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“You’re allowed to grieve your sister. You’re allowed to miss her. You’re even allowed to be angry with her.”
Her eyebrows rise a notch. “How did you—”
“Because I’ve been there. I’ve grieved my own losses. I still am. Grief isn’t something that just goes away on its own. It doesn’t come with an expiration date.”
She opens her mouth, then shuts it. I can understand her hesitation. I haven’t exactly encouraged these kinds of vulnerable conversations in the history of our relationship. But now that we’re here, it doesn’t feel quite as threatening as I would’ve guessed.
“It’s okay. You can ask me.”
Her gaze softens. “Who did you lose?”
When was the last time Ichoseto talk about them? When was the last time I willingly thought about them? Their memories live in a dark, locked box in my heart and that’s where I thought they’d always stay. But as soon as Emma asks the question, the lid of that box goes flying open and I’m talking before I even realize it.
“My mother and my brother.”
“Both?” she gasps.
“At the same time. Car accident.”
She shivers from head to toe. “No…” When she grabs my hand, warm droplets of soapy water splash onto my face. “That’s how I lost Sienna.”
I happen to know exactly how her sister died. It was all in the file that Kirill handed me months ago when I requested an in-depth background check on Emma. But I still wantherto tell me. Facts on a sheet of paper—single-car collision, one death, young female pedestrian—don’t do it justice.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I rasp.
Emotions are warring on her face. The things that are hard to say fighting against the things that need to be said. Her lips move without making sound for a while.
“She was on a pedestrian crossing and… and…” Her eyelids close and she grips my hand a little tighter. When her eyes open again, they’re full of tears. “And there was a truck. It was orange, I remember that. An orange pick-up truck barreling around the corner towards us.” A tear glides down her cheek. “I heard the screech of tires and I froze. And Sienna, sh-she pushed me out of the way.” Her fingers are trembling. “She joked once that, when she said she’d die for me, she didn’t mean it literally. But shedid. She literally died to save me.”
“Emma.” She lifts her eyes to mine. “You and I have a lot in common.”
“What do you mean?”
“The car accident my mother and brother were involved in…Iwas the one who was supposed to be driving. It should have been me in the driver’s seat of the car that day. Not Leonid.”
She slides a little closer to me, her hand falling against the curve of my neck. “You blame yourself?”
“Don’t you?”
She bites her bottom lip. “Every single day.”
“Like I said—we have a lot in common.”
She laughs miserably. “I wish it had been something fun. Like being double-jointed or matching birthmarks or something.” Her hand never leaves my neck. The water is getting cold at this point and the soap suds are almost gone, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry it’s this instead,” she whispers. “But I’m glad you told me.”
The craziest thing isn’t that I did in fact tell her, although that’s insane in its own right. It’s that telling her feltgood.Cathartic. Healing.
“Is that how you inherited the, um… family business or whatever you call it.”
I nod. “I was seventeen at the time. Far too young to take control of either Bane or the Bratva. I just assumed that, after my father, my uncle Vadim would take over. It made sense. He was the one who held the whole operation together after the accident. But in the end, my father chose me. To this day, I still don’t know why.”
The furrow between her brows deepens. “Your dad seems… quiet.”
“The accident destroyed him. He might as well have died in that car with my mother and Leonid.”
“Sometimes, I think the same thing about Ben,” Emma confesses. “That stupid orange truck killed everything human about him, too. I suppose it’s the price you pay for loving someone that deeply.”
The bath salts feel like they’re burning my skin all of a sudden. But it’s got nothing to do with the water; it’s got everything to do with Emma’s words.
