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As the enormity of what she’s done sinks in, she buries her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking lightly.
“I…” she starts to mumble.
“Speak up, Charleigh. We can’t hear you,” Niko says in his soothing voice.
He may not look or sound as frustrated as me, but I know he is.
We are trying to help this woman, but if she keeps fucking things up, we’ll have to throw in the towel.
Regardless of how we feel about her.
She’s becoming a risk we can’t afford to keep around.
“How… how do you guys do it?” she asks in a small voice. “How do you exist in this world, where your parents are murdered and you can’t go after the man who did it? How do you wake up and go through every day with so much hate in your heart all the color has gone out of everything?”
I know what she’s describing. Yeah, we know how it is when you think you’ll never be able to smile again. But if you let the hate destroy you, you’ll never get your revenge.
I stop my pacing and take a seat. I can’t risk a migraine today. That would fuck things up worse than they already are.
“Charleigh, don’t you know I suffer every day? I mean, I can’t speak for my brothers, but I’m guessing it’s the same for them on some level.”
I look up at Kir and Niko and they nod at what I just shared, something I’ve never, ever said out loud. Hey, I might be a bastard, but I feel shit like anybody else.
“Every day we get closer to the revenge we seek for our parent’s death. It’s not easy. My father was bigger than life. I feel like he’s sitting on my shoulder every day. I put massive pressure on myself. People call me a workaholic. I feel like the man can see my every move. Sometimes I’m so angry he was murdered that I can’t even see straight. But I don’t let that cloud my judgement. If I fucked up, I’d never get to avenge his death.”
I pull her out of the chair where she’s sitting and bring her over to the sofa where I can wrap my arms around her.
Initially, she stiffens in my embrace, as if my touch stings, but a few whispered words help her gradually relax. She drops her head onto my shoulder, and my brothers leave us to go take care of the situation she caused.
It feels good that she’s trusting me, and that I’m able to make her at ease. But I have to wonder, for myself, what it means for me, too.
On one hand, I want to run probably as much as Charleigh does. But on the other, I think I am finally learning what I really want.
And that’s scary as hell.
* * *
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Vadik
I take Charleigh’s chin and turn it toward me. Since before she went crazy on the second’s hand, I’ve been unable to take my eyes off her lips, perfectly shaped, colored with a light red stain that almost makes them look bruised.
When she whacked the man with her high heel, the look of satisfaction that washed over her wild face when the sound of crushing bones filled the room solidified the fact that the old Charleigh is gone. The new Charleigh has a blackened heart obsessed with revenge. She is able to fuck with abandon but has no capacity for true connection, and doesn’t hesitate to stand up to men twice her size as if she has some sort of death wish.
Which she probably does.
After yesterday’s conversation, when she was unable to respond to my brothers and me expressing our care for her, I told myself I’d keep my distance. I don’t like the feelings I have for her. They will bring nothing but trouble for me and the Alekseev name.
But she looks so wild and insolent with her hair askew and rebellion in her eyes. She has a new strength in her. Now, if only it can be channeled for her own good.
So far, most every decision she’s made has been a shitty one.
Like maiming thePakhan’s second. I have half a mind to buy Charleigh a one-way plane ticket someplace very far away and tell her to disappear for the rest of her life, because that’s how long she’s going to be hunted now. She made her own bed and until we cut her loose, we Alekseevs have to lie in it with her. Every crazy thing she does reverberates through my brothers and me, then to our team, and down to our myriad businesses.
She’s got to learn she’s not living in a silo. Every action causes a reaction. Actually, multiple reactions. That’s how our lives and businesses work, each component moving in time with the next like a well-oiled machine. She has to work with us or… not at all.
But I haven’t given up hope. She can be tamed. And when that wild energy is harnessed and focused, she will be more of a force to contend with than she already is.
