Chapter 7 #4
I almost hit him for that one. They have Lemon’s body? Fuck. Did Ash give it to the mayor? I keep my attention focused on him as the persnickety man in the glasses clears his throat. Ash’s eye twitches dangerously. He’s about to snap, no doubt about that.
Footsteps sound behind me and several of the people accompanying Ash gasp dramatically.
Alexei appears between me and Widow, dressed in a chocolate-colored suit and gold tie. Pale hair slicked back. Leather gloves encasing his long fingers. His eyes meet Ash’s and the air turns to ice between them.
“Looking for me?” Alexei asks with a little laugh. “I suppose you received our invitation?”
That almost does it, the implication in those words. Ash blinks wildly, and I catch the barest glimpse of his real personality underneath the Aspen shell, like a flash of lightning in an ebon sky. It’s gone as quick as it came, making me question if I’m only seeing what I want to see.
I don’t ask what invitation Alexei’s referring to. An invitation to the track today? Or something else? Not the time or place to reveal that there’s something I don’t know. Bohnes and Alexei, these schemers.
“Bold of you to show up in public like this.” Ash smiles, and it’s oily, a perfect recreation of his twin’s hideous expression. “Considering your father was a traitor to his own family. You’re quite brave, Borisov.”
Alexei reaches out with his gloved hands, grabbing Ash by the tie and yanking him forward in a move that shocks the living shit out of me. Widow, too, is staring with wide, gold eyes. Poor boys and rich boys bicker in entirely different ways. No throwing punches, just verbal flaying.
Ash doesn’t expect to be grabbed because Alexei is breaking all the rules.
Their faces end up nearly nose to nose, Ash with gritted teeth and Alexei with a luxe smile, smooth as poured cream. It curdles as it turns into a grin, an expression worthy of a Borisov with nothing to lose.
“Papa, the traitor?” Alexei tugs harder on the tie when Ash tries to pull back, choking him. Emma Jean covers her face with her hands and the guy in the glasses gets on his phone, using it to capture the interaction. For the mayor? Probably.
This is the first time Alexei Grove Borisov has been seen in public since Pavel’s murder.
Ain’t the mayor I’m worried about though, you know what I mean? The mob is the one to fear here.
Ash grabs onto Alexei’s bare wrists, taking advantage of that space between the gloves and the sleeves of his jacket. Infecting him with intention. Alexei’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t move, locked on his prey with a ruthless efficiency that leaves no room for personal insecurities.
“That’s rich coming from you, don’t you think?
” Alexei lifts a delicate brow, slapping one of his gloved hands over Ash’s mouth when it seems like he’s gearing up to spit at him.
Seems Kelly learned a poor boy trick from Widow.
Alexei’s attention shifts toward the man in the glasses, holding his phone in such a clandestine way that it becomes overt.
I would not want to be looked at like that, like something pathetic and small to be squashed and wiped away like an inconvenience.
It’s not the glasses man that Alexei is really looking at: it’s the person on the other side of the screen.
Mayor Kelly. Alexei’s gaze moves back to Ash.
“If you spit on me, you will come to regret it.”
Alexei removes his hand from Ash’s mouth, running the capped metal thimble down Ash’s jugular like a threat.
Ash stumbles back, nearly knocking Emma Jean over in his haste to get away.
Face red. Panting. His own hand clutching at his pale throat.
Those black eyes of his are alarmingly empty as they swing over to me.
This is the look of Ash giving up on himself, surrendering to the inevitable, spiraling into the abyss that is his Aspen persona.
He’s being swallowed alive by his dead brother, lodged in the throat of a sociopathic haunt. Widow is so agitated by the sight that he actually steps forward. I have to reach out a second time, putting my fingers on his arm to still him. Keeping the beast leashed.
I would interrupt the pair of rich boys, but I’m content to stand by and read the delicious subtext.
These four idiots think they’re pulling strings for me.
Really, they’re just marionettes on a stage that I’m directing.
