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“I’m talking about you and me,” he whispers, gently kissing my neck, but I can feel hownot gentlehe wants to be from the way he kisses; I can hear it in his breath. “I’m talking about the fact that, to make this plan work, a Sokolov and a Petrov still need to get married.”
A distant voice tells me this panic comes from having something I desperately want. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to be with Mikhail. I didn’ttrulyrealize anyway until he dared give me genuine hope. I’ve lived so long pushing down any idea that I could have a happy life.
Turning in his embrace, I say, “I don’t want to do anything just because we have to.”
“We don’thaveto do anything,” he snaps, but he can’t hide the hurt in his eyes. I’m guessing this isn’t the answer he wanted to hear. It’s also not the answer I wanted to give.
“I just want my brother to be safe.”
“He’ll be safe, and he’ll be an uncle, too.”
“Mikhail,” I whisper, my voice cracking, tears trying to spring to my eyes again.
I wipe angrily at my face, so sick of all the crying, all the useless pain.
“I promise,” he says fiercely, leaning down, looking me straight in the eye through a wild lock of his hair. “I’m going to make this happen, but I need your permission.” When I say nothing, he goes on, “Your father deserves to die. Not just for the evil, disgusting, unspeakable things he’s done to other people, but for every bad thing he ever said to you, every violent thing he did. I need to know that when I take his life, you won’t hate me for it.”
“I hatehim,” I snap.
“Ania hated our dad, but she loved him too. She misses him. People are more complicated than code, my tech temptation.”
I smile on instinct but then quickly force it away. What is wrong with me? “You don’t need my permission.”
“I do.”
“No …” I smooth my hand up his arms, then grab his shoulders and squeeze hard so he can feel the tension coursing through me like jolts of electricity. “You don’t because if I give you permission, maybe that little girl inside of me, that idiot who still thinks her evil, sadistic father might love her one day, will blame herself. Maybe she’ll hate herself. So, I know you’re right. I know what needs to happen, but …”
“You want no part of it.”
I swallow, averting my gaze. “That makes me a coward.”
“It makes you human.”
“It makes me a cowardly human.”
When he laughs, he doesn’t seem guilty or ashamed. He brings me in close, kissing the top of my head. “Just wait. Very soon, Drake, you, and I will be together one day. All of this will seem like a distant memory.”
I press my face against his chest, closing my eyes, doing what I do best with Mikhail—letting myself forget.
“It would be super cool,” Ania says, then slides the grape and cheese from the cocktail stick with her teeth.
Ania, Lia, Mikhail, Dimitri, and I are sitting on the back porch of the main house, sharing a late lunch before Mikhail and Dimitri have to return to the city to continue making arrangements for thepledge. Dimitri is being sworn in as the official leader, or Pakhan, of the Sokolov Bratva. Mikhail told me,“Everything will change after that.”
I know he was talking about our closeness, the connection we share. At least he didn’t come right out and start talking about family and the future again.
“If you worked on the game together,” Ania says, “you’re already a programming team.”
Ania beams at me, and I do my best to smile. She’s the only one who seems to make a genuine effort. Maybe that has something to do with the fact she’s the only one out of the five of us who looks like she’s had any sleep whatsoever.
“As long as I get employee of the month, I’m happy with that,” I say, trying to make it a joke.
Mikhail laughs, but it comes out sounding forced and husky. He’ll glance at me every so often, but only for a quick moment. I sense he doesn’t want to bring our relationship out into the open until we know it’ll work. So what the heck is he thinking, talking about families and futures, then? How does that make sense?
“As my only employee, I think you’ll get it,” he teases.
“Is that what you want to do?” Lia asks. “Make games?”
“I don’t even know,” I answer honestly. “I’ve never thought that far ahead. I focus on the day-to-day, usually, and I think it helps—the next project, the next line of code.”
