9. Cassie
CASSIE
I slid my tray along the cafeteria line in the hospital, choosing the least disgusting of the options for breakfast: yogurt, granola, and a banana.
Maeve would be back later with real food — she’d insisted on cooking for us and had taken to smuggling in everything from coq au vin to freshly baked bread to homemade apple cake with cream cheese frosting — but I was hungry.
And I needed coffee, the very first thing I’d added to my tray.
I threw on a pack of Oreos and a carton of milk (Vigo had asked me to bring his Oreo cup when I’d gone home to shower) and one of the chocolate puddings Jagger liked and paid at the register, then found a seat by the window.
I sighed with pleasure when I took the first sip of coffee.
I was bone-tired, my body stiff from sleeping in the chairs next to the Hawks’ beds.
Vigo insisted I climb into bed with him, but I was too nervous to hurt the burn on Jagger’s arm to sleep next to him, and I was extra careful around Hawk, who was still unconscious in the ICU.
I couldn’t even think about the Code Blue without feeling sick.
I’d never been so scared in my life, not on the mountain with the black SUV on my tail or even when the men at the paper mill had thrown the grenade into the lobby where I’d been standing with the Hawks.
The possibility of losing Hawk had turned my blood cold, and I was still holding my breath, hoping he’d wake up and be okay.
But it wasn’t all bad news. Jagger was better — in pain but awake — and Doctor Sterling said the burn on his arm was healing nicely and likely wouldn’t require grafting.
Vigo was in good spirits, the cuts on his face and body improving.
He still gasped when someone made him laugh — I knew firsthand that his broken ribs would take a while to heal — and the hearing loss he’d suffered in one ear made for some comical misunderstandings with the nursing staff, but he was going to be okay.
His parents had visited once — I’d made myself scarce to give them time alone and had no idea how he explained his condition to them — and Doctor Sterling said he might even be released the next day.
I spent hours by Hawk’s bed every day, talking to him about everything and nothing.
I told him about my funniest regulars at the coffee shop and about the furniture and art I’d thrifted for my apartment.
I told him about my childhood before my parents died and what it had been like after, when it had felt like Bram and me against the world.
I told Hawk how he’d changed me, or more accurately how he’d shown me who I was.
I was still figuring that part out, excavating my true self like an archeologist, brushing away all the dirt and debris that had grown around my heart, but I knew that whatever happened, my life would be different — better — because of him.
And I told him I loved him. Again and again and again.
I was past the point of thinking the words might be magic, that they might wake him up like a magic kiss from a fairy tale, but I told him anyway, hoping he could hear me, that the words would find their way to him through the darkness.
A woman at the table next to me got my attention when she looked up, then averted her eyes and shifted away from the walkway that ran between tables in the cafeteria. I knew what it meant before I even clocked Bram crossing the room.
Other cafeteria patrons followed suit, looking away, pulling inward like it might protect them from whatever their instinct told them Bram was.
He must have looked like an otherworldly god to them in his boots and ripped black jeans, his black T-shirt stretched across his massive chest, leather jacket sheathing his shoulders.
But to me he was just Bram: my brother, my only family.
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked when he reached the table.
He sat across from me and ran a hand over his head. “Just checking on you.”
I caught the fatigue on his face, saw the lines that had been etched onto his forehead by the late nights he’d spent with me at the hospital over the past three days.
He’d be thirty soon, but this was the first moment I believed it.
I looked him in the eye. “Don’t lie.”
I knew when Bram was lying.
“I’ll get you a coffee,” I said. “Then you better start talking.”
I got up and went to the coffee station, poured him a black coffee and grabbed him a cherry pastry, then paid at the register.
Back at the table, I set everything in front of him. “The coffee here sucks and the danish isn’t even in the same universe as Maeve’s danishes, but you look like you could use the caffeine and sugar.”
“Thanks, Cass.” He took a drink of the coffee with a sigh. “Everything okay at the shop?”
I sat down across from him. “Kaylee and Drew had lots of practice running things when I was out. I’m pretty sure they don’t need me at all.”
“Might be time to open that second location in Carlton,” Bram said.
I flashed him a tired smile. “Nice try. Spill it.”
He tapped his fingers on the table. “There was a phone.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “A phone?”
“At the paper mill,” he said. “The dead guy had a phone on him.”
I sat up straighter. I knew one of the guys who’d ambushed us had died, but this was the first I’d heard about evidence that might identify him.
“How do you know?”
He leveled a gaze at me that said, You know better than to ask.
“Right. Do you have it? The phone?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “I gave it to Aloha.”
“But isn’t it… I don’t know, evidence or something?”
“Let me worry about that,” Bram said.
I sat back in my chair and stared at my unopened yogurt, my mind spinning.
“How long do you think it’ll take Aloha to get into it?”
“Couple days,” Bram said. “Maybe a few.”
I drew in a breath, my pulse racing. If we could identify even one of the men who’d ambushed us at the paper mill, we might be able to figure out if Dimitri was the one who’d hired them.
“Thanks,” I said. “I know you don’t want to be involved, so just… thank you.”
“I’m involved,” Bram said. “So tell me.”
I met his gaze. “Tell you what?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
He nodded. “Everything you know about what happened to Mom and Dad. Everything you’ve learned about what they were digging into when they were killed. Everything you know about who ran you off the mountain, who might have tried to kill you and the Hawks at the paper mill.”
I bit my lower lip. “That’s a lot of everything.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s my fault. And I’m sorry, Cass. It shouldn’t have gone this far, and it might not have if only I’d listened to you. I hope you can forgive me one day, but in the meantime, I’m going to need you to tell me everything if you want my help.”
It was too much to hope for — that Bram was finally willing to listen, that he was willing to talk about what had happened to our parents, let alone do anything about it — and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I started slowly at first, with all the things that had made me suspect our parents’ deaths hadn’t been an accident, including the witnesses who’d seen Travis Dorsey slam into the car without even trying to slow down.
And then: the Russian man who’d hired Travis Dorsey to run our parents’ car off the road, the wire transfers from Kensington Trust to Aventine that I’d found in our parents’ old papers.
That got his attention. He sat up straighter, told me to go on, and I could tell he was locked into what I was saying.
So I told him about Irina Sokolov, how she’d worked at Kensington for the bratva, how she’d changed her name to Anna Reed and gone into hiding when she’d realized the bratva was funneling money used to traffic women.
How she’d warned me about Dimitri Kaprolov.
I wasn’t surprised when Bram leaned forward, his black eyes burning like pieces of smoldering coal.
“Dimitri Kaprolov?”
“You know about him, don’t you? Because of Maeve.”
Bram scowled. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m starting to think the problem is that we both know a lot of things we aren’t talking about.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “You first.”
“No way. I just told you a bunch of stuff. And I don’t trust you.”
“Ouch. Fuck, Cass.”
“Sorry, but I don’t trust you not to take the information I give you and squirrel it away, tell me not to worry my pretty little head. And we’re way past that now, Bram. You have to know that.”
He nodded slowly. “I do.”
“Then start talking.”