30. Elyssa
ELYSSA
M y eyes flickered open slowly and the first thing I saw was the fire burning in front of us. We had both fallen asleep after what I had decreed was the best first time in the history of first times.
Konstantin was behind me, my back to his chest and his arm slung right over my waist, clutching me to him.
Squirming a little, I also realized that he never came out of me last night, because his halfway hard cock was still inside of me. Somehow, that didn’t bother me, and even brought a smile to my face. I nuzzled his arm that sat underneath my head, kissing and biting at his exposed skin.
I felt him get even harder inside of me, causing wetness to gather between my thighs.
“Don’t tease me, lebedochka . You need to rest before you can take me again.”
His voice in the morning was even huskier than usual. I bit my lip, a small smile stretching my lips.
“Good morning,” I said, turning around to face him, causing him to slip from between my legs.
“Good morning.”
My hands went to his face where I traced the shape of his eyebrows, before moving on to his eyes, nose and mouth, and returning to his eyebrows. All the while he had his eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of my touch.
He looked at peace and it made me breathe easier somehow.
Then his eyes opened and fell on the side of my face, and gone was that peaceful expression. Instead, he looked downright murderous. His hand snapped from my back to my jaw and he grabbed it, moving my face to get a better look at my cheek.
“What the fuck, did I do that to you?”
I was confused at first but then remembered the blow Mia had delivered to my cheek last night and I understood it must have left a mark.
“No. You have nothing to do with that.” I grabbed the hand he was cupping my face with and interlocked our fingers.
“Then who? I’ll fucking kill them.”
Fury shone in his bright eyes, but I shook my head at him.
“It was just a fight with my cousin, nothing to worry about.”
“Mia did this? What the fuck, Elyssa?”
“She’s having issues. I think–” I hesitated, knowing Mia would be mortified if she knew I told anyone of her previous addiction, not even Briar knew. “I think she’s doing coke again. Or something stronger,” I sighed. “I need to tell her mom about it on Christmas break. She didn’t mean to hurt me, she’s just… she’s sick, Konstantin.”
I could see he didn’t like my reasoning and that was okay. Konstantin was a pragmatic and disciplined person. To him, if Mia was addicted to something, it was simply her fault. It wasn’t a lack of empathy per se, just his logic. He didn’t understand human emotions well.
That’s something he’d told me one night after we stayed up late discussing The Order, and it somehow made me understand our years of rivalry better.
“It doesn’t excuse her hitting you. I’ll let it slide this once but if it happens again, I’m sending Dinara after her.”
Was it bad that his reaction made me feel cherished? I loved my cousin, but she had hurt me deeply. After everything we went through, after watching our grandfather and uncles smack me around ever since I joined the family in my early teens, she knew how her hitting me would make me feel.
She had crossed a line last night.
“How is Katarina?” I asked, needing to change the subject.
Konstantin’s lips pursed. “Not good. There’s permanent nerve damage.”
I gasped softly, my heart breaking for her.
“She most likely won’t be able to dance again and certainly not on a professional level like she wanted.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“We’ll find whoever did that to her and make them pay,” he said fiercely, his eyes blazing with anger.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I suspected Viola, but I knew they would kill her if they knew. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be responsible for her death, so I didn’t say anything. If it was her, they would find out anyway and then I wouldn’t be responsible for whatever they did to her.
Konstantin cupped my face again, his eyes back on the bruise on my cheek. “I still can’t believe Mia hit you.”
“It’s okay. Not the first time a family member mistakes me for a punching bag, believe me.” I tried making light of the situation with some self-deprecating humor, but that was an obvious mistake as it only seemed to make him more mad.
“What do you mean?”
I gulped, looking away, and tried to move away too, but he didn’t let me, and his hold on me tightened.
“It’s nothing.”
“Like fuck it is.”
“I mean, come on, Konstantin, you know I’m far from being my grandfather’s favorite, or anyone from my family for that matter. If I recall correctly, you used that knowledge to take jabs at me.” I sent him a pointed look which he promptly ignored.
“I said that because that’s what people were saying, but they also say the same about Briar’s grandfather and you see how doting he is with her. I thought it was only a matter of pride, that your old man acted like he couldn’t stand you to keep face in front of his peers but treated you well behind closed doors.”
I flinched and shook my head.
“My family hates me.” I let out a humorless laugh. “Hell, I don’t think I even have one in the first place. I used to, back in Italy, but ever since Baba died, nothing has been the same. My uncles and grandfather never forgave my mom for leaving, and they don’t consider my lineage to be pure enough for them. It was worse when I was younger, but now they mostly ignore me.”
I tried hard not to let it show that it affected me, I did, but the truth was, there was a part of me that always yearned for a family. My inner child still maintained the illusion that they would accept me someday, maybe even start taking interest in me, like me, even. God knows I did everything I could for that to happen: I never disobeyed orders, stayed out of their way, excelled at school, and took on as many extracurriculars as I could… but nothing seemed to be enough.
“I try holding onto my father’s culture, it’s the one thing I remember from him, and they hate it. This is the only place I can paint my fingers with henna because if they see it on me back home, they go mad. They hate my bracelets, but I never take them off because they belonged to my grandma, and they never fail to tell me they think my belt is tacky but again, it’s one of the few things that remind me of her. She used to wear one every day. She’d hook a handkerchief or a really small towel on it because they always came in handy according to her,” I chuckled. “She had tattoos on her chin and forehead, not the kind you’d get done in a shop, the traditional kind that she got when she was fourteen in her small village in Tunisia.” A smile stretched my lips as I conjured her image in my brain.
Losing her had felt just as bad as losing Baba. The fact that I didn’t have any idea of where she was killed me inside. I tried finding her once I got older, but none of my internet searches had been conclusive.
