Too bad. The dress was nice, but my mind flashed back to our car ride, when her damp shirt had clung to her like a second skin and her nipples had strained against the decadent red lace of her bra. I’d meant what I’d said about her not being my type, but I’d enjoyed the view. I could imagine myself lifting that shirt, tugging her bra aside with my teeth, and closing my mouth around those sweet, hardened peaks—
I yanked myself out of that startling fantasy fast. What the fuck was wrong with me? That was Josh’s sister . Innocent, doe-eyed, and so sweet I could throw up. The total opposite of the sophisticated, jaded women I preferred both in and out of bed. I didn’t have to worry about feelings with the latter; they knew better than to develop any around me. Ava was nothing but feelings, with a hint of sass.
A ghost of a smile passed over my mouth when I remembered her parting shot earlier. I hope that stick in your ass punctures a vital organ.
Not the worst thing anyone’s said to me, not by a long shot, but more aggressive than I’d expected coming from her. I’d never heard her say a bad word to or about anyone before. I took perverse pleasure in the fact that I could rile her up so much.
“Alex,” Josh prompted.
“I don’t know, man.” I dragged my eyes away from Ava and her purple dress. “I’m not much of a babysitter.”
“Good thing she’s not a baby,” he quipped. “Look, I know this is a big ask, but you’re the only person I trust not to, you know—”
“Fuck her?”
“Jesus, dude.” Josh looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. “Don’t use that word in relation to my sister. It’s gross. But…yeah. I mean, we both know she’s not your type, and even if she was, you’d never go there.”
A sliver of guilt flashed through me when I remembered my errant fantasy a few moments ago. It was time for me to call up someone from my roster if I was fantasizing about Ava Chen, of all people.
“But it’s more than that,” Josh continued. “You’re the only person I trust, period, outside of my family. And you know how worried I am about Ava, especially considering this whole thing with her ex.” His face darkened. “I swear, if I ever see that fucker…”
I sighed. “I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry.”
I was going to regret this. I knew it, yet here I was, signing my life away, at least for the next year. I didn’t make a lot of promises, but when I did, I kept them. Committed myself to them. Which meant if I promised Josh I’d look after Ava, I’d fucking look after her, and I’m not talking about a text check-in every two weeks.
She was under my protection now.
A familiar, creeping sense of doom slithered around my neck and squeezed, tighter and tighter, until oxygen ran scarce and tiny lights danced before my eyes.
Blood. Everywhere.
On my hands. On my clothes. Splattered over the cream rug she’d loved so much—the one she’d brought back from Europe on her last trip abroad.
An inane urge to scrub the rug and tear those bloody particles out of the soft wool fibers, one by one, gripped me, but I couldn’t move.
All I could do was stand and stare at the grotesque scene in my living room—a room which, not half an hour earlier, had burst with warmth and laughter and love. Now it was cold and lifeless, like the three bodies at my feet.
I blinked, and they disappeared—the lights, the memories, the noose around my neck.
But they’d come back. They always did.
“…You’re the best,” Josh was saying, his grin back now that I’d agreed to take on a role I had no business taking. I wasn’t a protector; I was a destroyer. I broke hearts, crushed business opponents, and didn’t care about the aftermath. If someone was stupid enough to fall for me or cross me—two things I warned people never, ever to do—they had it coming. “I’ll bring you back—fuck, I don’t know. Coffee. Chocolate. Pounds of whatever is good down there. And I owe you a big, fat favor in the future.”
I forced a smile. Before I could respond, my phone rang, and I held up a finger. “Be right back. I have to take this.”
“Take your time, man.” Josh was already distracted by the blonde and brunette who’d been all over me earlier and who found a much more willing audience in my best friend. By the time I stepped into the backyard and answered my call, they had their hands beneath his shirt.
“Дядько，” I said, using the Ukrainian term for uncle.
“Alex.” My uncle’s voice rasped over the line, scratchy from decades of cigarettes and the wear and tear of life. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“No.” I glanced through the sliding glass door at the revelry inside. Josh had lived in the same rambling, two-story house off Thayer’s campus since undergrad. We’d roomed together until I graduated and moved to D.C. proper to be closer to my office—and to get away from the hordes of shrieking, drunken college students that paraded through campus and the surrounding neighborhoods every night.
Everyone had turned out for Josh’s farewell party, and by everyone, I mean half the population of Hazelburg, Maryland, where Thayer was located. He was a town favorite, and I imagined people would miss his parties as much as they missed Josh himself.
For someone who always claimed to be drowning in schoolwork, he found a lot of time for drinking and sex. Not that it hurt his academic performance. The bastard had a 4.0 GPA.
“Did you take care of the problem?” my uncle asked.
I heard a drawer open and close, followed by the faint click of a lighter. I’d urged him to quit smoking countless times, but he always brushed me off. Old habits die hard; old, bad habits even more so, and Ivan Volkov had reached the age where he couldn’t be bothered.
“Not yet.” The moon hung low in the sky, casting ribbons of light that snaked through the otherwise-inky darkness of the backyard. Light and shadow. Two halves of the same coin. “I will. We’re close.”
To justice. Vengeance. Salvation.
For sixteen years, the pursuit of those three things had consumed me. They were my every waking thought, my every dream and nightmare. My reason for living. Even in situations when I’d been distracted by something else—the chess-play of corporate politics, the fleeting pleasure of burying myself into the tight, warm heat of a willing body—they’d lurked in my consciousness, driving me to greater heights of ambition and ruthlessness.
Sixteen years might seem like a long time, but I specialize in the long game. It doesn’t matter how many years I have to wait as long as the end is worth it.
And the end of the man who had destroyed my family? It would be glorious.
“Good.” My uncle coughed, and my lips pinched.
One of these days, I’d convince him to quit smoking. Life had driven any sentimentality out of me years ago, but Ivan was my only living relative. He took me in, raised me as his own, and stuck by me through every thorny twist of my path toward revenge, so I owed him that much, at least.
“Your family will be at peace soon,” he said.
Perhaps. Whether the same could be said of me…well, that was a question for another day.
“There’s a board meeting next week,” I said, switching topics. “I’ll be in town for the day.” My uncle was the official CEO of Archer Group, the real estate development company he’d founded a decade ago with my guidance. I’d had a knack for business even as a teenager.