It’s only Reina and me now.
Just like all those years ago.
She sits on the side of the bed, still holding my hand, careful not to jostle my side. From what the doctor said, I broke one rib and bruised two.
I’m scared to look at my face and witness all the damage Ivan has done.
“Is he dead?” I ask Reina.
She must realize exactly who I’m talking about since she nods tightly. “I stabbed him in the fucking eye.”
“Good.” My voice turns emotional. “Mom and Dad can rest in peace now.”
I expected Reina to share my emotional reaction, but her expression hardens like a warrior before a battle. “I wish I did it earlier, but I couldn’t hurt him. The leaders in Grandpa’s closest chamber considered him the rightful heir, being a man and all. Ivan played a long-term game and made Mom and me appear like villains, like we brainwashed Grandpa. I had to get their blessing first, and I managed to persuade some strong allies, but the others wouldn’t budge. When I heard about your kidnapping, though, I couldn’t just stay still.”
Allies and leaders…all this mafia talk comes out of Reina’s mouth like it’s second nature, like it’s the only way she knows how to live.
“Will you…” I swallow. “Will you be okay now?”
She smiles a little. “Okay is my middle name, brat. You’re the one who’s always getting hurt.”
“Well, I wasn’t trained to stab people’s eyes.”
Her grin widens. “Grandpa taught me.” Then her face falls. “I wish you could’ve met him. He was a hard man with a good core, but he just didn’t know how to make Mom feel safe. That’s why she ran away.”
I gulp the saliva gathered at the back of my throat. “I think she ran away because she didn’t want that life for us, Rei.”
“Well, she didn’t succeed. It’s already too late.” She strokes the back of my hand. “I have to go back to my world.”
“Your world?” I choke and wince when my mouth aches.
“It is.” She shrugs. “I won’t let those who secretly allied with the fucker Ivan sully Grandpa’s legacy. He trusted me with it, and it’s my duty as a Sokolov to see it to the end.”
“B-but we’re talking about the mafia, Rei. The fucking mafia—they’re deadly.”
“I’m deadly, too. Grandpa didn’t raise me to bow to those fucking pigs.” Her shoulders straighten and her eyes lose their spark, turning cold and lethal. It’s almost like an entirely different Reina.
She’s not my sweet sister or the girl who trembled with me in the dark as we hid from Ivan’s men. She now seems more like those men, if not more emotionless.
What have they done to my twin sister all these years? What have they turned her into?
“R-Reina, we promised to be together, remember?”
“And we will. We are.” Her expression softens a little. “We’ll just have to cross paths like Dad and I used to, you in your world and me in mine.”
“No!” I shout, and my voice cracks. “That’s not what we agreed on.”
“We just promised to meet again.” She raises an eyebrow. “We never agreed on anything else.”
“Don’t get smartass on me, Rei.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Then…” I start to lick my lips then stop when I recall they’re most likely busted and will hurt. “Then I’ll go back to my identity and you go back to yours.”
Truth is, being Rai Sokolov again scares the shit out of me. That little girl was a runaway, always hungry and empty. She was a shell of a person with no purpose in the world and no one to hold on to except for Mom, so when she was killed, I lost all sense of purpose.
Until I met Dad and Asher.