Page 23 of No Longer Mine

Then, something strange happened. She smiled. Not just any smile.

A megawatt smile as she pulled me in for another hug. It wasn’t like any other embrace I’d received from her before. This one was different.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered against my ear, holding onto me for a second longer than necessary. “I didn’t think you’d ever find a passion for anything but killing—and here you are, proving us all wrong.”

I pulled away and decided we needed to stay clear of this conversation. “Who all is coming this weekend?”

Audrey and Alexei?

Her eyes softened with sadness. “The usual.”

No Audrey and Alexei. But I knew that, I’d called Alexei on the way here. I wanted to know for a fact he wasn’t coming because I wanted an out to this mess myself. But at least Carina was here. But then again, Carina was here, and I knew for a fact she wasn’t happy with my lack of texting or calling her back.

Ugh.

I showed Don to our rooms upstairs and grabbed another beer before deciding to face the music that was my family. Everyone was around the pool, though with the dropping temperatures, no one was actually in the water. My parents spared no expense on the pool or the terrace area, which meant there was also a hot tub and a heater in the massive Olympic-sized pool. Carina jumped from the table and rushed me. I held my beer up over her head to keep from spilling it on the both of us.

“You’re here!”

Ace remained seated at the table with his sunglasses on. I couldn’t read his expression, and I didn’t really care to. Ivan and Griffin were seated beside him. Griffin shot me an appreciative look, and Ivan ignored all of us. Once again, they didn’t have any female companions with them. I didn’t blame them. There was no point in bringing anyone around who you weren’t marrying. I was sure they had more than their fair share of women back home.

Carina pulled away from me and grinned. Her dark blue eyes reminded me of the ocean, and her dark hair was braided away from her clean face. She was gorgeous, and my brother didn’t deserve her.

“Okay, lets get this out of the way, shall we?”

Ace leaned back in his chair and one leg over the other.

“I am running for New York City Councilman. No, I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to hear it. I still don’t wantto hear it. My driver and security detail is here with me this weekend and he has been tasked, via my campaign manager, to take pictures of us this weekend. I just want to relax and enjoy my time out of the spotlight.”

A small grin curled Ace’s lips, and I wondered what it was about. He didn’t just smile. Ivan stood up and slapped me on the back before he walked away. It was the closest thing I would get to a congratulations.

“Glad to hear it, now can I go back inside?”

I frowned. “No one forced you to be out here.”

He walked away and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ace did.”

“Congratulations, Brother.”

“Thank you.”

“Are we going to stay in the dark this entire campaign?” Carina pouted.

I didn’t want to break under her scrutiny— I was already beating myself up for the three beers I’d had on the way here. It was getting harder to ignore her puppy dog eyes.

My eyes flicked between her and her husband. “Probably.”

Carina’s face fell, but she hid it quickly. “You need to loosen up! Promise we will have fun this weekend?”

Her definition of fun and mine were very different.

My head was swimming by the fifth beer, which was rather odd for me. Turns out, in my sober time, I became a lightweight. It was fine by me because when I went home, I wouldn’t touch the stuff again.

But it was also dangerous because all kinds of ideas were floating around in my head. Unhinged ideas that I’d tried to bury but now were coming up for air. Like replacing all of the thousands of dollars in wine with boxed shit. Don liked boxedshit and so we had a full trunk of it—I’d insisted he brought plenty. Now I was thrilled that he’d actually listened. I swayed as I walked up the stairs to find my security detail. He was sitting at his computer, going over surveillance. He insisted he stay on top of it while we were out of town in case my little friend came knocking again.

He raised his brows at me when I burst into his room. “You need to be cut off.”

“What I need is to replace all of the wine with your boxed shit.”