Chapter 17 Emil
EMIL
Iwoke up to the splitting ache of pain splicing through my brain. Drumming pounds filled my ears as nausea churned my stomach.
“Fuck,” I muttered in a low, long groan. Hugging a pillow to my chest, I curled around the softness. It didn’t help. Putting pressure against my body wouldn’t ease this emptiness inside me. Nothing would fix my dilemma.
Light seared my retinas as I pried my eyes open.
I’d left the light on again, and I wasn’t sure if I had the energy to get up, cross my room at my father’s house, and turn it off.
I had no clue where I’d put my phone last night when I figured drinking myself into oblivion wouldn’t be a half-bad idea.
Wait.
It still is night.
That explained it. This was only the starting or mid-point of a hangover. I hadn’t slept it all off yet. Letting out a deep growl, I hugged the pillow as I staggered to the wall. I slapped at the light switch and I swore my soul, whatever was still with it and not buzzed, sighed in relief.
Darkness was better.
Quiet was wonderful.
As I lay back down, dropping to the mattress, I waited to pass out again so the blurring nothingness of sleep could give me the perfect remedy to what ailed me.
It wasn’t a curse of drinking too much and being wasted.
It was the hole in my heart that spread me open wider from Sadie’s absence.
“It’s not love,” I mumbled with my face smashed against the pillow. “It can’t be,” I slurred to myself before passing out once more.
When I woke next, I slowly came to with too many urgent needs propelling me out of bed. I had to piss. I needed water. My stomach growled with hunger. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start with some kind of drugs to prevent this headache from getting bad again.
Sighing heavily as I trudged to the bathroom, I blearily regarded my reflection in the mirror.
“Fuck.”
I looked like shit. I felt like it too.
It’s like I’ve taken Ivan’s place.
Rolling my eyes at the not-funny joke in my head wasn’t wise yet. This was the kind of hangover that made any facial expression torture.
I didn’t resort to drinking myself to sleep every night.
I couldn’t afford the vulnerability and weakness of being shit-faced when I still had to take hits and kills.
That sloppiness would get me killed. While I was miserable to miss my little agent who I wasn’t allowing myself to love, I wasn’t sunken so low in depression to be suicidal.
Hot water soothed my face. Steam filled the air and acted like a balm on me, comforting me as I waited to feel moderately human again. I didn’t drink like this often, but with the expectation that I’d be here in this huge mansion on my own, the loneliness hit extra hard.
Two days ago, my father left on a pre-holiday getaway with Gabriella and Andre. Raisa and Ivan thought Lev might like it too, since the destination had stuff for children. Then since Lev was going, Alexsei joined in because Misha and Lev were best friends.
When they turned to me, inviting me on the “family” plans, I scoffed. As the single dude, the bachelor, the one without a child, I shook my head and tried not to look too bitter.
Gabby pitied me, but I shot her a look to shut up. “No, I don’t want Emil to come,” she said.
Luka rolled his eyes, tired of us bickering.
“Because he has to be here to take care of Mellow.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
She glared at me. “He’s just a baby kitten.”
“Yeah, and there aren’t cooks and maids and guards who can’t handle babysitting a kitten for a couple of days?”
She crossed her arms. “I don’t trust them to cuddle him.”
I paused to read her, though, and I saw that she was using it as an excuse. More than anyone else, she seemed most aware of how I’d become the odd man out. Just the uncle. The cousin. The babysitter if need be.
And for that reason, I appreciated that she was giving me an easy out.
So, I was here. Hungover but dutiful to tend to Mellow’s cries for food. The yellow cat trailed me everywhere with the majority of the house staff taking time off since Luka and Gabby were gone. Even Allan, my father’s personal assistant, was off on vacation for the first time in forever.
“Yeah, yeah.” I scowled at the small kitten as I dried off. Even though I wasn’t dry yet, he wove between my legs, rubbing against me and collecting water.
I never thought I’d see the day when my father would want a pet in his house, but that was the effect Gabby had on him.
“I still don’t see why the fucking guards couldn’t watch you,” I told the cat as I walked downstairs.
It was unnecessary for me to “house sit” or “cat sit” when the mansion was still under supervision. As the main Dubinin residence, one handed down through generations, this place would never be empty.
But it felt like it was now.
No one passed me on the stairs. Nobody greeted me in the kitchen.
