Page 8 of Unbroken

She doesn’t even wait to be invited inside, just shoves past me, a firestorm in human form.

Goddamn it. Her eyes look like Mariah’s when they’re flashing at me like that—the same wide, almost innocent look flecked with danger.

I want to grab her by her sturdy shoulders and throw her the fuck out.

“Hey. What the hell are you doing here?” I snap. This is my house. “Didn’t you work last night?”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I can subsist on very little sleep. And anyway, I couldn’t sleep because of what I heard was going on with Luka.”

I blink in surprise. What the fuck is she talking about? “Something going on with Luka that I need to know about?”

She crosses her arms. “You really don’t know? God, Vadka, my sister would’ve lost hermind.”

When Mariah was here, I rarely saw it—hardly ever thought that Ruthie and Mariah looked alike. Mariah was taller and thinner, put together, and organized. Ruthie is smaller but curvier, chaotic, and impulsive. But now that she’s standing in front of me spouting off about god-knows-what, I can see it—the same flash in her eyes, the same little upturned nose, the same defiant chin. She even has a little cowlick where Mariah did, right above her right eye.

I look away. I can’t fucking think like this.

“What did you hear?” I snap, my voice sharp but low and even. That’s how you keep control. Stay calm. Stay cold. Stay detached.

“You have no idea? How can you not know?” She takes a step toward me. My eyes zone in on her lips, full and glossy and nothing like Mariah’s. Thank fuck. I look away again.

There’s something in her tone—tight, brittle—that makes me straighten. My first instinct is to snap back, but I don’t.

She exhales sharply, pacing a few feet into the living room before turning on me again. “That some stupid fuck tried to follow Luka’s nanny home from the park last night. She panicked and quit.”

I stare at her.

“What? What the fuck? She quit and didn’t tell me?”

“No one toldme,” she repeats, her throat catching.

“Tell you what?” I shake my head. “Obviously, you knew since you just?—”

“That you hired a nanny, astranger,to watch my sister’s kid! Zoya knew about the nanny. Apparently, she ran to the Kopolovs. Rafail didn’t tell you?”

I run a hand through my hair and shake my head.

Ruthie plants her hands on her hips.“Where’s your phone, Vadka?”

I check my pockets. Not there. Run a hand through my hair again and look around the living room. Jesus, it looks like shit in here. I walk over to the couch and move a basket of laundry, tripping over a pair of Luka’s shoes.

“No one said anything to me. I would’ve handled it,” I grit out.

“Would you?” Ruthie asks, moving aside papers and unopened mail, empty water bottles and paper plates. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you don’t really have shithandled.”

I stand up and straighten my shoulders. No fucking way does this little spitfire get to march in here and tell me off in my own fucking house.

“You’re in my house,” I remind her, my voice quiet but full of warning. “You don’t get to march your ass in here and speak to me like that. Get out, Ruthie.”

Her jaw tightens. “No.I want to see my nephew.”

“Then fucking stop telling me off.” I shake my head. “Jesus. A man loses his wife and can’t fucking fall apart a little?”

“When you have a kid?No.”

Heat flares across my chest as we continue to throw shit around, looking for my phone. “Luka isfine.I’m taking care of my son.”

She looks over at me—reallylooks at me, and something shifts. The fury doesn’t vanish but flickers into something else. Something sadder.

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