Page 18 of Climbing Everest

Brixton

B y the time she finishes, tears are streaming down her cheeks, her eyes are unfocused as though she’s reliving that night right here in the middle of my penthouse, and I’d refilled my glass three times.

The burn of the liquor down my throat and into my stomach does nothing to quiet the beast rattling in my brain. It wants blood. It wants violence.

It wants fucking revenge.

Snatching the bottle by the neck, I carry it to where she’s sitting, top her glass off, then take a seat in the chair kitty corner to where she sits on the couch.

She blinks rapidly a few times, wiping at her cheeks, almost surprised to find them so wet.

“I went to your house when we didn’t hear from you,” I say, keeping my voice low as though afraid I’ll burst this little moment.

“I nearly tore through the guards when they stopped me from getting to the front door. Your dad came out with this look…” I suck in a deep breath and shake my head.

“He looked so smug, so fucking proud of himself.” And to think at that time, he believed his daughter was dead in the woods, rotting away or being torn to pieces by wild animals.

“He told me he’d taken you to the doctor himself for an abortion and that he’d chosen a husband for you, that the two of you had already married and were on your honeymoon. ”

Her pink nose wrinkles. “Did you happen to notice I was alone in that apartment?” Her head shakes side to side as fresh tears well in her eyes.

“You actually believed that shit?” She looks equal parts hurt and confused, and she has every right to both those emotions.

Because why the fuck had we ever believed a word out of her father’s mouth?

We knew Everest. We knew her heart, her soul.

“Not at first, but then we couldn’t find you, and we had every resource available looking for you. When no one caught so much as a glimpse of you…” I shrug as though I answered her question.

“What about Christos? What happened with that? And where’s Cora?”

I lean back in my seat, rake my fingers through my hair to push it out of my face. “We met with him after we left you that night. Tried to have a sit down. Kato told him you were pregnant, and that we were all three leaving. Told his dad he intended to marry you.”

I lift the glass to my lips as I look out the windows at the lights coming from the various buildings and businesses scattered through the city.

Hissing through my teeth, I lower the glass. “He said he’d cut your throat himself before he let his only son marry Russian trash. It got physical. Christos made a call, ordered one of his guards to track you down. Kato shot him. End of story.”

“Why the hell would Christos kill me? I get hating my dad, but he and I have barely said ten words to each other since I was little, and I think I was always polite.”

I smile at that, because of course she was polite. While Kato was being groomed to take over an empire, Everest Sidorova was being trained to be the model Bratva wife, being trained how to speak to anyone and everyone while also knowing when to keep her mouth shut and let the men do their shit.

“Because you’re not Greek, and because you’re a Sidorov. Literally the only reasons. Although I’m pretty sure the three of us could have gone about it a little better.”

She sips at the bourbon and stays quiet for a few seconds. Then her wide eyes dart to mine. “Wait…you went to my house?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you say why? Did you say why you were looking for me?”

She seems a little panicked. I don’t know why, but I don’t like the redness of her nose, the moisture clinging to her lashes, or the fear in her gray eyes that look bluer with her emotion.

I always swore her eyes were like a mood ring, turning almost sky blue when she was happy or after orgasm, going storm cloud gray when she was angry.

She’s neither happy nor has she orgasmed – yet – but between crying and the heightened emotions from reliving the worst night of all our lives, the color of her irises is striking against the redness surrounding them.

“I didn’t say why, but I don’t think it was a mystery. Especially when news got out that Christos was dead by his son’s hands and Kato was taking over the business.”

“Fuck,” she mutters just above a whisper.

“We’re still alive. So I don’t think that matters.”

And I have a feeling the only reason we’re still alive is because Dima fucking Sidorov believes his daughter is dead.

It’s what she’s been trying to tell us all along, that announcing she’s not only alive but in the same state, the same mother fucking city as that piece of shit, could put a bull’s eye on not just her but the three of us, as well.

She ran and stayed away to keep us safe and to stay alive.

“Did you ever plan to return?” I ask. I have to know. I need to know whether she ever thought she might return to us.

