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“But?” I countered.
“But,” she said, her voice now wavering. “Stupid girl came back for me.”
I ran my hand along my five o’clock shadow, even my soulless heart feeling bad for the girl with a pure heart.
Regretfully, I said, “What happened?”
Eili turned away, her dark brown hair with the shimmer coming back. It was the only thing I could see.
“I don’t know,” she said to the air. “I just know Markus said she’d be a gift…” She turned back around, and her golden eyes pierced my soul. The gold look spilled away to a hazy green. “For you, Lucius.”
I frowned.“What?”
“Markus said, ‘The girl was a gift for you.’”
I blinked. The brown-haired girl. The escort. The one Markus brought to the club. He had said that.
“I declined,” I said.
She glared at me. “Another’s body is not yours to decline, Bratva!”
I kept my mouth shut. There wasn’t anything I could say to that.
“Okay, well, we’re almost ther—” An alarm sounded, the blaring noise filling up the space.
Smoke started to billow from the hood, and it made my sister cough. Swatting smoke from my face, I looked for a place that was clear to land. There was not going to be much of a damn choice.
A clearing in a goddamn cow field was the only option. The helicopter started to spin as I pulled back the cyclic controls and prepared for what I knew would be a hard landing. Smashing the skids on the ground and losing one, I watched, terrified, as the blade caught the grass, causing the helicopter to flip over. The blade section went flying, and so did we.
I wrapped my body around my sister, holding on to her like bubble wrap.
I was thrown onto my back. The livestock fleed the area, huddling up against a wooden fence. Damn, the helicopter could have at least made a free burger or two, but no, the cows were just mocking us as we lay in their shit.
Taking a look at my aircraft, I cringed. It wasn’t on fire, but it was ruined.
Feeling a mix of disgust, worry, and a fuck ton of pain, I tested my arms. My sister seemed unharmed. She was lying on my chest, her petite body as light as a feather. Snow White wasn’t a feather. She was a goddamn weapon. When I held her, I felt every curve in my hands.
“Are you okay?”
My sister rose to her feet, surveying the whole lot of fucking nowhere. I knew I was a shit-talker, but I spat out actual shit this time. Vomiting, I flipped off the mound of beef and yanked off my shirt.
My sister’s eyes snapped to my back—the scars left by my father’s pain. Fuck. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted something not covered in shit. Eili gasped. The notion that she was an array of all colors from bruising and because she was reacting this way to my scars was ridiculous.
I turned my gaze away from her.
“Papa?” she said, running her light fingertips over the marred pink flesh.
I just nodded.
“It was the day Mama died,” I said, my voice numb, cold, and broken.
“Lucius, I am so sorry.” Her eyes welled with tears.
“Don’t be,” I gently wiped her tears with my thumb. “I learned what it meant to pay in blood that night.”
Eili frowned and shook her head.
“No, Lucius. We were young. Papa shouldn’t have put that on your shoulders. You were only fifteen.”