My fingers tighten against Widow’s corded forearm beneath the sleeve of his Sherpa denim jacket.
“Has that serpent you call a father slithered away to hide?” Alexei asks, playing with the buttons on his leather gloves like he’s not about to lose his shit over potential contamination.
I can see it in the sweat beading on the sides of his neck.
Can’t hide nothin’ from me. “Has he left you behind to face the consequences of his poor decisions?”
“He’s in DC,” Ash replies easily, forcing his twitchy mouth into a bloodless smile, lips pale, as drained of color as his too-white face.
“Making friends in high places. It’s a trick your beloved Papa tried and failed to implement when he betrayed the family for government clout.
The only snake that should be slithering away is you.
May I suggest you find another burrow? Coming here was a mistake. ”
Alexei laughs, and the sound is awful, echoing across the now mostly empty track. The race today was just one of the prelim qualifiers for Stars and Stripes. Only hardcore fans (and Scarlett Force fangirls-and-boys) showed up for this one. Widow filmed it all though, and that’s what matters.
I don’t need to farm clout: I am clout.
“I can’t say who,” Alexei begins, pretending to study the stitching on his gloved fingertips, “but there was a representative for the family here today. I was hoping to make contact, but it seems they’re content to sit back and wait for me to handle this.
” He lifts those poisonous eyes up to Ash again, murmuring something in Russian that nobody understands but him.
“And handle it I will. Tell Jonas to hurry back before this opportunity has passed him by. As far as the Borisov family tree grows, I am the kindest branch.”
Ash reaches back and grabs Emma Jean by the wrist, yanking her forward.
With his other hand, he jerks her red coat open and she cries out, trying to cover herself up before I can see what’s underneath.
A black lace teddy. She manages to scrabble the two halves of the red fabric together, huddling deeper into it.
My vision is as red as that coat, and there’s a knife in my hand that I subconsciously stole from Widow. Bohnes slithers up on my other side, drawing it from my grip like water passing through my fingertips.
“Emma, come here,” Bohnes commands. She turns away from him, grabbing at Ash’s sleeve and shaking her head, eyes pinched shut.
“I’m here of my own free will. Leave me alone,” she whispers, totally and completely full of shit.
If she’s playing Ash’s game then he must’ve given her good reason to.
Our little journalist is a smart cookie.
I tamp my rage down, encouraging all of that wild heat to turn as cold as Ash’s expression.
“I’m going to strangle you later,” I warn him, fully aware that the mayor is listening in on this conversation. Mayor Kelly is paranoid, that much is obvious. Ash has an entourage that may as well be a prison. He’s being monitored, blatantly, for misbehavior. He’s even got Emma Jean playing a part.
“Oh? You like breath play?” Ash replies easily, his voice like a night without stars, endless and terrifying and so fucking lonely.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He taps at his temple with a single finger and lifts both of his dark brows.
“Funny that, seeing as your sister likes it, too.” Fierce swipe of his tongue across that thespian mouth.
My ears are ringing with violence. Widow and Bohnes are one insult short of a public bloodbath.
Ash moves around us, Emma’s wrist clutched in his hand and his prison guards flowing behind him. She stumbles as she struggles to keep up, and I end up squeezing Widow’s arm so hard that I make him bleed.
Ash flees with Emma, and I let him.
I can’t do anything that would cause him to blow his cover in public.
I turn to watch them go, the knotted sleeves of my racing suit billowing in the breeze.
I untie and retie them as Basti and Nisha come up to stand beside me.
They’re both looking after Ash, too. Bohnes is standing there, toying with the knife.
Alexei waits until they’re gone before he reverts to his germaphobe self and tears the gloves off, tossing them into the trash like they’re plastic instead of leather.
Dousing his hands with sanitizer, teeth gritted and expression wild with fury.
“Don’t fuck us over for a fuckboy,” Nisha warns me for the hundredth time.
No.
I won’t.
I can’t fuck them over for a sister either, can I?