“I thought about it. I thought maybe after my father was dead I could come back and we could pick up where we left off. But then I pictured you three moving on, finding wives, having families. I figured it would be easier on you if I stayed away, even when the coast was clear.” She shrugs, her narrow shoulders rising and falling in the saddest movement.

“And you stripped because you couldn’t leave a paper trail,” I say rather than ask. I don’t bother asking about anything else. We had received confirmation she worked for tips. In that world, it meant she would suck or fuck for the right amount of money.

We have all been throwing that shit back in her face, using it as a means to humiliate and degrade her.

I might have been the worst of us.

We’ve had her back for two days. Two fucking days. After four years, she’s sitting right here, two feet from me.

And the whole time we have been hating her, planning our revenge against her and her family, plotting how we were going to break her, shatter her the way she had us, she had merely been trying to survive while keeping us from ending up in her father’s sights.

She sniffles and turns those sad eyes on me. “I really missed you. All three of you so fucking much. That was the only thing that kept me from…” She sucks in a shaky breath. “It was the only thing that kept me going.”

The only thing that kept her from ending her own life. She didn’t have to say the words for me to deduce what she’s trying to say.

“Sometimes, I would pretend you were all out in the audience watching me. Other times, I would picture what you were doing right at that moment as I was trying to go to sleep. I wondered if any of you had fallen in love with someone else, or if you grieved my death. I remember when I thought I was going to die…I hoped you three would forgive me for losing the baby.” Another tear rolls down her cheek.

“I tried to fight, but there were three of them, and they were so strong. So fucking fast.” Her voice is a forced, cracked whisper.

“When I saw the blood between my legs, I knew I’d lost the baby.

” Her exhale comes out in one of those heartbreaking hiccups.

I can’t fucking take any more.

Setting my drink on the table, I snatch hers from her hand and set it next to mine before dragging her off the couch and into my arms.

As though not a single moment has passed between us, she instinctively wraps her legs around my waist like she always did.

I hug her tightly to my chest, almost afraid I’m cutting off her air flow.

We had been so…fuck. Irate, enraged…there isn’t a word in the dictionary that describes the level of anger we all felt.

There was also a fuck ton of pain. Why tell us about the baby if she planned to abort it? According to chatter coming from the Sidorov Family, Everest and her father had planned the whole thing, merely a way to torture us.

And in reality, our girl had fought for her life, had almost lost it, then spent the last four years alone.

Yeah, Kato, Maddox, and I had been in pain, but at least we’d had each other. I had spent plenty of time either inking or piercing my skin to feel something other than loss and anger, had stuck my dick into any willing hole to fill the never-ending emptiness.

Kato buried himself in work, expanding the empire until we became a true threat to anyone on the outskirts. He’d built a reputation for his ruthlessness, but had also built an army of loyal soldiers who followed his every demand without a single question.

Madd…well, fuck. The dude now lived up to his nickname.

Maddox had gone batty as fuck. He’d always been…

not really serious, but he’d always had a head for business.

The moment we got word from Dima Sidorov, he had become violent as fuck, often reinforcing Kato’s law without backup.

Kato and I both feared he had some fucked up death wish and was using his role as enforcer, as a soldier to the Antoniou empire instead of taking himself out by his own hand.

None of that, not a single moment we have spent over the past four years held a candle to what our girl has endured.

Tangling my hand in her hair, I pull her head away from my shoulder and force her to look at me. “I am so fucking sorry. I should have known better. I should have…fuck. I don’t know. Started killing people until I got more information.”

For the first time in what feels like a century, I press my lips to hers. It’s not gentle. It’s hungry, desperate, and filled with so many promises.

“I swear to you on my goddamn life I will make them all pay. If I personally have to walk through those gates and into that house alone, I will destroy every single person who hurt you. Including your father.”

Her bottom lip quivers and my heart shatters a little more.

“I’m such a fucking dick.” My eyes drop to the lines visible above the collar of her sweater. Because it hangs off one shoulder, I can see the top lines of the letter B.

B for Brixton.

B for bastard.

“The initials?” I ask her when I lift my eyes back to her face.

Tears have trailed down her cheeks again. “My father.”