Page 84 of Jace
I laugh. “I’d like to see you be stupid enough to try. You wouldn’t escape my fist, my bullets, and the dozen cameras aimed at you right now.” He glances around as I school him. “This is Billionaire’s Row for a reason. Every square inch is armed and surveilled.”
The soldier fights the sag of his shoulders. He’s at his wits’ end, which wasn’t a long road. He’s all brawn and no brains.
Silently, he tries pleading with his eyes.Help me out here, buddy.Like I should give a shit for his sake—I don’t—but I do care about mine, and I love Vivian.
Unfortunately, this means my father knows about her. Don’t ask me how. The devil is an omniscient fuck.
The soldier opens his piehole to issue another threat, but I huff. “Shut your fucking mouth. We’re not playingJohn Wickin the middle of Palm Beach.” I stroll toward the other side of the car. “This should be interesting.”
The opposite rear window slides down, and I’m not prepared for who I see sitting there.
I have a few memories of my father. Most are of large, looming silhouettes, mocking my cries and locking me inside a trunk.
But one is clear.
It’s of him, sitting at the head of our opulent dining table. It was Sviat Vechir, the Holy Supper, celebrating what was to be our last Christmas Eve in Moscow before we escaped him.
We sat, formally dressed and silent, around the table—Mom, my brothers, and me—while the anxious butler and parlor maid scurried to serve us the traditional twelve-course meal.
It was excruciating and tense. We lost our appetites around our father, making it impossible to eat the sixth course of pickledherring. Immediately, Grant threw it up, making Sire turn and vomit. Axel fought the urge, and so did a very young Nick.
Our mother got up and rushed to care for them, but my father backhanded her, knocking her to the floor.
But I was the one holding Loch, my baby brother, in my arms that night. We took turns protecting him, and I knew what was coming. I bolted up from the table to run away with him, but our father barked, “Run, Jasha, and I will put Lyov in the trunkwithyou. You will survive without your mother’s tit, but he won’t.”
I spent Christmas Day alone, locked inside the devil’s coffin.
But that’s not who I’m looking at now.
Ruslan looks like the devil’s ghost. A phantom of his former self. Swollen face. Pale skin. Iron rings around his icy eyes. His bespoke, gray tailored suit hangs from his massive, withering frame.
He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be traveling. Shouldn’t be alive.
“Jasha, you are my tallest, my biggest, my healthiest stock.” He admires my form, stating the obvious in Russian.
So I bark back, “English or this conversation is over.” He can speak it fluently.
Slowly, he blinks. Annoyed. Exhausted. Karma’s bitch.
I grin. “Damn, old man, you look like shit.” I don’t care about his feelings; he has none. “Shouldn’t you be dead by now? What are you waiting for? A litter of puppies to kick before you croak?”
I feel nothing but cold apathy. Or maybe it’s burning fury. I don’t care, and don’t care about him. He flips that murderous switch in my brain—the one he put there.
He licks his cracked lips. “You know why I am here, and I know whyyouare here.” His bony hand, covered in liver spots, barely waves in the direction from which we drove. “She is beautiful, talented, and comes from cultured breeding. Wise choice, Jasha.”
Vivian.
He knows everything about her, her family, their legacy. But no fucking way can he know about the video. Only the kings and queens know about it.
It makes my pulse climb, my nostrils flare. I don’t say a word. I reveal nothing.
“Funny, is it not?” He muses with a muddled smirk. “I sent your brother, Sergei, here to find his wife as well.”
He means Sire, but he’ll never say our American names. And he means Wren, how we helped Sire rescue her from a sex trafficking ring here in Palm Beach.
Fuck, I’d forgotten it was here; it’s a small, sadistic world of the wealthiest men and criminal politicians.
I’m too focused on one loser in yellow shoes.
