Chapter 6
Aleksandr
It’s Time
I glared as the morning light spilled across the table.
The sun had no right to shine. Not when her chair sat empty.
Not when every desperate lead, every dead-end call, every fucking hour spent trying to find her had come up empty.
I couldn’t touch the food before me—could barely stomach the smell of it.
So I sat, jaw clenched, replaying our efforts once more, hoping something would click.
She hadn’t returned to Skagit; we’d taken dogs and combed the entire area. A second cabin sat farther back on the property, but it looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. We even confirmed that she hadn’t been to the bank.
The days turned to weeks, and still nothing. With each passing day, I lost a piece of myself. Ivan looked like complete shit. Nik kept to himself, and I pushed myself in ways that sickened me.
Killing had taken on a whole new level of madness.
The demons feeding off all my fears had me spinning out of control.
Nothing was the same without her. She had permeated every aspect of our lives, from work to home and everything in between.
The huge gaping hole created by her absence wrecked me, reducing me to inhumane almost.
I rubbed my head, wondering how the hell we’d gotten here.
My brothers and I practically avoided each other now.
Each of us trying to deal with the situation and failing miserably.
The only thing that brought a respite was our work, and even then, it was tainted with her wording for it.
Soul snatching. She had snatched our souls, and without her, we were nothing. Empty and without purpose, we drifted.
“I spoke with Sebastian this morning, and I’m heading back,” Ivan said at the dining room table. These were the first words spoken to either Nik or me in four or five days.
The dark circles under his eyes testified he wasn’t sleeping and something was eating at him. Something big. There was a struggle raging inside my baby brother, and I had no way of helping him. Whatever had happened between them, he was carrying a shit ton of guilt.
The first few days, he adamantly insisted she left because of him.
When pressed, he’d storm away, take his bike out.
I feared he would do something stupid, so I stopped asking.
Slowly, that guilt shifted to anger. I knew far too well from my own issues with Kinsley that the only thing I could do was let it play out.
He seemingly vacillated between being angry at himself and then at her, certain she had walked away.
Marcus swore that nothing in their conversation even remotely sounded like a woman hell-bent on leaving.
She had confessed she wanted to apologize to Ivan, so she wouldn’t have left.
But I hated that every attempt to locate her came up a dead end.
With her grandfather released from prison, I thought maybe he had taken her.
It was a real possibility. One we had to consider.
We had feelers out in Russia, but even those turned up nothing.
“If you think that is best,” I said, as the anger flared in his face.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
“I’ve got my end of things here all worked out.
Jake will take over as manager, and the gym will be in excellent hands.
The two of you need to wrap shit up here as well.
Mother and Father are even making their arrangements to go home too. ”
“What about Kinsley?” Nik asked.
“She’s gone. She’s not coming back. We were all playing a fucking game and lost. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m done talking about her.” He stood and stormed out.
In the wake of things, Nik’s usually composed demeanor shifted. He wore a sense of uncertainty as he grappled with the loss, his eyes filled with bewilderment. When we were little, there were only a handful of times when he looked at me like this. He was waiting for me to decide.
“He’s right. I guess it’s time.” The weight of the world bore down on my shoulders.
Bringing Kinsley into our family was ultimately my decision. I was the oldest—they looked up to me. I made it a priority, and she became a part of us in ways I hadn’t prepared for. Now the repercussions were staring me in the face, and I hated it.
Nik sighed. “We have two unresolved cases. If we end those degenerates, I can wrap up everything with the agency.”
I was ready. Having appointed an acting manager at the club, everything was running smoothly and had been for the last two weeks. I hadn’t confessed to either of my brothers how much time I’d actually spent trying to find her.
“I’ll call Marcel and Sebastian. You can let Mother and Father know.” Nik rose and left me alone once more in the dining room. My gaze flicked to her empty seat.
Bloody fucking hell.
Over the next few days, all the arrangements were completed, and we made plans to leave Seattle within two weeks.