Seeing my brother talking to Sasha, flirting with her, and her slowly falling for his act–whether in a romantic way or not–has felt like a dagger in my heart every day that I’ve watched it. All I could think of to do was to act as if it didn’t bother me, so that Art didn’t see how much Sasha meant to me.
I don’t trust him. I know now that he wants the inheritance he forfeited, and I’m not sure it ends with that. I don’t want to give him something else to use against me, to know how much it would hurt me to lose Sasha, or for something to happen to her.
I don’t want him to know what it is that I love most.
And yet–for all my efforts, for all the days of forcing myself to stay away from Sasha, to bite my tongue, to pretend as if the distance between us isn’t tearing me to pieces, it seems as if he figured it out anyway.
I hear his voice coming across the deck towards us, and I know the game is over and I’ve lost.
Sasha stiffens against me, her hands going very still underneath mine. My entire body feels as if it’s throbbing with need, desire coursing through me with a force that makes it hard to pull away.
“Max?” She breathes my name, her lips still a fraction away from mine, and it takes everything in me to tear myself away from her and turn towards my brother.
“This has nothing to do with you, Art.” I can hear the low, dangerous edge in my voice, and I try to keep a grip on my fragile control, to not cross the deck and pummel my brother’s face in with my fist. It’s rare that I feel such anger, but at this moment, I don’t care that he’s blood. I care that he’s come in and disrupted my life as thoroughly as he did when he left it, and I want him gone.
“Max!” Sasha’s hand touches my arm, her fingers wrapping around it, but I pull away. I can feel a lifetime of repressed emotions and repressed desires throbbing just below the surface of my skin, and I’m one moment away from the final thread snapping loose.
“Go inside, Sasha.”
“But–”
“Go inside!” I turn sharply towards her, teeth clenched as I grind out the words between them. “Now.”
She flinches back, a look of stunned hurt on it, but she turns on her heel, fleeing past Art and back into the house, leaving the two of us facing each other in the dimly lit darkness.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing at here.” I take a step towards him, fists clenched, my voice pitched very low. “But it stops now, Art. Sasha is not for you. I wish I could say I don’t know why you’ve decided to toy with her, but I do. And I’m not going to stand by and watch it.”
Art smirks at me in the darkness. “You know, brother–you have so much here. An inheritance for the taking, power to claim, wealth to use as you like, a beautiful woman who wants you. And yet you behave as if you want absolutely none of it. I wondered what there was between the two of you, really. I saw the look on her face the afternoon I came here, when you called her your friend. I knew there wassomething, but I didn’t know how much–the nature of it. Now I do.”
“Why does it fucking matter?” I stalk closer to him, gritting out every word. “Why do you care if I want her or not, if we’re together or not, or something in between? I haven’t mattered to you for the better part of two fucking decades, Art, so why now?”
Art lifts one shoulder casually, the smirk still clinging to his lips. “Maybe I just want to come home, brother.”
“Well, you’re fucking here, aren’t you?”
“Filthy mouth for a priest who wants so badly to cling to the past.” Art steps back, leaning against the wall behind him. “She deserves better than you.”
“You don’t know anything about her.”
“I know enough.” He shrugs. “She’s very beautiful. Very innocent. You shouldn’t lie to the ones you love, Max–her…orme.”
“I didn’t lie to you.” I glare at him. “Sasha and I aren’t together.”
Art smirks. “That looked very…togetherto me. I’ve fucked plenty of women, Max, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever had a single one want me so very obviously–sopurely.Not because of fame or money or connections, but out of pure, primallust.” A delicate shiver goes through him. “If you really think you aren’t lying to me, brother, then I can assure you that you’re lying to yourself.”
“Fuck off.” I try to shove past him, to go back inside, but Art grabs my arm, gripping it with surprising strength.
“You can’t have it all, throw it away, and then tell others that they aren’t allowed to even scavenge from your scraps, Max. Remember that.”
“Get your fucking hands off me.” I twist, wrenching away from him. “You’re staying here on my grace, Art. You can go back to Milan if you’re so unhappy with watching my choices. But stay the fuck away from Sasha.”
I pull away then, stalking back into the house and leaving him there, feeling as if my world is spinning out of control, with no way to stop it.
—
As if he can fucking sense that tonight is thelastnight I want to talk, I’m barely sequestered away in the study when a call comes in from Viktor. I grit my teeth, resisting the urge to hitdeclineon the call as I sink into the deep leather chair behind the desk, propping up my tablet and accepting the video chat.
Viktor’s office fills the screen, and I catch a glimpse of Luca sitting on the other side of it, his face so grave that a ripple of uncertainty runs through me.