Clearing my throat, I decided to close that subject. “But it’s okay. I get to come and study here most of the year so I don’t see them that much.”
Konstantin listened attentively, and he stared at me for a while afterward. I was surprised to see how much the way they treated me seemed to anger him.
“Your family are assholes. You don’t need them.”
“It’s the only one I have left,” I whispered.
“Not anymore.”
My breath caught in my throat as I looked up, boring my eyes into his.
“Come back home with me for Christmas break.”
Eyes wide, I couldn’t help but feel startled, like a deer caught in headlights. The demand was so unexpected that words failed me.
“I’m tired of hiding. Let’s make it official.”
He looked at me with all the seriousness in the world; it made my heart soar.
“They would never allow it, Konstantin.”
“Who cares? I’d like to see them try coming after my family,” he growled. “Unlike them, we’re not fucking cowards. We take care of our own.”
The fact that he included me in that healed something in me, but it also caused anxiety to crawl up my spine.
“It’s too soon. My mother isn’t doing so great. Her last attempt was last year during exam week and I need to be there for?—”
“What?” he cut me off and I realized what I’d just said. I had told him about my mother’s deteriorating mental health before, but I never mentioned when was her last attempt. “Last year, when you cheated on that exam… it was because you had to go home urgently, wasn’t it? Because your mother had tried to kill herself.” He put the pieces together and I nodded silently, tears welling up in my eyes. “Fuck, Elyssa, I was such an asshole to you.”
I didn’t say anything, because it was true, he had been an asshole to me, but all that was water under the bridge now.
“I get it. You were disappointed and angry. I don’t blame you, Konstantin, you didn’t have all the information to make up your mind. Plus, believe me, all you did was child’s play compared to what I’ve been taking at home.”
He didn’t like my answer but I cupped his jaw, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth to try and pacify him.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about me, I’m used to being the ugly duckling.” I managed a small smile but that didn’t soften him up.
Instead, Konstantin’s hand grabbed my throat and forced me to look at him. “Fuck them. Look what a beautiful swan you’ve become.”
Walking out of the secret room hand in hand with Konstantin felt weird. We left using our usual passage, not the one he’d used last night which he had discovered while rummaging through the room one night after I fell asleep.
The castle was quiet, everyone was still sleeping since it was only around six on a Saturday. Breakfast wasn’t served until nine on weekends, so we all usually got in as much sleep as we could.
Konstantin pushed me against the staircase wall, careful not to activate the mechanism that opened the secret door, and took my mouth with his for one last kiss. Pulling away, I smiled at him, butterflies in full swing in my stomach, before untangling myself from him and ascending the stairs to get to my dorm.
I was smiling like a fool by the time I reached my floor, replaying the events of last night and this morning over and over again and wanting to giggle with joy at how perfect it all had been. I was falling hard, but now that I knew Konstantin wanted to make things official, that he was serious about us, I couldn’t stop hope from blossoming within my chest.
So when I arrived in front of my room and saw my cousin Lorenzo sitting on the floor next to it, asleep and looking disheveled, I stopped dead in my tracks. A little voice in my head screamed that all good things eventually came to an end, but I refused to think negatively.
“Lorenzo?” I called, and his eyes snapped open almost immediately. He looked confused for a beat, but when he took in his surroundings, eyes landing on me, he jumped to his feet.
“Fuck, Elyssa, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all night!”
Gulping, I forced myself to think fast, “I—I slept over at Sinem’s. My phone was off. Why? What’s wrong?”
I had never seen him look so distressed, so scared in my life. He usually was pretty good at hiding how he felt, he had to, given he’d be taking over as underboss soon.
“It’s Mia. She’s nowhere to be found.”
Running a hand through my hair, I sighed when I got Mia’s voicemail again. She wasn’t picking up her phone and it wasn’t the first time, but as always, it drove me crazy. It wasn’t unusual for her to randomly ghost us when she spent the night with a guy, but still.
Lorenzo was freaking out next to me, but only because he didn’t know she’d been out on a date last night. I couldn’t tell him and break Mia’s trust, even if I was still angry at her.
“Voicemail,” I said, tossing the phone on my desk.
I noticed the journal on the Sons of Tyche was still there, opened as I left it last night. I discreetly closed it and pushed it into my desk drawer. For some reason, I didn’t want anyone else to know about it; it was my and Konstantin’s secret, nobody else’s.
“Shit,” he cursed, pacing back and forth near my door.
Unable to see him worry any longer, I sighed, plopping down on my bed. “Listen, there’s no need to worry. She always does that when she’s out on a date, maybe that’s why she’s not answering her phone right now.”
I tried not to give away the fact that I knew for sure she had spent the night with a guy because that would push him to ask who and, as much as I thought he was an asshole, I didn’t want Dominik in trouble. Not because I cared for him, but because I cared for Konstantin.
“Look, why don’t you go to your room and take a shower?” I walked up to my cousin, putting my hand on his shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll make a few calls and see if I can find her. If not, we’ll search for her, okay?”
His eyes bore into mine for a few seconds, full of worry, before he nodded. As soon as he was out of my dorm, I grabbed my phone and fired a quick text to Konstantin.
Me: Please tell your brother to tell Mia to check her phone. Lorenzo is going crazy over here.
I decided to get my things ready to take a shower in the time it would take him to answer. My thighs were still sticky from Konstantin’s cum; I secretly loved it but knew the best thing to do was have a shower.
Just as I was about to get into the shower, my phone pinged with a text. Goosebumps broke all over my skin as I read it over and over again, thinking maybe I was having trouble reading the words correctly. Fear made my stomach churn and my hands shake, blood freezing in my veins as I let my eyes roam the screen of my phone.
K : What do you mean? Dom is still in Louisiana, he left his phone in his dorm. Only Roman and I came back last night.