47. Aj
Islide into the chair and smooth down my dress. Gage barely glances up from his plate of eggs. He’s polished as always, dressed in an expensive suit, but the black eye blooming beneath one of his bright blue eyes and the scrape along his jaw makes it obvious he’s been fighting recently.
“Only fifteen minutes late.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Personal best.”
I roll my eyes and steal a strip of bacon from his plate. “I hope that black eye hurts.”
A corner of his mouth twitches. “I earned it.”
The usual Sovereign crowd fills the room, loud voices bouncing off marble and glass. Commanders with wives. Heirs. Everyone dressed perfectly and pretending their hands aren’t covered in blood.
My eyes linger on the empty chair beside me. The one David should be sitting in.
“Where is he?”
“Stepped out with Dad.”
My stomach twists.
Gage watches me for a second. “You good?”
I chew slowly, buying myself time. My pulse starts climbing before I’ve even opened my mouth.
“No.” The word slips out before I can stop it. “I’m not marrying him.”
The coffee cup freezes halfway to his mouth. “What?”
I lower my voice immediately. “I can’t do it, Gage.”
His expression hardens. “You can’t just call off a wedding to a Sovereign Commander.”
“I can.”
“No. You can’t.”
My hands clench in my lap. “I don’t care.”
He’s right.
I know he’s right.
David won’t let me walk away. My father won’t let me walk away. The Sovereign sure as hell won’t let me walk away. I just…I can’t marry him. I won’t.
“AJ—”
“I want to be with Wolff.”
For a second, Gage just stares. Like he’s trying to decide if I’m joking. Or drunk. Or having some kind of breakdown. Honestly, it could be any of the three.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I love him.” I blurt the confession. I’ve never said it out loud before. Not even in the dark when I’m alone and stupid enough to think about him. But now that it’s out there, I can’t take it back.
Gage looks horrified, like I just confessed to something unforgivable.
“And…” I swallow hard, my voice cracking. “I think he loves me too.”
The way he held me the other night…there’s something real between us. Something deeper than the hate and the violence and the desperate, angry fucking. Something that feels like it could survive all the darkness if we just stopped fighting it.
“Are you high?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“But that’s not the point.”
“That’s exactly the point.” He drags a hand down his face.
“Wolff?” His voice rises. “K9?”
Several people glance our direction, so he whisper-hisses, “The same fucking sociopath who—”
“He’s not—”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Gage laughs.
“I know him.”
“No, you fucked him. Big difference.”
I glare at him, but it’s weak. Because I don’t know how to explain it.
“Even if by some fucking miracle he could actually feel something, Wolff is not the man you marry. He’s not like David—”
“What the hell do you even know about David?”
“Jesus. You’re really this stupid?”
“Fuck you, Gage. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am! Which is why I’m telling you to wake the hell up. David is a good match. The wedding is happening. This isn’t some fucking fairy tale, AJ. It’s politics and bloodlines and power. You’ve always known this.”
“I won’t marry him.”
He leans across the table, his voice dropping lower. “This is bigger than you, bigger than your feelings, your choices. This is the Sovereign. You don’t get to say no.”
I feel the walls closing in, the way they always do when someone reminds me what I am—what I was raised to be. I stare down at my plate and shove a piece of fruit across it with my fork, suddenly unable to breathe.
“Look…you’ll adjust, AJ. You’ll get used to it.”
I look up at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?” I let out a humorless laugh. “I’m so fucking tired of having this conversation with you.”
“AJ—”
“No.” I shake my head. “For once… just once… I want to talk to my brother without you sounding like every other Sovereign in my life.”
His expression falls.
“Every time I tell you I’m scared, you tell me to adjust. Every time I tell you I don’t want this, you tell me to accept it.
Every conversation ends with you defending them instead of listening to me.
” My throat tightens. “I don’t need another Commander, Gage.
I already have enough people telling me how my life is supposed to end.
I just want my brother.” Pushing up from the table, I grab my purse. “I can’t do this right now.”
He starts to say something else, but my phone begins ringing inside my bag. I don’t even check the screen before answering, already halfway across the restaurant and grateful for the excuse to walk away.
“Hello?”
“AJ.” It’s a woman’s voice.
I stop near the front windows, my grip tightening on the phone. “Who is this?”
“It’s Miranda.”
Miranda?
“We met in Russia,” she says quickly. “At the café near Nevsky.”
A cold shiver slides down my spine.
I remember. The café Wolff brought me too…
“Yeah,” I say slowly, turning away when I catch Gage watching me from the table. “I remember. Uhh…why are you calling me?”
