Page 5 of Dangerous Promises

I close my eyes and repeat the chant.

If I were to look at my face in the mirror, I couldn't see how I've changed. I've always had a lot of anger inside me. I can't seem to see the change in me that Isla does.

She said she could see my brother in my eyes. As if that were a bad thing. Victor could be kind sometimes. He was my brother after all. But there was always a certain look on his face when he was losing it. When he was descending into madness. I see that look in my own eyes now.

I know it's me. I can reach out and touch me. Yet I feel so far away. I am aware enough to see that this look should scare me. But not aware enough to change my path.

Victor. Victor. Victor. Victor.

I can't let this feeling take over. The flushes of grief that roll through me never seem to go away no matter how much time passes.

Every single day I wake up with a knot in my chest, reminding me that something must be done. I've always been angry, and I'd always learned to live with the knot in the past. Since my brother died I can't ignore it. I am untethered. I never had peace, but I lost whatever was left of it. Whatever parts were still holding me together.

When Sage is gone… dead, by my hand, I'm sure this feeling will go away. I know from experience I will never have peace. But maybe I can quieten the grief that threatens to consume me. Maybe I can regain control and maybe I can learn to live again.

But only after I see her burn.

Isla is back in my face, clicking her fingers when I snap my eyes open. She backs off on a shiver, and I hate to think how much darkness she's seeing in me to make her recoil like that.

If it were anyone else intruding on this space, they would regret it. But Isla is the only other person in the world I would die for. So for her, I make an exception.

I head to the makeshift bar in the corner of the room, pouring myself a shot and downing it in one go.

"I don't like you being in here," Isla says, whispering as she watches me with a hung head. My hand pauses around my next shot of vodka. "After everything that went down in this room, I don't think you should be spending so much time in here."

I crack the glass and the shards dig into my skin. But that's the most reaction she'll get out of me. I wipe the broken glass off on my pants and head back for another tumbler. "Because Victor died here?" I say, pouring myself another shot, keeping my voice even and calm even as Isla narrows her eyes at me in suspicion. "Because that little bitch snuffed his life out right here on this fucking green couch?"

Looking at it from this angle, the angle that I first saw Victor's lifeless body, has my breath quickening. I put the glass down and turn away in an attempt to calm down. A warm hand brushes my shoulder, one that I glare at but don't shrug away right now. "You can't push away your responsibilities forever."

I scoff and this time I do push her away.

"I'm holding down the fort, Alexei," Isla says, disappointment bleeding into her tone again. "But you're thepakhannow. I can't hold this spot forever."

I fiddle with another shot of vodka, daring not to look at her where she stands behind me judging. "I have bigger problems."

Isla gives me a condescending laugh. "Sage DeMarco is not a bigger problem than everything else that's going on. If you just put your shit aside for one second you'd see-"

I down the shot and smash the glass against the wall in a fit of unintended rage. All in my pursuit of making this room more trashed than before. "Do not!"

She gets in my face, as if getting closer to me will get this incessant message through to me any better than the first thousand times she pitched it. I will admit, Isla is rarely passionate about much, and right now her brown eyes are screaming at me.

"I am not thepakhan, Alexei. You are. We have much bigger problems than Sage DeMarco. Or any of the DeMarcos, for that matter. And if you ever took your eye away from her, you'd see that."

I eye her up and down, seeing the plea in her. But like a fog has formed over me, I can't reach out, and I can't see past it. All I see is my anger. All I see is Sage's face in my mind. Playing on a loop over and over.

Isla sighs and clenches her fists. "I wish I could make you listen to me." She slumps down on the couch, scrunching her face at whatever she feels when she sits there. "Something isn't right. It scares me. I can feel something... coming."

I hear her words in the background, but that is all they are. Background noise. They're behind the fog. I stand with the remote clutched in my hand, playing that footage over and over. Just so I can see the way her throat bobs. I can't look away from it. For a moment, it's the only thing that quietens the screaming in my head.

Isla scoffs behind me. "Fine. If there's one thing you've always been, it's obsessed. First with her. Now with killing her. I can't watch you waste away in here."

She storms past me but I grab her arm, leveling her with a look that I can tell only makes her worry more. "Until I've avenged Victor, my entire being exists in this room. My life's purpose belongs here. Until Sage DeMarco is dead on this floor, bleeding out just as she left Victor to bleed out, this is where I will be."

Isla makes a clucking sound with her tongue. She doesn't need to speak for me to know she disapproves. Problem is, I don't give a fuck.

Not about what she thinks.

Not about my life.