Page 128 of Ruthless Rustanovs

NINE weeks later, Chrysanthemum “Santhe” Brown stood trembling in the small garden of the little house she’d inherited from the kind older Quaker who’d taken her in after she’d escaped from the South.

She and the man she’d come to love had just gotten into a terrible fight.

He wanted to go west and seek out opportunities there.

But she begged him to stay with her in the Quaker woman’s house.

This was the last known address anyone back on her old plantation had for her, and she couldn’t possibly leave.

But as her man pointed out in a stern second verse, it had been two years since her brother was freed. Even if he were still alive, her husband wondered, how was she to know he’d come here? How did she know he wasn’t off somewhere living his dream, while she put theirs on hold awaiting his return?

He loved her, he proclaimed in a rousing final verse.

But she would need to choose between the waiting and the dream.

He’d then left her alone with that ultimatum, which brought on a solo aria with Santhe wretchedly wondering how she could choose between her man and the brother she’d vowed to meet again.

At least she thought it was a solo aria. But halfway through her tortured wondering, she is interrupted by someone calling her name.

She turns, trembles. It can’t be…

But it is! Her brother. Her brother, now much older than when they sang to each other before her escape. He has found her at last!

With tears in their eyes and holding hands, they sing a soul-melting final number together with the rest of the chorus. For the waiting is over. And the dream of a new day… For her. For him. For their people…

The orchestra and chorus stops as Santhe’s voice fills up the entire venue with two words, sung in a potent mix of gospel and opera, “HAS BEGUN.”

Santhe holds the audience there for a full minute with her declarative cry. And by the time the siren lets them go, most of the audience is on its feet, clapping wildly with tears in their eyes.

Thel herself had trouble keeping the tears out of her eyes a few minutes later as she and the rest of the cast took their final bow.

It was just the beginning for quite a few of them.

The run had gone spectacularly, making both national and local news for its subject matter and its teenage wunderkind writers.

If she’d been interested in continuing on as Sirena, this role would have made an amazing launch pad for the rest of her career. But this would be her last performance as Sirena Gale.

So it was farewell kisses she threw back at the adoring audience, tossing flowers and programs on to the stage. Farewell kisses, even though she could already feel the one-of-a-kind work burning a permanent hole into her heart, where it would always reside.

The only thing she regretted more than the loss of this role was the empty seat directly behind the orchestra. Prime real estate she’d kept blocked off every night of the show’s run, just in case. But he’d never made it.

She guessed she really had come to start thinking of him as family, she thought ruefully a little while later.

Backstage, she watched Dana get swarmed with hugs from her own family: her sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law, an insanely hot Latino hotel magnate who, despite being a billionaire, had flown out with her sister for every single one of Dana’s weekend performances.

Now that was love, Thel thought with a bittersweet heart. Though her own sister and brother-in-law had come out for her opening performance, she felt virtually alone now at her last. As if the most important performance of her life had been missed by everyone she loved.

It also didn’t help that it was her birthday.

A day she never celebrated because of what had come after.

But the sharp pain of Trevor’s death had faded into something a little more warm and bittersweet since her San Francisco trip.

And this morning she’d found herself making a birthday wish that he’d make it back in time to see her last performance.

It matters to me. It is very important to me to see you sing in this role, Siren, he’d told her. But obviously, he hadn’t been able to make it back in time.

She found three missed calls from him when she went into her dressing room. But she didn’t bother returning them until she was all the way out of her costume and had removed her heavy make-up.

“Where are you?” he asked in lieu of a hello.

“Coming out of my dressing room,” she answered. “Where are you?”

“I just arrived at hotel.”

“Oh,” she said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice. So he had tried to make it, but hadn’t gotten here on time.

“You didn’t go back to the condo?”

“You never gave me key,” he reminded her.

“You never came off as the kind of guy who needed one,” she shot back, not bothering to mask her irritation.

A moment of quiet, then, “I tried to get here sooner, Sirena.”

She knew he had. “Sorry, I just wish…” she trailed off, not having the words for everything she wished.

That he’d made it back in time for her performance.

That he was different. That she was different.

That they were two totally un-fucked up people who’d met under better circumstances and actually had a chance at the kind of love her sister and brother-in-law shared.

“Dexter knows where I am. Tell him to bring you to me. We will make paradise again.”

She once again opened her mouth to say a number of things: “I think I should just go home. This isn’t good for either of us. You know I’m officially not Sirena anymore. I’m Thel. In fact today is both literally and figuratively her birthday.”

But instead she heard herself say, “Okay.” Not quite ready to give up paradise just yet.

Which was why she nearly had a heart attack when a restaurant full of people yelled, “Happy Birthday!!!!” right as she walked in.

Her hand clasped her chest when she saw Bair standing at the front of the crowd.

“How did you know?” she demanded after she’d pulled him down and thoroughly kissed him. She’d never told him the exact date of her birthday, just that it was in August.

He answered with a Rustanov sneer. “You know already about me and my ways, Siren. I make Olivia Pope look like amateur.”

“Is this why you didn’t come to my last performance?” she asked laughing,

“I was there,” he answered. “But high in balcony with Alexei. He was right about you in this role, Sirena. You were only siren for it.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, wondering how many ways Bair would melt her heart before they were through.

“Would you like drink?” he asked.

She blinked. “Seriously?”

Another of his psycho rules floated up between them. She must never be sad when he is hungry. She must always be wet for him. She must never drink.

“I have changed,” he said, his black eyes solemn. “I know this is hard for you to believe, Siren, but I have changed.”

And there went her cynical heart, melting all over again.

“Maybe I’ll truly believe it after I’ve had a glass of champagne,” she said with a teasing grin.

“I will be back,” he said, giving Sirena a couple of ideas about who should be tapped to play the part in the next inevitable Terminator reboot.

Almost as soon as he disappeared into the crowd, though, Alexei appeared beside her. Like an evil cloud of smoke.

“I would like to know what your intentions are with my brother,” he said without so much as a hello.

Thel blinked up at him. “My intentions? I don’t have any intentions in our relationship. I’ve never been allowed to—us American black girls being so untrustworthy and all that.”

At least Alexei had the grace to look a little ashamed of himself. His jaw tightened and he said, “About that…I still would like to explain—”

Thel cut him off with a shake of her head. “I don’t think there’s an explanation on Earth that would help me figure out why you goaded him into treating me like a piece of fuckable property. I know that’s all Rustanov pets are to you guys, but you—”

“You think back then…what he did…was about you being a Rustanov pet?” Now Alexei cut her off, squinting at her with seemingly genuine confusion.

Before she could answer, Bair came back with two flutes of champagne.

“Alexei, perhaps you do not know it is Sirena’s birthday,” he said, handing one of the flutes to Thel while taking note of the tense, confrontational way she and his brother were standing across from each other.

Mouth drawing back into an unhappy snarl, he said something more to Alexei in terse Russian.

To which Alexei responded with a stream of way more vehement Russian. What looked like a good two-minute argument then ensued, each brother cutting the other off several times, before Alexei ended up throwing his hands in the air with a bunch of Russian even Thel recognized as curse words.

“What was that all about?” she asked, watching Alexei leave.

Bair dead-eyed his brother’s retreating form as he took a sip of champagne. “My brother wishes to give me relationship advice. I told him I did not need it, so he is leaving your party now,” he answered.

Then he blinked when he saw the expression on her face. “Why does our argument bring smile to your face?”

“Because,” she answered, her grin just stupid with happiness. “You really have changed.”