Chapter Two
Islowly climbed the stairs, each step bringing me closer to facing my sister.
When I reached my old bedroom, I couldn’t help myself.
I pushed the door open and wasn’t the least bit surprised by what I discovered.
My room had been converted to an oversized closet complete with seating areas, floor to ceiling mirrors and expensive built-in shelves, drawers and cubbies for shoes and handbags.
Guess it’s a good thing I planned to stay at a hotel tonight. Unless I wanted to curl up on a pile of Chanel, Ferragamo and Balmain, there was no place for me here.
Rolling my eyes at my mother and sister’s ostentatious display of wealth, I closed the door and made my way down the hall to Dafina’s room. I knocked twice, and she screeched, “I’m getting ready, Mom! Jesus!”
I anxiously cleared my throat. “Dafina? It’s me.”
The door swung open, revealing Dafina in a button-down chambray shirt, black Lululemon Hotty Hots and white Hokas.
Her hair was a deeper, more honey-toned blonde than the last time I had seen a photo on Instagram.
Her brows had been recently microbladed, and I was pretty sure she’d had her lips done, too.
She was stunningly beautiful, and I was left wondering how the hell we were related.
She scowled and jabbed her phone at me. “Come to gloat?”
“No! Of course not.” I gestured to the phone in her hand. “I’ll come back.”
“No. Stay. Just—wait.” Irritated, she lifted the phone to her ear.
“No. I’m not ignoring you! I—it's my sister. No. No. She doesn’t!
Look, I’ll call you when I leave. Okay? No!
Just...please. Wait for me, and don’t do anything stupid!
” She ended her call and tossed her phone across the room and onto her bed. “Well, come in I guess.”
I didn’t dare ask who she was talking to on the phone. It obviously wasn't a work call, not with the way she was acting. It sounded more like a lover’s spat. The less I knew about that, the better.
“I’m sorry about Skender not making it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Sure, you are.” Then, with a narrowed gaze, she asked, “What the hell are you wearing?”
“It’s a kaftan. Cheyenne and I found them while we were on vacation in Thailand.”
“Pink is my color,” she muttered. “You better not be wearing it tonight.”
“I’m not. I’m wearing black.”
“Perfect color to celebrate the death of my future. Not that you care. I’m over here, getting ready to sacrifice my whole life for our family, and you’re traveling around the world on stepdaddy’s dime. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo.”
“It’s not his dime, and it’s work,” I insisted. I didn’t point out that she always lived off of our stepfather’s money. He’d paid for her private school, her college, two different vehicles, provided her a healthy allowance and anything else she requested.
“Oh, that’s right. Organizing deliveries.” She snorted derisively. “I can’t believe they made you a junior VP for that.”
“It’s a little more complicated than scheduling deliveries,” I argued, hating the way she always had to make me feel small. For one, it was delivery of contracted electrical power, not cargo.
“It’s logistics, Elona. FedEx mastered that thirty years ago. You’re not doing anything groundbreaking. It’s just galling that I have to work five times as hard as you to earn my bread.”
“So, what? You’re jealous of me because of my salary?” I shouldn’t have taken her bait. I should have let her pick a fight with someone else, but I obviously hadn’t learned my lesson yet.
She scoffed meanly. “Me? Jealous of you? Fucking please, Elona. I might be on the verge of marrying literally a murderer who killed our father, but I’ll take a lifetime of being chained to that monster over a single day of being trapped in that body.”
She may as well have slapped me. If she had, at least then I would have a reason to hit her back.
My therapist’s voice filtered through my mind. It urged me to stay calm, to disengage and gray rock if necessary. There was nothing I could say that would ever get through Dafina or my mother’s need to always be the victim. It was stupid of me to ever think they would change.
A tense silence settled between us. Dafina’s face had turned an embarrassed shade of red, and I knew that she regretted what she had said. She wouldn’t apologize, but at least she was capable of feeling wrong.
She walked to her vanity and sat down, opened a drawer and started rifling through her cosmetics. “Well—aren’t you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“About the wedding! About him?”
“Do you want me to ask? Because it seems like you really don’t want to talk about anything to do with Luka, the rest of the Beciraj family or your move to Albania.”
“Oh, I’m not moving to Albania,” she cut in with a bitter laugh.
“I’m staying right here. After how hard I worked to get my promotion in the front office?
Two years an unpaid intern. Two years as an underpaid assistant to the biggest asshole in all of Houston while also juggling my course load at school.
