Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
The Wedding
The soft, lilting strings of the violin quartet play “A Thousand Years,” as couples dance barefoot in the grass while kids chase one another in a game of tag.
Tucked in solitude with the sunset in front of me and the sky on fire in a watercolor of orange and red, I watch the festivities, content to just sit and exist in it.
Smiling faces. Vibrant laughter. Friendship.
Family. Things I’m not a part of, but that’s okay. I’m glad I came, if only for her.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than Syn is right now.
White, long sheath V-neck crepe dress that hugs her curves, little white flowers pinned in her flame-red hair.
The happiness she exudes as she slow dances with Tristan.
Her love for him on full display as she gazes up at him.
A love that I’d gladly sell my soul to the devil just for the chance to experience it.
Tap. Tap. T—
Dierdre pulls out the chair beside me and takes a seat. With an exhausted sigh, she crosses her legs and picks up the full glass of champagne I haven’t drunk. “It was a beautiful ceremony.”
“It was.”
She takes a sip, hums her approval, then drinks the rest down. “Not exactly legal, though.”
“Love doesn’t abide by society’s laws.”
Dierdre props her elbow on the small round table and rests her chin in her open palm, her pensive gaze focused solely on me and not her adopted daughter, who just married her brother and his two best friends.
“Neither does the heart,” she says, and I hear her not-so-subtle implication loud and clear. Her French-manicured nails beat against the tabletop as quiet seconds tick by. “Thank you for protecting her.”
Surprised by that, I look at her. There’s so much of my half sister that is him. Her eyes, the color and the shape of them. Her mouth and ears. The mahogany brown of her hair. The slight square-cut of her jaw and the dimple indentations in her cheeks, the same ones Tristan and I have.
“I didn’t.”
Dierdre’s small, elegant hand lands on top of mine. “That’s your perception, but I see it differently. And because it needs to be said, I’m so sorry, Aleksander.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
I slide my hand from under hers, her apology making me uncomfortable because she has nothing to apologize for.
I should be telling her that. Pyotr held a gun on her on my orders when I went to see Syn in Texas.
So much has come to light since then. The fact she’s alive, and the abuse she and Tristan endured under Francesco for decades.
Nikolai Stepanoff could be just as cruel, but Francesco was worse.
The ugly scars covering Tristan’s back show the brutality he suffered.
I always thought he was weak for how he cowed before Francesco.
Tristan wasn’t weak. He was trying to survive.
Dierdre’s shoulders rise when she breathes in, her eyes imploring. And sad. “I’d really like the chance to be your sister…if you’ll let me.”
She’s giving me the choice. One I’m not sure I’m ready to take. Years of hate can’t be erased in one day, even if I now know most of it was misplaced. That hate has been ingrained for too long to be able to expunge it so quickly.
“He took so much from us. Don’t let him take our family, too.”
“I had a family,” I snap, my anger a knee-jerk reaction I regret instantly when I see the tears gathering in her eyes.
“You still do,” she softly replies.
I can’t do this right now when my emotions are too raw and too needy. I want the family she’s promising more than I’ve ever wanted anything, besides Syn. But the pain of my twin brother’s loss is still too great. If I let her in, it’s like I’m betraying him.
Ready to make my excuses and leave, I’m stopped by the shadow that falls over the table.
I gradually raise my gaze, afraid to meet the light-blue eyes of the woman I have spent most of the afternoon pining for. Such a stupid connotation for how I felt listening to her recite vows of forever to Tristan, Constantine, and Hendrix.
“Hope I’m not interrupting,” Syn says, a smile in place as she pointedly directs her statement at Dierdre before turning toward me. “If I remember correctly, you owe me a dance.”
“Do I?” I manage to utter, my voice belying how uneven my heartbeat is pounding.
Syn holds out her hand. “Yes.”
I stare at it like it is made of the hottest flame. It will burn, but I take it anyway.
Syn walks us to the middle of the yard to a patch of trampled clover beneath strands of fairy lights surrounded by the fragrance of late-blooming jasmine.
“Were you rescuing me from your mother?”
Turning into me, she steps closer. “Maybe. And it’s weird to call your sister my mother. You look very handsome, by the way,” she comments, smoothing a hand down the lapel of my charcoal gray dinner jacket.
“And you’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
Fuck, Aleks, laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?
