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The person who is supposed to be closest to me is the one who treats me like a stranger. He wants me to carry on the family business but snaps when I try to make him proud. Or happy. Or something other than the cold and stoic asshole he’s become.
For years, I’d lived in Lili’s shadow. She was always a better gymnast, a better student, more dependable, more sensitive to people’s feelings…things that never really mattered much to me. I was always the rogue, the one who would sneak out in the middle of the night to go to parties, the one who studied five minutes before a test, the one who got sent to detention for making out with my boyfriend, Remy, in the boys’ locker room.
Sometimes I feel like that shadow is still hanging over me, except the stakes are higher and my aversion to authority has only gotten stronger.
It should have been me and not Lili.
I wiggle my toes in my new Jimmy Choo booties and take another sip of vodka. I don’t even know how much I’ve had. Today, tonight, the hours seem to blend together. I drink it like water, and it numbs the pain that slices through me after every conversation I have with Papa.
Today was bad. And tomorrow…tomorrow will be horrible.
It always is.
That’s really why I came here. I needed to forget, at least for a little while. I needed to ditch my past…and Alexi…for my future.
Whatever the hell will come of it. From day to day, I just never know.
I don’t trust easily. Alexi is my only real friend. He knows more about me than anyone. He knows me better than my own father, for Christ’s sake. And Rocco is right. Alexi has been all over me like maggots on rotting meat since that conversation with Papa. I’ve gotten no less than thirty texts from him since lunchtime, just checking in. He also showed up at my place, but I managed to convince him I was staying in. Showing up to the door in my robe with my hair piled on my head gave him peace of mind, I suppose, and he finally left me alone for the night.
But I don’t need protection. I want to be exposed and appear vulnerable. Maybe it’ll bring the demons out to play.
I have some games in mind…
And the people sitting around me right now…I know I can count on them. They’d have my back. They’ve proven it before.
How ironic that they don’t know me at all.
Maybe if they did, they wouldn’t be so willing to help me.
I take another gulp of my drink and twist away from their laughter. I take in a sharp breath, my heart thumping. If I’d have just waited a split second longer, I wouldn’t have seen it. And fuck me, I wish I hadn’t.
Because one person has claimed a place in my otherwise dismal future, the one who keeps creeping into my thoughts, who has me fantasizing like a teenaged girl mooning over the newest boy band sensation.
And he has not one, but two slutty bitches draped all over him.
“Ohh. Would you look at that?” Shaye leans over, her hair spilling into my glass. I pull it away so she doesn’t knock it out of my hand.
“What are you talking about?”
She points in Rocco’s general area. I say general because her hand is waving around like she’s signing her name in the air. “That.”
I shrug. “He can dance with whomever he wants to. Good for him, you know?”
“You’re mad, Kat. I can tell. Why don’t you go over there and kick their whorey asses-s?” She giggles, pulling herself onto her knees. “You know you want to,” she taunts. “And you know you can.”
I glance back at the girls. Of course I can. That’s not even a question.
But kicking their asses wouldn’t make me happy.
Kicking his would.
He did this to me! He turned me inside out! I was perfectly content with my empty and meaningless life, daily battles with underworld scumbags topped off with a boatload of regret and guilt eating away at me.
At least I had Stoli 2.
But now I have nothing.
And I want something, goddammit!