29. Tino
The messagefrom Mackenzie wakes me from a half-sleep. My pain has been fucking awful these past few days, and I’ve been self-medicating even more. I check the text and bolt upright in bed.
I need to talk to you and Dom. Don’t tell Kill, please. Meet me at my room, the den isn’t safe.>
What the fuck?
I message Dom.
You get a text from Duchess?>
His reply is swift.
Yes, on my way.>
I type back that I’ll see him there in five. I jump out of bed and race into my bathroom. A quick brush of my teeth, a rake of my hair with my fingers, and spray of deodorant and I’m pulling on a light sweater and heading out the door.
I race up the stairs, hoping to God I don’t bump into Kirill. I think he has gym right now, if I remember correctly. He takes some extra evening classes because he’s so good at fighting.
In the past, before Mackenzie, I knew both my honorary brothers’ schedules like the back of my hand. I realize that now, I only know hers.
It feels like everything is splintering. There are fracture lines developing between us. Worse, I had a message from back home, and my sister is in the hospital again. She’s the one out of my family I love the most, yet my parents want to marry her off and be rid of her. The thought makes me sick. The idea of being on that compound without her and only them and my father’s hard and vicious men makes my stomach twist.
What do I have to look forward to after this?
Dom will stay here, and he will take vacations in beautiful parts of Italy, and he might end up running a nice big patch of New York State for his Daddy Dearest. He’ll probably marry some gorgeous Italian girl and have lots of pretty babies, while he screws his side pieces in some Manhattan duplex.
Kirill, well, he’ll likely go back to Russia and rule there, or maybe London because Grigoriy Stepanov has his fingers in a hell of a lot of pies in a lot of places. He’ll marry a stunning socialite—hell, maybe even a high-end model—and he’ll travel the world.
Me? I’ll be expected to live on that fucking compound on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. That violent place where raids happen and families fight for control. I’d rather live with my mother in California, where she spends much of her time these days, but my father would go crazy.
My mother is American, all blonde and fair skinned. I certainly take after my father with my dark hair and eyes. Thank fuck, because the women love how I look. My sister doesn’t look like either of them, with her warm coloring and green eyes. I sometimes wonder if my mother had an affair but then discount the idea as ridiculous because my father would have killed her for such a transgression.
Still, the way my mother leaves Argentina for longer and longer periods makes me think he’s not as in love with her as he once was, or he wouldn’t let her. She can’t be safe alone, not really, yet she prefers to take the danger of being out of the compound on her own to being with my father, and he seems to care so little that he lets her.
My home life is fracturing, my life here is seemingly starting to tear apart, and my damn body is letting me down by only giving me endless pain and nothing else.
God, I’m so tired.
I reach Mackenzie’s room and knock quietly once. It’s late, and I don’t want to alert her mother or Nataniele, who are just a couple of doors away, to my presence.
The door swings open immediately, and she smiles at me. It’s a tight smile, though, and it barely reaches her eyes.
I step inside and nod at Dom, who is already here. He’s lounging on her bed as if he’s right at home. A stab of jealousy hits me.
Does she like him the best?
A twisted little thought occurs to me. If I had the Duchess with me, going home wouldn’t seem too bleak, and if I had her on my compound, the others wouldn’t be able to get her back.
Not even Kirill with his father’s sprawling network could penetrate our compound if we were on alert with any real chance of success. Never mind that they’d get on the radar of all the other cartels if they dared to venture into our territory.
No, if I took Duchess home with me, I’d have someone who cared for me, and who would give me comfort, and no one could take her from me.
Dom won’t stick by her, anyway. How can he? At some point, if that cursed marriage ever takes place, he’ll legally be her stepbrother, and his father is far too uptight to let Dom get away with marrying his own stepsister. The scandal that would follow would be hilarious.
Yes, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense for Duchess to become mine. She needs to be safe from her professor, and I can certainly offer her that safety in a way none of the others can.
I smile at her as I take a seat on a chair in the corner. “So, what gives? Your message sounded urgent. Why no Kirill?”
“It concerns Kill.”
She bites at her lip, and it’s adorable, but I don’t let it distract me right now. I can tell from her expression that this is serious.
“What’s going on?” Dom demands. “Did he hurt you?”
“God, no.” She shakes her head vigorously. “Nothing like that. You know he wouldn’t do that.”
Dom shrugs. “He’s been acting fucking weird recently.”
“Yeah, well, he’s got all that shit with his dad going on,” I point out. “Can’t be easy having that fucking ogre breathing down his neck all the time.”
I shudder, imagining if my father were always visiting me. The one good thing is he doesn’t come here often.
Mackenzie paces the room, wringing her hands. What the hell? She’s nervous and stressed, and I want to know why.
“Spit it out,” Dom snaps.
He’s an asshole, but he only voiced what I was thinking.
“Kirill asked me to marry him.”
I stare at her, and, in the corner, Dom bursts out laughing.
“Fuck off, he did.” Dom carries on laughing between speaking. “Good one, Duchess. Now, seriously, what is going on?”
