Page 3 of Raine
One last glance at the dresser, and I’m storming out of my house and slamming doors in my wake. I guess my pity party will have to wait until later.
Chapter2
Raine
Punching in the security code at Justyce’s front door, I allow myself in and walk down the hallway, admiring the abstract art lining the wall while my ballet flats slap across the dark slate tiles.
I know the boys are going to hang shit on me as soon as they see me, so I bypass our meeting room and beeline it to the kitchen to find Olga, Justyce’s live-in cook and friend.
I can’t remember the last time I ate. However, by the way my stomach is growling, swirling with the copious amount of alcohol I’ve consumed, and my head is thumping, it must be awhile.
Walking into the kitchen, I’m met with Olga’s smiling round face and kind brown eyes. She sweeps her salt and pepper colored hair out of her face and taps the stool situated at the breakfast bar.
“Sit, Lijep, I’ll fix you something to eat,” comes her heavily accented Croatian voice.
Smiling at her nickname for me, I can’t remember the last time she called me Raine. Lijep means beautiful in Croatian, and it’s what she’s called me since I can remember.
I take a seat on the stool and groan. “Do I look that bad?”
She smiles sadly. “You just needa some food, that’s all, Lijep.”
Food cures everything with Olga, and who am I to burst her bubble?
She bustles around the kitchen, fixing me something to eat, her short, stocky figure wrapped in a red and white apron, reminding me of someone’s grandma… just not mine.
A sharpness pierces my chest, and I cough to clear it. The simple word grandma elicits pain, which I prefer to keep buried within my cracking veneer. I’m twenty-six, younger than the three men I call my brothers, but I feel a hell of a lot older. I have no blood relatives left roaming this world, a mafia princess with a palace and no one to share it with.
Even as I sit here nineteen years later, the internal trauma is still as flayed open and decaying as ever. I was seven when my parents were brutally murdered, and the grim reaper that stole their lives was never found, leaving no trace or murder weapon.
I grimaced and shuddered at the crime scene photos I obtained when I’d turned fifteen. I’d begged Arrow, batting my eyelashes for him to hack into the police database and using his affection for me against him so I could see what they endured with my own eyes. And those images have stayed with me since.
Even so, I was unable to part with the house they were both tortured and killed in, and I often find myself there when I need to… think. Morbid, I know, but I’m a different shade of fucked up.
Don’t get me wrong, my grandparents loved me and raised me to their best ability, but I guess when my mother, Winter, was taken from them in the manner she was, it also killed a piece of them alongside their daughter.
Olga’s voice penetrates the fog-induced memories I’m lodged in, and a tear escapes down my face, causing me to swipe at it angrily.
“Jesi li dobro, Lijepo?”
Are you ok, Beautiful?
Sniffling, I meet her kind, dark brown eyes and force a smile. “I’m fine; thank you, Olga.”
She nods, but I know she doesn’t believe me. Instead of questioning me further, she slides across a plate of her famous palacinke, Croatian pancakes. The sweet smell of jam and ricotta wafts up, and I inhale, my stomach rumbling with the scent.
She always makes these for Justyce when he is in a sour mood, which, for argument’s sake, has decreased a whole lot since Kenzi is now living with him.
“Eat,” Olga says with a sternness that brokers no debate.
And I oblige, shoveling down the food until my stomach feels so fucking tight that I might actually burst. A clicking sound draws my attention, my face huddled over the plate, a fork full of pancakes midway, and my mouth open.
Acheron rounds the corner, a tight black suit unbuttoned, tailored to perfection, and a dark blue dress shirt filling the gap.
He halts, his lapis blue eyes pinning me with a glare as his lips lift in a snarl. “Of course I’d find you here, hurling food into that big mouth of yours.”
“Acheron!” Olga scolds, and Acheron’s features soften; even the scar that runs up his clavicle to his lip flattens in response.
The way he looks at Olga compared to the way he looks at me is a stark contradiction. I briefly recall our interaction at the Charmed Brothers clubhouse—us high on drugs, alcohol, and life for that briefest moment. There was no hatred between us while the liquor and powdered magic floated through our systems, but when I look at him now, I see it. I’m not sure why he gives me so much shit, but there isn’t any love lost between us.
