ten years from now?”
She scowls. “Have you asked Dima the same thing?”
“Dima has a life.”
She tenses. “What does that mean?”
“It means he goes out. He fucks, he drinks, he fights. And one day, he’s going to find a woman and he’s going to settle down with her,” I say as gently as I can manage. “Unless…unless you do something about it.”
Her scowl hardens long past the point of being believable. “I… I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
She pointedly turns away from me and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Ilarion.”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him. I know what’s keeping you tethered to this Bratva, and it sure as hell isn’t me. It isn’t loyalty to the cause or love of the game, and God knows it isn’t for the sake of family tradition. It’s for him. Admit the truth, Mila.”
“Shut up.”
“Mila—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
I fall silent. The sound of the engine churns all around us. Mila picks at her nails again and again until I hear a hiss of pain and look down to see she’s torn one clean off. Blood trickles onto her pant leg.
“Mila.”
“There’s no point, okay?” she says in a broken rasp. “I can’t…I can’t be with him the way a man wants a woman to be with him.”
“I want to see you happy. You haven’t been happy in a very long time.” I cast a quick glance at her. “Except for when he’s around.”
She sighs, and her eyes flutter closed. “I haven’t been happy since the first momenthe…touched me.”
It’s been a while since she’s spoken of it. The air in the car feels electric now. A lethal charge in every breath.
“I wish you’d told me sooner. I wish I could have stopped it.”
“You loved him.”
“I loved you more.” I gently nudge her. “I still do.”
She gives me a small smile. “I know that. Thank you. But what happened is a secret that I intend to take to my grave. And if I were to be with Dima, I would need to tell him the truth and…I just can’t do that.”
