Page 132 of Wicked Proposal

This time, I don’t kneel. “Hi, Kira.”

Hi, Yuli.

I can hear her voice in my head like it hasn’t been a day. Her amused lilt, like there was always something funny to find in every conversation. Even when she was sad, or angry, or in one of her gray spells that the weight of her birthright brought about, the ones that made her cold and indifferent to everyone and everything, she never lost her humor.

I take in the details of her grave. It isn’t as dirty as my family’s, but the flowers—camellias, her favorite—are far from fresh. They’re dried, stiff things on cracking stems.

One touch and they’d crumble into dust.

“I see your sister hasn’t been by,” I remark, touching my fingers to the thin layer of dust on the headstone. Another sign Nikita hasn’t been here in a while. “I’m to blame for that. I lost her.”

You lost my sister?

“Yes. But I’ll find her.”

If Kira was here, she would have raised a skeptical eyebrow. But unlike her voice, Kira’s is blurry in my memory. Indistinct. Like I’m gazing at her through water. It should be the clearest of them all, with Nikita being a living reminder by my side, but for some reason, it’s not. The only time I can see her again is once a year, when I stare into the eyes of her portrait.

I wonder if this is why Nikita comes by every week.

Because she doesn’t want to forget.

Fuck, what wouldn’tIgive to forget?

“There’s someone else I might lose.” I don’t put fresh flowers into her vase. It’s not my place to. I was never family to her, not a boyfriend or a fiancé or anything else like that, not that her killers cared enough to ask.

“Someone who’s got nothing to do with me.”Like you.

“Someone who might die for it.”Like you.

“Someone I don’t want to lose.”Like you.

Thepakhanin me is silent. Usually, it’d be sneering already, mocking my weakness. Reminding me of what I need to do and why.

But here, in front of the graves of everyone I’ve lost, even thepakhanside of me has no place.

Here, I’m simply human.

“I lied to her.” My voice goes hoarse around the lump in my throat. “I let her believe I had nothing to do with that shooting.”

The flashbacks from that day overlap with the ones from twenty years ago: the bullets, the roar, the blood. Carbon copies of each other.

“She almost died. I almost turned her son into an orphan. I shouldn’t give a shit, but God help me, I do.”

You always give a shit.Her tone is light, joking, with a note of truth underneath it.That’s why I had to look out for you. You were way too soft for a Bratva kid.

That wasn’t a bad thing, you know.

I turn deaf to that last part. I don’t want to hear all the reasons why being weak is a luxury I can afford. Not when it so clearly isn’t.

Not when it cost me what I cared about most in the world.

“Without her, I can’t avenge my family.” I clench my fists at my sides, bloodthirst mounting with every second. “I can’t avengeyou.”

Would that be so bad?Letting sleeping ghosts lie?

“Yes.”

Why?