Page 102 of Burn Falls

CHAPTER TWENTY

Fuck.

Calla was in love with me.

I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I cared for her and like I’d told her, I would never let anything happen to her. But there was no way I could fall in love with a human. What I needed to do was settle things with Renzo and hopefully strike a deal with him to leave her alone and for this all to be done. Though, to do that, I needed to break things off with her before her feelings deepened, even if I felt as though she was made for me. I couldn’t deny how I craved her, but I also knew the right thing to do to save her life andmyun-beating heart.

After Calla fell asleep, I went to wait for Athan. We needed to talk, and I wasn’t sure how the conversation was going to go. He was my best friend—my ally—my brother, but there was still the issue with Renzo and his ties to Russia. Maybe Calla was right. Maybe Athan had no idea. Renzo was good at hiding who he was and what and who he controlled. That was how only Capone and the others of the Chicago Outfits got busted with the feds, and how word never got out that a vampire controlled Chicago. I wasn’t naïve enough to think there weren’t any vampires in Russia. I just didn’t know if Athan was keeping something from me—or multiple things.

A little before eight in the morning, Athan walked in through the kitchen. I was sitting at the island, looking at files on my computer of the nightly updates for my patients at the hospital, whiskey bottle in front of me.

“And how was your night?” he asked just as the automatic shades started to descend on every window, indicating it was almost daybreak. This time of year, the sun rose around eight thirty in the morning and set around six in the evening. The hours we could be out were starting to shorten.

I looked up from the monitor of my laptop and straight into his dark eyes, knowing I needed to hide my inner thoughts so he couldn’t read my mind. “Shit went down.”

“What do you mean shit went down?” He grabbed the bottle and an empty glass from behind him in the cabinet. He wasn’t picky which glass he drank from as long as the contents tasted the same.

“The vamp that attacked Miles showed up.”

“What?” he roared and slammed the bottle back on the island a little too hard.

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “Calla’s sleeping.”

“It’s eight in the fucking morning. Doesn’t she have work?”

I grinned. “She’ll be late.”

Athan chuckled, knowing I’d exhausted her. “Okay, then what the hell happened with the vamp? Where is he?” he asked, lowering his voice back to normal.

“Tell me about the Russian Mafia.”

He balked and then blinked slowly. I heard him say in his thoughts, “The Russian Mafia?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “The Russian Mafia.”

“I know nothing about the Russian Mafia except that it exists.”

“Everyone knows that it exists,” I snapped. “Don’t fucking play games with me.”

Athan crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe you should just ask me what you really want to ask instead of insinuating that I know more than I do.”

I stared at him for a beat, both of us keeping our thoughts hidden. “Renzo has ties to the Russian Mafia. You live—”

“He what?” he growled, cutting me off.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Athan.”

“I’m not fucking playing dumb with you,Draven,” he hissed my name. “I know nothing about Renzo or the coven being in Russia.”

“How is that possible? You own a nightclub there.”

He picked up the whiskey bottle again and poured it into the glass a quarter of the way full and then downed the contents. “Because you know, just like you, that I keep a low profile. The club is under one of my aliases. I don’t go around looking for trouble.”

“So it’s a coincidence that the place you chose to put down roots after all this time is the same place Renzo has had ties with since 2015?”

“Yes,” he agreed as though it were true and not him playing games with me. Just like I had, Athan had moved town to town every ten years. We started off in the same place when we left the coven, but over the years, we’ve chosen different places. When I was in Seattle, he was in Canada. Now that I’m in Alaska, he’s in Russia—he moved there in 2010. And while I became a doctor, he worked security for nightclubs and was the playboy of vampires. Now he owns a nightclub and it just so happens to be in a country I never knew Renzo had ties with. I hadn’t thought to question why he chose Russia to settle down until now.

“Don’t you think that if I knew he was in Russia, I would have told you?”