Page 76 of Black Sheep

Sergey Yurinov takes his time to weigh my offer. He helps himself to two more shots of premium vodka before his eyes flick to Oleg. The second in command reaches for a leather binder I hadn’t spotted on the bar and extracts a document, which he holds out to me. I take it from him and open it to find a transfer of ownership document. I suppress a smile.

“I’ll have my attorney take a look at this and get back to you by noon.”

Sergey dips his head and holds out his hand. When I shake it, he holds it firm, black eyes pinned on mine. “In return, you have my word that the business interests of your father and Bratva will never join forces.”

I nod, dark elation expanding through me.

When they leave, I cross to the bar, pour a finger of Balvenie whisky, and toss it back.

The bracing liquor warms the dark spaces in me. I feel lighter than I have in years.

By day’s end, Finnan’s last bastion will be gone, and I can hammer the final nails into his coffin.

PART THREE

US

Chapter Twenty

IT HAPPENED ON A RAINY NIGHT

Cleo

I lost my virginity in his bed.

I fell in love with him in his bed.

I charted the glorious life we would have together in his bed.

I named our children and imagined the grandchildren who would enrich our lives and bear testament to our love in his bed.

I found out the man I loved more than my own life was capable of murder…while I was in his bed.

It happened on a rainy night.

To my knowledge, Finnan Rutherford had not stepped foot in the pool house since his son moved in. Not until that day.

Axel is out picking up a pizza, our staple food after hours of marathon sex. I’m lying in his bed worrying about the college letters that are piling up on his nightstand. He put off college when his mother passed last year. I helped him mourn the mother who was never really there for him, while I was secretly overjoyed at having him to myself for a whole year. Despite our obsessive need to be with each other, he reapplied the moment his father started talking to him about joining the family business. I know he regretted his hasty decision the moment he posted the applications. Same as I know that this time around, I’m the reason he’s putting off answering the offer letters that are pouring in from Ivy League schools.

I should be selfless. Think about the foundation we’re laying for our future. Axel wholeheartedly supports my passion for interior design. I feel like the dirtiest bitch for not wanting him to leave me. He thinks it’s because I haven’t seen or heard from my parents since they flew out to a wedding in Boston four months ago. And that was partly true. My heart aches for the vicious argument my mother and I had the morning she left, when she once again mentioned moving back to Boston. The very idea of leaving Connecticut, leaving Axel fills me with dread, so secretly I’m glad they’re not back.

But Axel’s father reassures me that he’ll leave no stone unturned until he finds my parents, and my almost seventeen-year-old self is consumed with Axel, so it’s been easy to give my heart permission not to worry. To enjoy whatever time I have with Axel. My parents will always be around—once they rear up their heads from wherever they’d disappeared to. It’s not the first time they’ve done this since we moved to Connecticut.

The love of my life, however, will be sequestered on a campus somewhere far away. Especially if he doesn’t agree to stay in Connecticut and earn his business finance degree at Yale.

I don’t need tarot cards to know he’s refusing Yale out of hand because he doesn’t want to be around his father.

Tracing my finger over the corner of one distinctive college logo, I bite my lip. My head wants to tell him to follow his dreams wherever he wants, but my heart wants to club my head with a baseball bat. The thought of Axel being away from me, even for a day, is giving me serious sleepless nights. Like the world’s worst pessimist, my heart weeps even when I’m at my happiest in his arms.

Nothing short of a binding blood oath that we’ll be together every day for the rest of our lives will shift my mood. Thunder booms from a storm-laden sky, adding to the melodrama of my melancholy. I hug the pillow that bears Axel’s scent to my face and inhale deeply. Even though I’m wearing his favorite Yankees T-shirt, I can’t get enough of his smell. I burrow deeper and sigh at my pathetically soppy state.

Turning my head, I see a flash of lightning. And a body silhouetted against the French doors.

I should have seen the devil for what he was. Should have jumped up and fled as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

Instead I sit up and pull the pillow into my lap as Finnan Rutherford raps his knuckles against the door and enters without waiting for a response.

I must look like a deer caught in headlights because he shakes his head. “You don’t need to be frightened, Cleopatra. Not of me, at least.”

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