Page 2 of Bound By Them
That knowledge, soul-deep, is heady. I’m drunk on the certainty that I could choose one.
This is the best night ever.
Until it isn’t.
Edmund
The Aseyev family’s biggest flaw, according to my father, is that they rule with emotion, not with logic. I’m seeing that flaw play out in real-time tonight. Patrick Aseyev, the biggest douche on the planet, fucking up his entire enterprise. His tenuous foothold in the Layton territory?
Gone. Because he had to go after his cousin’s girl.
I don’t know the details. But I know Princess Danica is upset. For some reason, that upsets me.
No. Her feelings mean nothing. I’m angry at Patrick. I’m angry on behalf of Dmitri’s girl, Leah.
You’re feeling too much. You always feel too goddamn much.
So instead of engaging, I look at the entire shitshow as funny. It’s a spectacle of the Aseyevs’ own making. Danica punching her cousin? That was funny as hell. Dmitri glaring daggers at me? Even funnier.
Danica raises her voice, defending her friend. In her white dress and her white-blond hair, she’s a beacon in the dark street. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Aseyev princess sprouted wings and ascended to heaven via the force of her righteous anger. She’d spew lightning bolts the entire way.
Troy steps forward, ready to defend Danica against her grandfather’s cruelty. I tap his shoulder, rein him in.
He turns to me with a scowl on his face. “They’re wrong. She’s right.”
“It’s her fight, not ours.” I melt back into the shadows. Troy, as always, comes with me.
We watch the drama unfold. Accusations are hurled. Danica and Dmitri tell off the family patriarch, Sergey Aseyev. I evaluate him with interest, because he’s my family’s longtime rival.
I mutter, “My grandfather and father would both love to know about tonight.”
Troy’s shoulders straighten and he tenses.
He doesn’t relax until I add, “We aren’t going to say a fucking word.”
When Danica rushes past the alley and gets into a car, I point toward mine. “Let’s go.”
“Should she be driving?” He makes a drinking motion with his hand.
“I never saw her drinking. I think she’s fine.”
Troy nods. We manage to evade the rest of the Aseyevs’ attention. We get in the back seat of my car and I tell my driver, Jon, to follow Danica’s red sedan.
Jon’s good enough to evade Danica’s notice. When we reach a quiet part of Old Thirty-Three, she parks in front of a small house. She gets out of her car, her movements jerky and upset.
We pull up across the street. Jon leaves the engine idling. I don’t think Danica has noticed us.
I climb out of my car and stand next to it. “Dani.”
Her head swivels to me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You’re upset. I wanted to check on you.”
“Yeah, thanks. Creepy-ass motherfucker.” She shimmies her shoulders like she’s trying to shake off cobwebs. “Now fuck off.”
I laugh. “Is that any way to talk to your knight in shining armor?”
Her scowl could scare away a shark. “More like wankstain in shining armor.”
