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“I’m not—”
“Let’s do a quick summary,” I interrupt him, holding up my free hand and ticking off my fingers one by one. “We have Rico, who has spent the last six years not letting anyone get close to him. Then we have Eli, who is fucking insane. But he didn’t even need to work on that because Raina is a bloody lunatic too.”
Jace huffs out a laugh. “You’re one to talk.”
“My point exactly. Out of the four of us, I am the most emotionally crippled one of us all. But you… You feel things all the time and you still function.” I stare at him in desperation and disbelief. “How do you do it? How do you kiss and fuck and cuddle a girl and then just walk away and move on to the next one?”
A mischievous glint shines in his eyes, and a smile tugs at the corner of his lips as he echoes, “Cuddle?”
“It was an example. A figure of speech.”
“Sure it was.” He grins. But before I can locate the nearest knife and stab my infuriating little brother, he moves on and actually answers the question. “Like I said earlier, I just remind myself that they don’t matter. That they’re not important.”
Cold fear seeps through my bones and an even stronger sense of dread pulses through me. Because the moment the words have left his lips, I know without a shred of doubt that that method will never work for me.
Because Alina matters.
Alina is important.
31
ALINA
The scent of garlic and herbs hangs over the kitchen. I stir the chicken strips and the chopped vegetables in the pan before quickly checking on the rice. Then I cast a glance up towards the clock. Everything should be ready at the same time.
A loud bang sounds, making me jump in surprise.
“Enough is enough!” Maksim snaps.
Twisting away from the stove, I glance back at the table where my two brothers and my two cousins are seated. All of them were drinking and chatting quietly while I was making dinner, but Maksim’s patience has apparently run out now. His hand is still curled in a fist on the tabletop where he slammed it down, causing that loud bang.
“The bastard has been coming at us for months already,” Maksim continues. “And shit has fucking escalated these past two weeks.”
I don’t need to ask to know who the term ‘the bastard’ refers to. Kaden. And Maksim is right. Things have escalated. For my brothers and cousins, at least.
It has been almost a week since Kaden replied with that ominous text that he was going to collect later with steep interest, and almost two weeks since I crawled into his house in a chastity belt and then left it utterly fucked and thoroughly cuddled. And Kaden hasn’t done anything to mess with me since then. Not one single thing. My brothers and cousins, however, have been on the receiving end of his increasingly intense attacks.
“And we can’t even retaliate properly because of that damn video he has hanging over your head like a fucking sword,” Maksim finishes. Slamming his fist down onto the tabletop again, he lets out a vicious string of curses in Russian.
“Trust me, I’m aware,” Mikhail replies from where he’s seated at the head of the table. His blue eyes sharpen as he fixes our cousin with a pointed look. “But what do you expect me to do?”
“Attack! We attack their house in full force and break every bone in their bodies until Kaden deletes the video.”
“We tried that, remember? But they somehow knew that we were coming.”
Guilt twists in my stomach. Turning back to the hissing pan, I stir the chicken and vegetables again while I try to convince myself that tipping off Kaden that time had been the right thing to do.
“He’s right,” Konstantin says with a defeated sigh. “No matter what we do, Kaden is always three steps ahead. Every time we try something, he sees it coming and turns the tables on us.”
Maksim glares at him, clearly annoyed that he sided with Mikhail instead of his own twin. “Then what do you suggest we do?”
“I don’t know. But brute attacks clearly aren’t working. We need to fight smarter.”
“And we need to do it fast,” Anton adds. “It’s impacting Mikhail’s grades.”
Shock pulses through me and I drop the spatula in surprise. It clatters down on the counter next to the stove while I spin around to face the table again and stare at Mikhail with wide eyes.
“Your grades are slipping?” I blurt out, my heart suddenly pounding.
