Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
She rolled her eyes, but we both knew what it was.
A hickey.
I’m not sure when I’d gotten it, but I definitely knew it was there now. There was no way you could hide something that big.
Even my brother probably noticed it, but he was wise enough not to ask about his sister’s sex life.
He’d learned that particular lesson when I’d lost my virginity to one of his friends in high school, and I’d given him every single detail and more. I’d then told him about our two-and-a-half-month-long relationship every single time I saw him so he’d know what kind of sex I was having.
I’d even asked him to give his friend advice on how to please me.
That’d been the last time he’d ever asked, mostly because he knew that I’d make his life a living hell if he did.
I was wise enough not to tell him that I’d slept with a cop who’d wanted to investigate him, though.
“We need to talk about the next steps.” Elianora crossed her legs to get comfortable. “Don’t ever talk to them…”
She went on to explain how the next several days would go. How I shouldn’t talk to the cops without her present. How I needed to be careful, because why would someone specifically give me a box with a dead body in it. How a lot of this could be related to Shasha and his business practices—i.e., the Russian Bratva that he now ran with an iron fist.
Blah, blah, blah.
“I think you should stay with us for a few days.” Shasha paused. “Or, perhaps, the perfectly good house that I built you.”
I winced.
Shasha had finished the houses—or more accurately, his wife’s brothers’ company had finished it—two years ago, and I’d yet to move into mine.
Dima’s was also sitting empty, even though it was empty because he was in the military and actually not even in the country.
Milena didn’t have any issues with staying in a suffocating jail cell—though she had her reasons that she didn’t exactly share with the rest of us.
“Um, no,” I said. “I will not change a single thing about anything that I’m doing. I’m literally running my business out of my apartment right now. If I move to your house, all of my stuff won’t just follow me over there.”
“We can…”
“No, Shasha,” I said. “This is a hard limit for me. No. I don’t want this. If you suffocate me, I’ll push back.”
They’d tried that when I was younger, and it’d only pushed me away.
He knew I’d leave and not come back, too.
And it would kill him.
He loved his family.
I knew he did.
But I would not go through that again.
I’d done it throughout my childhood, and it wasn’t healthy.
When Shasha’s daughter, Vivi, had been born, I’d had to have a long talk with Brecken about Shasha’s pension for suffocation.
And not in the “kill you,” way but in the “I’ll protect you until you want to run away” way.
I had done that, too.
Run away.
It’d been a last-ditch effort to keep myself sane.
And it’d caused my parents to go nuclear and Dima and Shasha to outright flip the fuck out.
Needless to say, the only way they’d gotten me back was to promise they’d let me live my life.
Which I would be doing, even now.
I just hoped in this process he didn’t find out where I was living.
He’d seriously lose his shit, and I’d never hear the end of it.
He looked fucking pissed, but I noted that he didn’t push anymore.
“So what am I supposed to do? Hope that you don’t get chopped up into little pieces like that young woman did?” he asked. “Just take a leap of faith?”
I gritted my teeth. “When I knew I was in trouble, I called you first, Shasha.”
He deflated.
He knew I was right.
“You’ll promise to always call me first?” He leaned forward then, eyes intense.
I stood up and patted him on the head. “Yes, Shasha.”
He grumbled under his breath and reached for me, pulling me into his lap and squeezing the shit out of me. “Don’t fucking get into a mess, Nastya. This is bad.”
“I know,” I returned. “I’m going to try my hardest.”
My phone buzzed, the alarm going off for my blood sugar this time.
I groaned when he said, “Get it taken care of, Nastya.”
I grumbled something under my breath and he pinched me. “This isn’t a game. This is not something that I’ll allow you to fuck around with.”
I rolled my eyes.
When I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
I’d tried really hard to act normal, but with the stupid diagnosis came even more suffocation.
I fucking hated my diagnosis.
Sometimes, I’d thought about how easy it would be to just do what I wanted and damn the consequences.
It was hard to live in a world where your body was against you one hundred percent of the time.