“Can we meet?”
My stomach tightens with nerves. “I don’t know—”
“Please.” Her voice sharpens with urgency. “It’s important.”
Every alarm in my body starts going off at once.
“What’s important?”
“Not over the phone.” Her breathing crackles through the line. “The park on Fifth and Pine. One hour.”
“Miranda—”
The line goes dead.
I stop walking and stare down at my phone, my reflection warped in the black screen. What the hell?
I cinch my jacket tighter around myself as I cross the park.
It’s nearly empty at this hour. A couple with a dog passes by near the fountain, two joggers cut through the far path, and the wind coming off the lake slices straight through the thin fabric of my leggings.
I scan the benches until I spot her near the trees, short bright-blonde hair tucked into the collar of a thick cream sweater.
She stands the second she sees me.
I slow a few feet away, hands shoved deep into my pockets.
“Miranda?”
“I was worried you wouldn’t show up.”
“You said it was important.”
“It is.” Her gaze flicks over my shoulder, then toward the path behind me, like she expects someone to be watching. “And I shouldn’t be contacting you. But I didn’t know what else to do. He won’t talk to me.”
“Who won’t talk to you?”
Her expression shifts, something pained and tired moving across her face.
“Dylan.”
“Who?”
She motions toward the bench. “Sit down.”
I don’t move, feeling uneasy. “Miranda, I don’t understand—”
“You know him as Wolff.” The wind seems to leave the park all at once.
“This is about Wolff?”
She nods, and I sit before I can think too much about it.
Taking a deep breath, she folds her hands in her lap and gazes out at the path ahead. “I wasn’t sure if he’d told you anything about me,” she says finally. “Or about…before.”
My brow pinches. “He didn’t tell me anything about you.”
A sad little smile touches her mouth. “He wouldn’t.”
I stare at her profile. “How do you know him?”
Her fingers lift to the pale, uneven skin at the side of her neck—half hidden beneath her sweater collar. The burn scar I noticed at the café.
“He’s my brother.”
I go completely still. “What?”
“Not by blood.” Her voice stays quiet, but her fingers don’t leave her neck. “Foster brother. But brother, all the same. His name was Dylan. Long before he joined the Sovereign.”
A cold, sick feeling crawls up my spine. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because he won’t answer my calls. Hasn’t answered them in years.” Her eyes flick to mine. “And because the way he was with you in Russia… I’ve never seen him like that.”
My throat tightens. “You don’t know anything about me and Wolff.”
“No,” she says gently. “I probably don’t. But I know Dylan. Or I knew him once.”
She looks away again, out toward the gray water beyond the trees.
“There were nine of us in that house by the time he showed up. Foster kids. Jake and I were the oldest and had been there the longest. Then Dylan came at five years old, with huge green eyes and covered in bruises. He barely talked. Hardly looked at anyone. But he watched everything.”
The space behind my ribs constricts. “Why did you say house like that?”
Miranda lets out a humorless laugh. “Because it wasn’t one. It looked normal from the outside. Big farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania with a nice yard and a young married couple. But it was a fucking horror show.”
Her fingers curl tighter in her lap. “They liked collecting broken kids. That’s how Jake used to put it.
The worse off you were, the more money they got from the state, the church, private donors—whoever wanted to feel good about saving children.
They’d smile for social workers, take photos at Christmas, make donations, put us in clean clothes when someone came by.
” Her voice goes flat. “Then the doors would shut.”
Like the terrible memories are flashing through her mind, her eyes stay on the ground. “There were cages in the basement. That’s where they kept us.”
Something inside me caves in.
“We had no food except bread and water, if we were lucky. Sometimes not even that. And upstairs…” She swallows. “Upstairs was worse.”
My stomach churns, and I have to look away for a second. Wolff in a fucking cage? The image hits so fast and so wrong; I can’t even process it properly—him small enough that his feet probably didn’t touch the floor when he sat, trapped in a metal cage.
“What do you mean? That upstairs was worse?”
She’s quiet for so long I don’t think she’s going to answer.
Then she says, “Men came to the house. Friends. Donors. Church men. Men with money. They’d look us over, make their pick, and take whoever they wanted upstairs.” Her hand lifts to the scar on her neck, thumb dragging over it. “Dylan was their favorite.”
The park goes dead silent around me.
Favorite.
Bile rises in my throat. I know what that word means… I was Akim’s favorite. My hands curl inside my pockets, my nails biting into my palms. Miranda glances at me and immediately looks away again.