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“No, why would I? You haven’t shared that information with me. It’s so much easier to interrupt my conversation and drag me away by the arm like a fucking child on a playground following a predator to his car.”
“Stop behaving like a child and I’ll stop treating you like one.”
“You’re the one holding some old grudge from school!”
“It’s not my grudge. Krystiyan was the Miles Griffin of our school—he was the connection for contraband. And he had a partner—Mykah Leonty, you remember him from Apothecary?”
She nods.
“They got themselves in hot water selling tainted product. A girl in our class OD’d on fentanyl. Somehow Krystiyan walked away without so much as a slap on the wrist, while Mykah lost two fingers and was expelled from school.”
“You’re saying Krystiyan sold him out.”
“He’s a back-stabber. And I’ll tell you something else—he’s connected to the Malina. Whether he was involved in what happened to Ivan or not, he fucking knew about it. We are not EVER working with him, under any circumstances.”
“Understood,boss,”Sabrina says, tossing back the last of her champagne.
“Don’t be like that.”
“How do you want me to be, Adrik? You act like I’m independent, until the moment I’m not doing exactly what you want. We make choices together until I don’t agree with you. Stop the charade already.”
Before I can reply, she’s set her empty champagne flute on the tray of a passing waiter, and turned and walked away.
Perfect. I’ve managed to alienate the High Table, turn away a potential supplier, and seriously piss off the woman I love.
Well done, Adrik. That’s got to be some kind of record.
* * *
33
SABRINA
I’m so fucking frustrated I could scream.
I head to the bathrooms to calm down, but several minutes of pacing the powder room only makes me more agitated. The candy-colored room feels like a padded cell, if Marie Antoinette were in charge of decorating. The gilt mirrors, upholstered walls, and frilled furniture press in on me from all sides, the air heavily perfumed with the scent of overblown lilies.
I feel powerless and hamstrung—tasked with impossible feats, my legs cut out from under me every time I gain traction.
Adrik acts like he’s so rational, but he makes emotional decisions like everyone else. We work with people we don’t like or trust all the time—why is Krystiyan any different? Adrik made us partner with Zigor and look how that turned out.
As I’m silently fuming, washing my hands over and over at the sink, Sloane comes and stands at the mirror next to mine.
I look at our twin reflections: both of us dark-haired, olive-skinned, wearing black gowns with a slit up the thigh. I could be looking at myself thirty years in the future.
Sloane’s eyes meet mine in the mirror.
“Trouble in paradise?” she says.
Ever the spy. She was probably watching Adrik’s and my entire conversation.
Adrik respects Sloane more than almost anyone. Probably more than he respects me. If I were going to be jealous of anything, I should be jealous of that.
“I might have made a mistake coming here.”
“Maybe you did,” Sloane says, evenly.
I turn to face her, anger rising all over again.