A blush tints her cheeks. “And how many other weddings have you attended to make that comparison?”
“None, but I stand by my observation.”
Her goddamn smile makes me weak in the knees. “Then I’ll happily accept the compliment.”
Syn brings our linked hand up between us and places her other hand flat against my chest. Her touch lights a spark that grows into a wildfire, and my fingers convulse with need as they curve around her hip.
Her dress is already smudged at the hem with grass stains, her long, wavy hair wild from the breeze.
She is radiant. And not mine. But maybe, just for a little while, I can pretend that she is.
And just like that, everything around us falls away as the violin music fades out and changes to something in D minor, the notes quietly dancing over the evening air like fireflies as we dance.
“Was Alana being nosy?” she asks.
Dierdre will always be Alana to Syn. The woman who saved her and became her surrogate mother when Syn lost her memories.
I understand Tristan’s anger with his sister for faking her death and keeping Syn a secret for all these years.
But I also understand Dierdre’s point of view.
The fear she lived in for both herself and for Aoife.
In order to live, they both had to stay dead and become new people, away from Francesco’s reach.
“She was actually offering an olive branch.”
Syn’s smile turns up its wattage. “Are you going to take it?”
I slowly spin us in a circle. I’m not the best dancer and can only hope I don’t step on her feet. “Eventually. I’m just not ready yet.”
“I can understand that. Accepting love can be hard for people like us.” Her bluebonnet eyes lift, and I swear, I drown in them.
“But I promise you that it will be worth it. I know we…I mean, you and the me that is Syn, not you and the me that was Aoife…started out as adversaries, but I’m so thankful we ended up as friends.
And I’m shutting up now because that sounded even weirder than that sister-mother thing. ”
The dreaded friends. But it’s a label I wholeheartedly accept and will cherish because it means that I get to be in her life.
I feel the ominous tension before I notice Tristan, Hendrix, and Constantine leaning against the patio deck railing, beer bottles dangling from their fingers as they closely watch me dance with Syn.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I ask.
“Go for it.”
“Was it hard to fall in love with them again when you couldn’t remember them?”
Syn makes a hum as she contemplates my question. “It’s difficult to explain. Instinctively, I felt a connection the second I laid eyes on them, even with Hendrix when he was being a royal pain in my ass.”
“Was being? The guy is still a huge asshole.”
She admonishes me by poking me in the shoulder. “That’s just a mask he wears. I think the two of you could be good friends. You’d balance each other out. Your calm to his chaos.”
“Highly doubtful.” And I say that with extreme politeness because there is no fucking way Hendrix Knight and I will ever be friends.
“I’m going to thoroughly enjoy rubbing your pessimism in your face when I’m proven right.
” Cocky Bastard lets out an obnoxiously loud crow from the coop on the other side of the yard, startling a laugh out of her.
“He’s such an attention whore.” She rests her cheek flush against my chest, and I hold her a little tighter because I know this is as much of her that I’ll ever get.
“Thank you for coming. I’m really glad you’re here. ”
“I almost didn’t,” I reply truthfully.
“Why not?”
Because I’m in love with you.
Because I didn’t want to watch you belong to someone else.
“I figured I’d be a distraction. I didn’t want to ruin your wedding.”
She stops us mid turn and scowls. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you really believe the bullshit you just spewed.”
I love how she is never afraid to call me out. Or stand up to me. I look sideways at someone, and they shit their pants in fear. But not this woman. She directly challenges me every chance she gets.
“Aleks,” she says with a bite to it. Syn never calls me Aleks. Always Aleksander. “You’re here because we want you here.”
“Your husbands would disagree.”
“Okay, smartass. I want you here. Alana wants you here. So does Tristan—don’t you dare say what you’re about to say,” she cuts in when I open my mouth to contest the latter. “And you’re coming to the farm to spend Christmas with us.”
She catches me off guard with the invitation, and it takes a second for me to wrap my head around it. “I don’t think that’s a—”
“Hush. You’re coming. End of story.”
Happiness shoots through me like a magic bullet, and I dip her low until her hair grazes the grass. “Yes, ma’am.”
If eye rolls could smirk, the one she gives me would. “That’s a much better answer.”
Her lithe body is soft weight in my arms, her breath brushing my collarbone. The quartet shifts into another song, this one slower, sadder, more final, and something intangible shifts between us.
