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“Hey, Elena.”
“Kate. Hi. How are you?” There’s something about her voice that tells me this isn’t just a social call. I can’t stop the worry that something happened to Liam.
“Good.”
“Hey… I hate to mention his name, but have you heard from Liam?”
“No.” God, is he missing again? “Why?”
She pauses. “Niko is in a state. He’s really worried about him.”
“Why?”
“He’s a mess, Kate, and we all know it’s because he’s not with you.”
My heart wants to feel warm and fuzzy about that. I tell it to knock it off. “He made his choice.”
“You could reach out to him.”
“He’s rejected me twice now, Elena. I have my pride.”
She’s silent on the other end. Finally, she says, “Do you know Liam’s history?”
“I know he grew up in the Bratva, left to be in the FBI, and then took over the Bratva.”
“Did he tell you about his parents?”
I shift in my seat, not sure I want to hear Liam’s history. It will be too easy to empathize and have my heart open to him when all I want to do is shut him out. “Not really.”
“His mother died when he was little. Like five or six. Apparently, everyone said she was sick, but the rumor was that she was poisoned. It was a warning to his father, who was head of the Bratva then.”
God. I lost my mother at a young age to illness. I couldn’t imagine learning she’d been murdered. But then, that’s the world they lived in.
“His father was murdered a few years later. He ended up being raised by his uncle who was good to him. Groomed him to be the head of the Bratva after him. Liam chose a different path, but then his uncle was killed. We know now that was Igor Peprov.”
“Elena, this story is sad and I feel for him, but I don’t know what it has to do with me.”
“Is he dead to you, then?” Her tone is sharp.
“I’m dead to him,” I snap back.
Again, there’s a long silence. “Liam has spent his life trying not to love. It scares him. The people he’s loved have been killed. But he loves you. I know he does.”
“I know it too.” My voice chokes up because that is the worst part of this. Niko was right. Liam left me because he loved me.
“Look, I don’t know if you two can work it out, but if you care for him too, he needs help. He’s drinking a lot. Involved in risky behavior?—”
“Your lives are all about risky behavior.”
“He’s playing chicken with life, Kate. It’s like he wants to die. Niko told me what he did the night he killed Babichev. He fully expected to die. He was ready for it, daring for it to come.”
My heart clenches at Liam being so tormented as to wish for death. But I’m tormented too. My heart can’t take any more of the whiplash it experiences when around Liam.
“If the answer is me, he knows where I live.” I hang up the phone.
32
LIAM
