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“Genny,” I say softly. “What is it?”
She meets my eyes for a moment, and I can see the uncertainty there. Simmering like boiling water. “I-I should have been around more during that time,” she says. Her voice gets so quiet I can barely hear her. “I should have been there for you.”
I shake my head. I wouldn’t be ready for this conversation on my best day, and today is most certainly not that. “You had a life to live.”
“But you were my sister. And not only did you lose your career, you lost your baby, too.”
I freeze, feeling goosebumps pimple my skin, flushing my body with reminders that I don’t want. Everything feels a little too close to home, especially now, with the new life growing inside of me. It’s like the first green thing poking its head above ground after a wildfire. Like fragile hope.
“Genny…”
“Adrian told me that you refused to talk about the miscarriage after it happened.”
I frown. “I didn’t realize you were talking to him so much.”
She shrugs. “It wasn’t ‘so much.’ Just a couple of calls every month or so after the crash. Mostly because you refused to come to the phone, remember?”
“Yeah,” I whisper quietly. “I remember.”
The clock ticks in the corner. Every passing second feels like a little needle pricking against my cheek.
“Adrian told me you wanted to press charges.”
“I did,” I say softly. “At the time, I thought it was the closure I needed to move on. But the thing about a hit-and-run is that there is no closure.”
When I first started having nightmares about The Accident, I heard the screeching tires of the vehicle as it hit us. Then those same screeching tires as it drove away. I’d wake up with sweat on my brow and the stench of burnt rubber in my nose.
And I’d curse the invisible person who changed everything.
I only stopped with the curses when I realized they were hurting me far more than they were hurting the person I was cursing. It takes a whole lot of energy to be angry.
So one day, I just decided to stop. Life is tiring enough without clinging to anger.
It took a while to really believe that, though.
Geneva places her hand over mine. “I haven’t been a very good sister to you, have I?”
I sigh deeply. “We haven’t always been good sisters to each other,” I correct. “But we can change that now.”
Geneva smiles. “Yes, we can. And this time, I’m not going to leave you, June. I’m not going to abandon you when you need me the most. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. But…”
I frown. “Genny—”
But she steamrolls over me. “It’s no coincidence that you’ve started having these nightmares now, June,” Geneva insists. “This is your conscience trying to warn you. Kolya is trouble. He’s dangerous. He’s going to end up hurting you.”
I can’t blame her for thinking that, but I’m hoping I can make her understand. “He’s—”
“We watched him murder a man today!” she insists. “In front of a room full of people.” She cups her ear and leans toward the windowpane, as melodramatic as ever. “But I don’t hear any police sirens coming this way, do you?”
“I know it looks bad, Genny—”
She rears back in disbelief. “You can’t possibly be taking up arms for this guy, June.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. My head is suddenly pounding, as if someone is whaling on the inside of my skull with a jackhammer. “You don’t know everything that’s going on. I mean, I don’t, either, but you don’t know—There’s… there’s this guy. Another guy. Like Kolya, but he’s—”
Fuck, I’m screwing this up so badly.It’s absolutely essential that I make Geneva understand, for both our sakes, but the pieces just won’t lie in their places for me to show her how it all looks from a distance.
I take a deep breath and try again. “The man who was hosting this party, who hired you to host—his name is Ravil Uvarov. He might be going by a different name, I’m not sure. But that’s not the point. The point is, he’s Kolya’s cousin. They were both a part of the same Bratva, before Ravil decided to break off and start his own.”