“Why do you always look at me like that?” she whispers.
I falter bringing her back upright. “Like what?”
“Like I’m about to disappear.”
My fingertips dig into the back of her dress, like if I can grasp on tightly enough, I can keep her. “You did once.”
Constantine approaches, clears his throat. Even though he can talk now, he’s still a man of few words.
Knowing I need to let her go, I hold Syn for a moment longer than I should, then step back, my hands falling reluctantly to my sides.
Looking right at me, she says, “Never again.” Rising on her tiptoes, she puts her mouth to my ear.
“We haven’t made the official announcement yet, but I wanted to tell you that you’re going to be an uncle.
You’re stuck with us,” she whispers and goes to Constantine, who intimately takes her in his arms and presses a kiss to her lips.
Blink.
Blink.
Wait.
Syn’s pregnant?
I’m going to be an uncle?
How does she even know which guy is the father?
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I realize in that moment, I don’t fucking care. I will protect her child with my life.
I startle when someone cuffs my shoulder. “You look about as stunned as I was when she told us,” Tristan says.
“I…” Have nothing. No words.
“Want a beer?”
Yes, I absolutely want a beer after hearing that unexpected news. “Sure.”
I follow him inside the house to the kitchen. It’s a mess of empty food platters and what’s left of the wedding cake. He grabs two chilled beers from the fridge and hands me one, then presses his bottle to his temple.
“Tired?” I ask, trying to make small talk in the strained silence that has filled the kitchen.
“Small headache.”
I recently learned that Tristan suffers from debilitating migraines, severe enough to incapacitate him. Aleksei used to get them. Not often, but they were bad when they hit him.
“Where’s your medication?”
He lowers the bottle and twists the cap off. “You sound like Syn. And it’s not bad. Just needed a break from the noise outside.”
“Congratulations. About the news. I really mean that.”
The vision of Syn, her stomach round with child, the glow she’d exude while pregnant—fuck me. I can’t wait to see her like that. Syn is a force of contrasts. Deadly strength and feminine softness. A combination that’s my kryptonite.
“Thanks. To be honest, I’m scared out of my fucking mind. All I can think is how screwed that kid is going to be having us as dads. Not like we had good role models growing up to teach us how to be good men.”
He’s right. We’re not good men. But we’re men with a conscience. Men who know how to love. Unfortunately, we’re in love with the same woman.
I slowly roll the beer bottle between my hands. “And that right there is why you are going to be the kind of dad your son or daughter is going to hero-worship. Francesco has no power over you. He never did, as much as he tried. He doesn’t get to decide the man you choose to be.”
Tristan’s whiskey-brown gaze assesses me, like he’s seeing me for the first time and is trying to figure me out. “Ditto for you, too.” He finishes his beer and tosses it into the recycle bin next to the trash receptacle. “Full disclosure. I used to envy you.”
My forehead creases, my brows drawing down. There was nothing about my life to envy. “You shouldn’t.”
“You got out.”
Index. Middle. Ring. Pinkie.
“If you truly believe that, then you’re fucking clueless.”
Aleksei and I went from Society to bratva. Drako showed us kindness, and he loved us in his own way, but being a part of that world didn’t come without a price. Nikolai forged me into a weapon, and Drako was more than happy to use it. I still see the blood on my hands of every man I killed for him.
“I notice you do that a lot.” Tristan glances at my hand playing piano keys on the countertop, and my fingers immediately stop.
“I’m going to go. Tell Syn bye for me.”
“I think you should do that.”
I’m getting overwhelmed, and I know my limits. And he doesn’t get to witness one of my episodes. I will never show any weakness in front of Tristan fucking Amato.
“I’ll text her later. Have fun in Hawaii.”
I get as far as the hallway to the foyer when he says from the kitchen archway, “I’d like to visit where you spread Aleksei’s ashes. Pay my condolences.”
Fuck you and what you want is on the tip of my tongue. Aleksei was my brother, not his. I don’t care if we share blood or the same father. When Tristan looked at Aleksei, all he saw was a rabid animal I had to leash. He never cared to see the person he really was.
“Aleksander, I’m trying. I promised Syn I would try, and I will never break a promise to that girl. I need you to meet me halfway.”
The wind whips through the foyer when I open the front door…
And close it behind me without looking back.