Page 71 of Silent Heart

Which only served to confirm what he suspected.

“There’s no one,” I bit out.

“Sticking with the lone wolf lifestyle?” Kazimir laughed roughly. “It’s much nicer to have someone to come home to, Wraith.”

I don’t have the luxury of coming home!I wanted to scream at him. There were individuals out there right now who would never come home. I had to fight. I was one of the few whocouldfight.

I didn’t envy my cousin or the rest of our men. They were street tough, with a little military training. But even Ilya, who’d served in a war camp once upon a time, wasn’t trained like me. They weren’t crafted into killing machines.

I was.

Joining the United States military had been a way to escape the underworld. It gave me an honorable excuse. Even though my uncle—the late pakhan—wanted to have me assassinated for deserting us, he later came around to the idea when he discovered how useful my special ops training could be to him.

When Kazimir asked me to go hunting, all that training finally found purpose. It was a switch I could never turn off.

Without another word to my cousin, who was used to my stony silence, I left the truck, going around to the back to grab my duffel bag and rifle case.

“Here, for the road.” Kazimir handed me two stacks of bills, similar to the ones he’d handed the gatekeeper.

“What do I need those for?” I grunted.

“I don’t know, dinner one night?” Luka drawled.

With a snort, Kazimir shoved them at me, knowing better than to open my pack and place them there himself.

I tugged the zipper open, pushed some of the clothes aside, and buried the bills. Something cold and hard brushed against my fingers. The horse’s shoe. A wave of emotions washed over me, and just like that, I was drowning. It took everything I had to swallow past the lump in my throat and zip the bag closed.

Harley would know by now that our last words were a goodbye. I’d left the burner phone at the lake. That beautiful little sprite belonged there, where life was mostly safe. She didn’t need to swim in the shark-infested waters where her innocence and goodness would be devoured. Even when she came to Chicago, she would be in the mainstream waterways, safe from the murky depths.

“Be safe. Stay in touch,” Kazimir said as a parting shot, slapping my shoulders in a one-armed hug.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Luka smirked.

“I’ll call when I can,” I lied. It was what we said every time I left home. The same parting words I’d been using since my first trip to basic training.

As I boarded the cargo plane that my cash-only contact used, I couldn’t help but notice a piece of my chest felt hollow. Dead.Numbed.The work I did was worthwhile, but it seemed impossibly hard to leave this time.

“I just need to shake it off,” I growled as the twin engines started.

A little voice mocked me, saying that would never happen.

Part II

~Fall ~

Chapter 28 – Harley

“Can you believe my Henry is old enough to get married,” Aunt Janice tittered. The fruity wine in her plastic cup sloshed over the rim, splashing on the dirt. “I remember when you used to babysit him for us, Harley!”

I wished I didn’t remember. Janice and Marty liked to go to the bar, which meant most Friday or Saturday nights I slept on their lumpy, threadbare couch after putting their cranky toddler to bed.

Now that cranky toddler was a diesel mechanic and getting drunk with his bank teller wife.

“It’s a lovely reception,” I said, taking a swig of my beer to prevent another lie slipping from my lips.

“I see the rumor’s not true?” Kayla minced, coming up behind me and poking my belly. “Unless that’s 3.2 beer, but you know that can still give the baby fetal alcohol poisoning.”

I glared at my cousin. I was skinnier than ever thanks to the grueling workload I recently finished. There was no physical indication that I was expecting. And the second period I’dhad since Kole left confirmed that our haphazard birth control routines worked.

---