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“I’ve got her. Let’s go.” Another familiar voice. This one female. It has to be Milana.
I want to ask questions, but my mind is too heavy, drenched with fear. The only thing I can manage is resting my head against the broad chest I’m being held against.
As long as I’m here, everything will be okay.
33
KOLYA
“Jesus, can you make her stop that noise?” I growl, shooting a dagger-edged stare at Milana as though she’s personally responsible for Geneva’s wailing.
“Short of knocking her unconscious, I’m out of options,” she hisses back.
“Don’t tempt me.”
The only reason I keep myself from making good on the suggestion is the fact that June is here, too. Slumped in the seat right next to me, as quiet as her sister is loud.
She hasn’t said a word since I slit Iakov’s throat. A front row seat to a violent death will do that to you, if you’re not used to it. Even now, her face is splattered with drops of his blood.
What I did will have ramifications. Serious ones. I crossed a line, spilled protected blood. But despite all that, my main concern is for her.
Even the sound of her sister’s incessant screaming isn’t snapping her out of the catatonic fog engulfing her.
I glance back over my shoulder at the back seat, where Milana is trying to get through to Geneva. She’d been restrained with makeshift cuffs after clawing at two of my men. But her mouth is still painfully unfettered.
“Will you calm down?” Milana snaps, a little unruffled by her normal unflappable standards. “We just saved your life.”
“My life?” Geneva screeches back in disbelief. “You’re all in on this shit together! H-he’s a murderer.” She turns to me. “MURDERER!”
The woman certainly has a flair for the dramatic. I pull up the partition that separates the front seats from the back. It cuts the sound by half, but I can still hear her banshee screams.
We arrive on the tarmac ten minutes later. I’m the first one out of the car. Milana is the second. “My head is pounding,” she complains. “She’s got a set of lungs on her. Why wasn’t I allowed to gag the witch?”
“Because of June,” I growl. “Keep her in there for the moment. I need to make sure June is okay.”
Milana nods, and I walk around to the other side of the car and open June’s door. She doesn’t even glance at me. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused. When I take her hand and pull her from the car, she comes with me without putting up a fight. I walk her onto the private jet waiting for us, engines already purring eagerly.
Forcing her into one of the leather seats, I take the opposite one. Her gaze teeters brokenly toward the night beyond the window. Darkness obliterates everything past the wingtip.
“June.”
Her eyes flicker back to me, but they don’t focus. I gesture for the stewardess, who brings me a tray stacked high with wet towelettes.
I take one and press it against June’s blood-splattered face. She flinches against the cold, but she lets me wipe her face clean. By the time I’m done, she looks like she’s checked back into reality. Just barely.
“You never finished telling me about your solo,” I say quietly. That gets her attention. Her eyes drift to mine.
“W-what?”
I keep my voice soft and distractingly calm. “Your solo. The night you danced on a sprained ankle. You said you got a standing ovation. Tell me about it.”
She nods dumbly. I hate seeing her like this. Like the life has been sucked out of her. “I… I landed wrong. A grand jeté, but the floor was wet with sweat, so I slipped a little when I hit.” Her voice is dreamy. Haunted. “I felt the pain shoot up my leg, but I had worked so hard to get there that I didn’t want it to be for nothing. So I kept dancing through the pain.” At long last, the corners of her lips twitch up in the faintest, vaguest ghost of a smile. “But then they all stood and clapped for me when it was done. My ankle was on fire, but it was the best night of my life.”
I smile back at her. What’s the warmth I’m sensing in my chest? It feels like pride, but that makes no fucking sense. I barely know this woman now. I definitely didn’t know her then. Her past is nothing to me but words—but goddammit, the feeling says it means far, far more than I’ve been willing to admit.
“Was Adrian there?”
I’m not sure why I ask. I’m not sure I even want to know, and yet I’m curious. Curious to see how many important moments of her life she shared with him. Curious also why the thought of that makes me sneeringly jealous.
