AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s madness. I’m strung-out, pathetic, a goddamn embarrassment. What would my father say if he could see me?
He knew something was up, with all my texting and how secretive I became with my phone. He’s a goddamn detective. I knew if he spied so much as Adrik’s name on the screen, he’d never stop hounding me about it.
He didn’t believe my bullshit story about why I was three days late coming home from Dubrovnik. To my cousins’ credit, they kept their mouths shut, under what I’m sure was intense interrogation—even Cara, who’s allergic to lying, to the point where she will literally break out in hives.
I told my brother the truth. Damian always has my back. All he said was, “You know how Dad feels about Russians.”
Luckily the Petrovs don’t seem to share the same prejudice against Americans.
Adrik’s mother has been nothing but warm to me. She has the thickest accent of any of the Petrovs, and unlike Sloane, she doesn’t seem to take part in the family business. She has Adrik’s coloring—olive skin, blue-black hair—but her features are softer, her voice gentler, her movements slow and almost dream-like.
She goes for long walks down on the beach in the mornings, carrying a little sketchbook with a nub of a pencil tucked in the spine. The pages are already filling up with drawings of the view off the cliffs, the black and white Oystercatchers that pick their way down the beach, and the seals that roll out of the waves to sun themselves on the rocks.
She’s immensely affectionate to her boys, rarely passing Kade or Adrik without ruffling a hand through their hair, dropping down on her husband’s lap on the sofa instead of sitting beside him, curled up against him in a little ball as if she were still a kid herself.
She reminds me of my own mom—steady and calm.
Dominik Petrov is nothing like my dad. He strikes me as someone who never would have chosen this life at all if he hadn’t been born a Petrov.
His respect for Ivan is obvious—I suppose loyalty to his brother has been his motivation all this time. The jagged scar down his cheek is one of the many evidences of the cost of this service. The lines of exhaustion on his face in moments of repose make me think he would rather rest than rule. But maybe the people best suited to lead are always the most reluctant.
Neither of them has Adrik’s ferocity. There’s an extremism in Adrik that draws me—we share the same abhorrence for rules and restrictions, or even reasonable restraints. I want to find the edge, even if I risk flying over it. I’ll never trust what can and can’t be done, until I try for myself.
I head upstairs for a proper shower, then dress in shorts and an old Cubbies’ jersey that only partly covers the scrapes on my chest and arms. Nix eyes the marks when she comes in from her own shower, but doesn’t say anything, roughly drying her flaming hair with one of the faded beach towels from the linen closet.
She steps into a pair of ragged cut-offs, the long muscles of her thighs flexing. Nix is built like an Olympian. I’m jealous of her athleticism—physical disadvantage is the one aspect of femininity I loathe. Nix is the only woman I know as strong as most men.
Well, maybe Ilsa, too. She certainly held her own amongst the Enforcers at Kingmakers. I don’t know how she stood living in the Guardhouse with all those overgrown frat boys. I would have perished from the smell alone.
“You’ll like the shopping on Hemlock Street,” Nix says. “They’ve got some cool little boutiques. Lots of coastal shit—knit bikinis and straw visors and jewelry made out of shark’s teeth.”
“Sounds great,” I say.
Catching the lack of enthusiasm, Nix glances up from the floor where she sat down to pull on her sneakers. “What’s wrong? I thought you liked shopping?”
“I do.”
“Well god knows I’m not doing it for me. If you’d rather go somewhere else, none of that bougie shit’s gonna fit me anyway.”
I shrug. “I just wanna hang out with you. Doesn’t matter to me what we do.”
“Yeah?” Nix looks up at me from under the cloud of her already frizzing hair. Nix’s hair is the texture of cable yarn, with each strand curling in a different direction. This close to the ocean, she gets Diana Ross volume in a shade somewhere between Fanta and a fresh tangerine. “You don’t wanna ask the guys if they want to come with us?”
I keep my face expressionless and my voice casual. “I dunno. I guess we could if you want.”
“Only if you want,”Nix imitates my blasé attitude. “Makes no difference to me whether I get to scam on Adrik all afternoon …”
I laugh. “Invite them, then. Is that what you want to hear?”
“No,” Nix says, grinning at me mischievously. “I want to hear what kind of heat Adrik is packing to have you waking up before seven a.m. to sneak out of our room—”
“Who said we’re fucking?”
“Unless you took up roller skating, it’s pretty obvious,” Nix says, shooting a pointed glance at my skinned knees. “That and your guilty fucking face.”
“What’s guilt?” I say airily. “Never heard of it.”
“I’ll write out some definitions for you,” Nix says. “A few words you should learn: ‘moderation,’ ‘safety standards,’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
