“I know that.”
“So what’s the problem? It’s no different for Orla.”
“Orla has everything she needs at home!”
Juana kicked the chest of drawers and stormed out. I heard her footsteps on the stairs and a minute later, the front door slammed.
She drove away. Her escort followed, Rubi and Viktor in the car, a couple bikes at a respectable distance behind, trusted brothers who worked on rotation to guard Juana on the rare occasion she wasn’t with one of us. It was a round-the-clock detail, same as Orla’s. She could go wherever the fuck she wanted, whenever the fuck she wanted. Just not on her own—a detail that gnawed at me, but I was too thick to comprehend why. And too tired and fucked up to stand at the window thinking about it, even if the cool glass against my forehead was the only good thing about being awake right now.
I wrenched myself away and shuffled to the bathroom. It was clean, thanks to fuck knew who—definitely not Juana. She didn’t do shit like that for us, it was a hard line. We were friends. Co-parents. Not spouses. So why did I feel like I’d pissed off my fucking wife?
Embry would know. He always knew. But he was busy and I hated it. I hated this fucking house when there was no one in it. Like... what was the point of all this brick and mortar iftheyweren’t here?
My family.
Husband. Brother.Father.
Damn.
I hunched over the sink and glared at myself in the mirror. Red-eyed and scruffy, I didn’t look all that parental.
You’re a fucking mess, boy.
Truth. But I flinched away frommyfather’s voice—that old cunt could die a hundred times if he hadn’t already—and dragged myself into the shower.
I had grand plans for after, but I fell asleep almost immediately, still wet and naked, just a towel for company.
Sometime later, I woke up cold and with more than the cat for company.
“Fuck.” I jumped out of my skin, wrenching my belly as I bolted upright, fighting for my life and the escaping towel. “What the shit are you doing in my bedroom?”
Alexei eyed me from the wall he’d propped himself against, watching me flap around as if he’d seen this scene unfold before with someone else. “You would prefer we talk with smoke signals?”
“What? Fuck. I need to get dressed.”
“You do,” he agreed, passing me a neat stack of clothes. “And then we need to do something with your face.”
“What’s wrong with my face?” Apart from the obvious.
Alexei didn’t answer. He left me to get dressed and came back far too soon with coffee, a bowl, and a knife.
Groggy as I was, I had the sense to be unnerved. “Did I piss you off too?”
He smirked. “Not yet. But this—” Alexei waved the blade at my throat. “—this has to go.”
It took me a second to realise he meant the scruff growing wild on my face, not my jugular.
Lacking any better ideas, I moved to take the blade.
Alexei evaded. “Let us not waste time.”
“You’regoing to fucking shave me?”
“Clearly.”
Okay. I needed some of whatever he was smoking if he thought anything about him being this close to me and not slitting my throat was clear. But saying so seemed dangerous, so I sat still in the path of an apex predator and let Alexei do whatever he wanted to my fucked-up face, wondering if it would make things weirder to tell him he smelled kinda nice. I mean, not nice like Embry. Or Lili with her charcoal-bubblegum scent. More like the cologne bottles I’d robbed from Harrods when I was a kid.
“You are tired,” he murmured, focusing on the spot where my hairline joined the mess on my jaw. “People are not used to that.”