Two years fighting and clawing to get noticed on the events planning team while also trying to finish my MBA? Nope. I’m not going anywhere!”
I couldn’t argue with her. She was right to want to stay here, to remain in the job she had worked so hard to get. “Is he moving to Houston?”
“No.”
“So... it’s going to be a long-distance marriage?” I tried to make sense of her plans. “He agreed to that?”
“He didn’t agree to anything. He doesn’t know yet. As soon as we get married and the wedding night is over, I’m getting on a plane and flying right back to Houston.”
My stomach lurched with anxiety. “Dafina, I don’t think it’s that simple. Luka will expect you to live with him, to...you know...share his bed and have kids.”
“He will get one taste of this.” She gestured to her body. “That’s it.”
Scared for my sister and her safety, I insisted, “Dafina, these people—Luka and his family—they aren’t used to being refused anything.”
“Well, we all have to learn to be disappointed once in a while.” She picked out a lip gloss. “If he doesn’t like it, he’s free to divorce me.”
I doubted it would be that simple. “And if he won’t?”
She applied her lip gloss and checked her reflection. “Maybe he’ll have an accident.”
“Dafina!” I gasped. Paranoid, I glanced around the room, half expecting to find some sort of obvious listening device. “You shouldn’t joke like that. What if someone hears you?”
She looked at me like I was crazy and tossed her lip gloss back into the drawer. “The only person who heard that is you. Do I need to worry that you’re going to tattle on me?”
“I would never! Especially not to him.” Unlike my brother and sister, I had been old enough to experience and remember everything related to that blood feud and the death of our father.
I remembered him, Luka, standing there on that rainy night.
Still a teenager but acting like a man. Threatening us with death if we didn’t leave. I hated him.
“It’s too bad he’s one of them. He’s not the ugliest man I’ve ever seen.”
“No?”
“He’s tall.” She glanced at me, visually sizing me up. “You’re closer to his height.” She scrunched up her nose. “But he has better taste in clothing.”
I let that barb slide. “What’s he like? Did you get to know him at all while you were in Tirana to visit?”
“He’s quiet. He doesn’t like to talk. He’s judgmental about everything.
Every time I drank or lit up a cigarette or used my vape, he was so offended.
Just straight sour-faced like he was sucking lemons.
His sister ran away from him and lives here in Houston.
That should tell you what a control freak he is. ”
“She’s closer to Skender’s age, right?”
Dafina nodded. “She’s going to school here. I’ve seen her around at different clubs, usually on game nights. She’s wild as hell.”
“Maybe you two will end up becoming friends?” I asked hopefully.
“Not likely! Every time we cross paths, she looks like she wants to stab me!” She made a disgusted sound. “Just like that housekeeper!”
“Housekeeper?”
“Drita. She runs the house in Tirana like she’s the queen of the place. She had nothing but ugly looks and nasty remarks for me the whole time I was there. Just nonstop resting bitch face.” She shook her head. “If I was living there, firing Drita would be my first order.”
“I suspect he’d fight you on that.”
“All the more reason for me to live stay here,” she muttered. “Also—can you believe he’s letting her plan our wedding? A fucking housekeeper planning my wedding!”
“What? The whole thing? You have no input at all?”
“Oh, well, she let me choose my dress from five she handpicked.” Begrudgingly, Dafina admitted, “They were beautiful gowns, at least. She isn’t pinching pennies.”
“Is Luka involved in the planning at all?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“What do you mean? You two are talking regularly, right?”
“Nope. He texts me, like, twice a week. That’s it.”
“No phone calls? No video chats? Just texts? Why isn’t he making an effort?”
“He didn’t make one when I visited. Why would he make one now?”
“Was he busy with work when you visited?”
“Work?” she scoffed rudely. “As far as I could tell, he’s shit at his job. Total nepo baby who failed up.”
I winced at the description, but it was the realization that Luka might not have control over his territory that made me nervous. “Why do you think he’s failing?”
She shrugged. “Lots of little things I heard. You know how it is when people start drinking. All their secrets start to spill. He introduced me to some of his friends, and one of them had a lot to say. Apparently, the uncle that lives here, the one that owns all the strip clubs, and the other guy back in Tirana, the one with the awful scar on his neck, control everything.”
Memories of that man with the vicious scar across his throat flashed before me. His terrifying face was one of the few clear memories I had of the night we’d been banished from our home.