I made coffee for myself first, shivering and regretting that I hadn’t pulled on a shirt when I grabbed my sweatpants. Mellow protested my delay all the while.
“Hold on,” I growled, taking my black coffee toward the rear porch way back at the other end of the house. That was where Gabby kept Mellow’s food. The litter box was in the mud room back here so baby Andre, who was crawling everywhere, wouldn’t discover it and put anything in his mouth.
Under Gabby’s insistence, the kitten should be fed then offered a chance to “frolic” in the garden for at least a little while. It didn’t matter that it was late autumn. Winter would be here soon, and I bet she’d stick with this dumb schedule.
I plopped food in the bowl and straightened to sip my coffee.
Mellow sat there, staring up at me like I was doing it all wrong.
“Eat,” I ordered.
He meowed then padded to the glass door and pawed at it.
“Whatever.” I opened the door and watched the small cat stride out. Because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find an exact replica of this yellowish cat, I stuck around and watched that the animal didn’t escape. If this thing disappeared, I’d have to pretend like nothing was amiss with a substitute.
“Don’t run off—”
I stopped short as someone stepped out from a corner of the stone wall where the fountains were already turned off for the season.
Appearing so unexpectedly like this, out of the blue, Sadie hurried toward me like a fucking ghost.
She could’ve been the recipient of my order not to run off. Not the cat.
My heart thundered too fast, but my brain didn’t get the oxygen to click into gear and process what was happening.
This was reality.
Not another dream. Not another nightmare or fantasy or anything created in my mind.
This was real.
She was real. And she was really here, sneaking into the garden at my father’s house and now striding toward me like she meant business.
“Sa—”
What the fuck?
I caught myself from saying her name because any audio recording would be something else to pin her here. Cameras were still on, anchored all over the place. Even though the house had a smaller staff at the moment, guards were still patrolling.
Anyone could find her here, and my father wouldn’t hesitate to punish an FBI agent for trespassing at his home.
I grabbed her, moving faster than I could think. Glad that she had a hood on, preventing her face from being fully visible with the nearest camera’s angle, I worried that she’d still be recorded. That her presence would still be noted.
I'd dreamed of seeing her again. I'd hoped to hear from her—somehow. Every day of the last six months had been torture, torture I’d initiated. To touch her, to see her, felt like a gift I never thought I’d receive.
“Sadie?” I hissed at her once I had her on the porch.
She scowled, keeping her expression so stern as she let me haul her inside.
She was here. With me. Within my reach. The shock of it all sobered me up and stunned me stupid.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Just like old times, she narrowed her eyes. Shoving at me, she wrenched out of my hold and glowered at me with that stubborn sass I wanted to never forget. Her spirit and that bold tenacity to stay strong and fight back were what drew me to her.
“What the fuck is going on?”
I failed to get over her for half of a year, and now that she’d spontaneously appeared, I didn’t care for the confusion and concern that had me so worried and frantic to hide her.
This porch didn’t have many cameras. If we whispered, no guards would hear us.
Regardless, I knew the seriousness of this moment.
She was the enemy.
My father would be livid that an agent snuck in close.
Urging her to follow my lead as I tried to sneak her toward a closet, just in case one of the few guards on the premises could see us, I racked my brain for an explanation.
“What the fuck is going on?” I demanded once we were in the closet.
She cringed, batting away coats on hangers to face me directly. As she fought for room, I shoved the hangers over in one smooth push, knocking it all to the floor. Before I lowered my hand, I pushed her hood back to see her clearly.
“You can’t be here,” I added, as if that wasn’t clear enough.
“Hello to you, too,” she bit out.
I gritted my teeth, torn between kissing her until we passed out and shaking her.
Fuck, I’d missed her.
But I didn’t want her dead. That was half of the reason I’d left her in the Caribbean. If she stuck with me, someone would’ve tried to stop that and kill her sooner.
“Sadie. What the fuck are you doing here?” I shook my head, staring at those almost turquoise eyes I’d yearned to see again. That sassy frown that haunted my dreams.
Before she could part those plump lips and explain, my brain caught up.
I was wasting time asking her why she was here.
I knew why.
She’d only ever had a reason to seek me out because she was supposed to. She was expected to catch me and bring me in for whatever the FBI wanted. To arrest me and hold me responsible for all the murders. To question me about my father’s plans.
She hadn’t come to see me, not from missing me.