She narrows her eyes at Dom and crosses her arms under her perky tits, shoving them up a little in her tight t-shirt. “Screw you. Fine. I won’t tell you.”
My heart picks up speed, and my throat runs dry. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly, and so was he.”
“When?” Dom demands.
“Today.” She takes a seat at the small chair by her desk and picks at a piece of fluff on the leg of her jeans. “He was really off. Not himself. He got upset with me when I said no.”
“Of course you said no.” Dom jumps off the bed. “That fucking fucker. I’ll kill him. How dare he? Behind our backs, too.”
Mackenzie picks up her notebook and throws it at Dom’s head, shocking me.
“This isn’t about you, Dom. Or your feelings right now. This is about Kirill, who I am worried about, and me. So can you for once in your goddamn life try to not only see everything in the way it affects you?”
Ouch. But she’s not wrong. Dom is a narcissistic asshole a lot of the time.
“Why was he being strange?” I ask. “I mean other than the fact that he’s clearly lost his mind by asking you to marry him.” I ignore the fact that I was thinking about doing the exact same thing.
“He seemed super tense. As if he might explode at any minute. When I said no, he said … he said he would make me.”
Her words turn into little more than a whisper at the end. What the actual fuck?
I stare at Dom, and we have a silent conversation. I can see the sudden real worry, and maybe even fear in his gaze. This is seriously not where any of us saw this heading when we started our games with this girl. Is she going to tear us all apart?
My stupid fantasy of her coming back with me to my home crashes and burns around me. I see another future. One with her married to Kirill, and whisked off to Russia, and the Devils fractured beyond repair. I’d lose my only real friends, my Duchess, and probably, if things keep going this way, my mother and sister, too. I’d be at that compound with only my father and his men.
It’s a hellish vision, and my stomach lurches. I stand and pace, cursing as I put too much weight on my bad leg, making it scream.
Christ, I need more pills. I need a bottle of whisky, too, to deal with this head fuck.
Kirill has lost his goddamn ever-loving mind. From the murderously dark expression stealing across Dom’s face, Kirill might be about to lose his life.
“How does he intend to make you?” Dom drawls.
I admire his restraint.
“Did he share this information?” Dom’s dark brows are raised in a question.
“No.” Mackenzie shakes her head. “He said his dad wanted it, and his dad would make it happen.”
“Oh, crap,” I say without thinking.
“What?” Mackenzie turns to me. “Why are you all reacting this way? Camile was the same.”
“You fucking told Camile?” Dom shouts loudly enough that his father might hear. I put my finger to my lips, and he tenses his jaw but gives a jerky nod in reply. “That’s really stupid of you, Mackenzie.”
“She’s my friend.” Mack’s face turns red. “You all have one another to talk to, and I have no one.”
“You can talk to us,” I point out.
She snorts, and it’s kind of cute. “Yeah, right. You three are the friends, and I am the spare part. I can’t talk to you. You’re tight.”
“We were tight,” Dom corrects. “Clearly, we aren’t anymore.”
His words sting. Does he include me in that?
“What the fuck are we going to do?” I ask Dom. “If Grigoriy wants Kirill to marry her, how can we stop it if Kirill won’t see sense?”
“We have to make him see sense, even if we have to beat it into the fucker. Let’s think about it tonight. We can make a plan of action. None of us talks about this.” Dom jabs his finger at me and Mackenzie as if we’re kids in kindergarten. “Let’s hope your so-called bestie doesn’t flap her lips.” He shoots her a filthy look and then jerks his head at me as he walks to the door. “Don’t worry, Mack,” he says. “You’re not marrying him. We’ll sort this out.”
As we walk down the corridor together, Dom turns to me. “Get some sleep. It’s going to be a shitshow of a day tomorrow. If we can’t make that fucker see sense, then we might have to do something drastic.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Use your fucking imagination.” Dom slams the door to his room in my face.
I stand out in that corridor, shut out, alone, treated by my supposed brother-in-friendship in the same dismissive manner my father treats me.
When I reach my own room, my pain levels are screaming at me like an internal fire alarm. I unscrew the lid on a bottle of whisky and down big slugs of it. Then I pop a few pills. I don’t even count tonight. The pain is horrendous. My head thuds, my stomach roils, and a sense of panic I can’t deal with washes over me in waves.
All I want right now is a few hours of oblivion. I lie on my bed, but the act of trying to sleep with all this racing through my mind simply makes me more anxious. Time and again, I toss and turn, switching sides to no avail.
A glance at the clock, at what seems hours later, shows it is early morning. At this rate, I’ll be useless tomorrow.
I reach out to the nightstand for more pills. I glance down at my palm, and then toss them into my mouth. I swallow them in one gulp, using the half empty whisky to wash them down, and for good measure, I keep drinking the amber liquid.
I relish the burn as it scorches a path down my throat.
It doesn’t take long before the buzz starts, and this time it hits stronger than usual. I close my eyes and fade to black.