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“I’m not looking for a shoulder to cry on, Laila. I’m not looking for a friend, either.”
“I’m not your friend,” she snaps. “But I am your wife.”
Fuck me—my decisions don’t usually bite me in the ass quite this fast, but it was a mistake letting her come in here. I can alreadypicture her in the rocking chair in the corner. I can see her laying our daughter in the crib. I can see her sitting on the window seat, nursing our baby.
When I don’t respond, Laila starts for the door.
I think she’s going to leave, and I’m torn between breathing a sigh of relief and yanking her back in.
Then she stops and turns back to me.
“I know this isn’t real, Arsen. You’re not really my husband, and I’m not really your wife. But—” She rests her hands on her stomach, cradling our daughter. “You can still tell me things. You can let me in.”
I don’t respond, my jaw working back and forth in an effort to keep myself from articulating all the things I refuse to say out loud.
I can’t let you in.
I can’t let you in because I can’t keep you.
“The nursery is beautiful,” Laila says softly as she pulls the door closed behind her.
38
ARSEN
My phone rings for the third time in as many minutes. I don’t even check to see who it is before I answer. “What is it now, Matvei?”
“Boss, he rolled up his shirt sleeve to show me his tattoos.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I don’t care if he dropped trou and showed me your name on his ass, man. I’m not taking a meeting with someone off the street. Get a name or tell him to get lost.”
There will be no name because whoever is at the gate either has an ax to grind or a favor to ask, and their only hope of either is catching me off-guard.
I was up half the night organizing the nursery, so I’m too many coffees to count deep and not in the mood for a fight or to get pumped for favors.
I’m about to hang up the phone yet again when Matvei speaks up. “I don’t have a name… but boss, he has the same tattoo as you. The viper.”
Fuck.
I close my eyes, reaching blindly for the last dregs of caffeine in the cup in front of me. I’m going to need it. “I’ll be there in five.”
Even as the gate slides open and the man strides onto my property, I know this isn’t possible. There’s only one other person I know who has a viper tattoo like mine on his right bicep.
And he’s supposed to be dead.
The sun glints off the metal gates. I shield my eyes with my hand, trying to get a good look at the ghost walking towards me.
“Well, well,” the man rasps when he sees me coming, throwing his arms wide. “Life on the outside has certainly done you good.”
He stops in a patch of shade, and I can finally lower my hand to take him in.
His beard is long and matted. There are wrinkles around his eyes and mouth I don’t recognize, and his lanky hair hangs down to the shoulders of his shabby, checkered shirt.
But his bright blue eyes—those haven’t changed. They cut straight through my chest.
“Wish I could say the same about you. Although, considering you’re supposed to be dead, you look pretty damn good.”
Jasper smiles and ten years drain from his face. He looks more and more like the man I remember every second. “You believed the rumors, too?”
