Bloody Heart (Brutal Birthright #4) - Sophie Lark Page 0,27
and eight, just babies still.
But now I wonder if it didn’t hit Nero worst of all. Seb and Aida are okay. They’ve pulled out of it, recovered their happiness again. While Nero just seems so . . . angry. He gets in fight after fight, each one nastier than the one before. I think he’s going to kill somebody. To distract him, I’ve been taking him along on the armored truck hits. And he’s good at it—good at boosting the getaway cars, good at following instructions. Even good at planning the hits himself. He’s smart as hell, though you’d never know it from his grades.
I couldn’t go to New York. Not full-time. I said it to Simone in the heat of the moment, but I can’t leave my siblings here alone. Aida’s getting prettier by the day, and more troublesome. Seb needs to practice with me, so he can make the high school team. Nero needs me to keep him out of jail, or from getting himself killed. He thinks he’s invincible. Or he doesn’t care that he’s not.
I could still visit Simone, though. If she goes to Parsons.
Seb does some tricky little fake and steals the ball off me mid-drive toward the hoop. When he tries to bring it back down to score, I block his shot, knocking it right back down.
“You’re not gettin’ that bitch-ass little shot over my head,” I tell him.
“You’ve got like eight inches on me,” Seb complains.
“There’s always gonna be somebody taller than you. You’ve got to be faster, stronger, more devious, more accurate.”
I drive toward the hoop again, easily knocking him aside with my superior weight.
After I’ve made the shot, I hold out my hand, helping to pick him up off the concrete.
Seb gets up again, wincing.
He’s skinny, smaller than me, with big brown eyes that break my heart. I want to go easy on him. But how would that help him? It wouldn’t. Nobody else is ever gonna go easy.
“Try again,” I say, tossing him the ball.
11
Simone
Serwa got a job with Barclays in London. She’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks.
“Are you excited?” I say, sitting on her bed and watching her pack her books into boxes.
“Very,” she says.
She’s looking better than I’ve seen in months. The antibiotics cleared out the infection in her lungs, and she’s barely been coughing with the new medications. Papa says she could even get a lung transplant in another year or two. She’ll never entirely be cured, but a transplant could add decades onto her life.
Serwa is so much smaller than the rest of us—as petite and delicate as an American Girl doll. It’s almost like her illness is a curse, preserving her in time. She doesn’t look any older than me, though there’s ten years between us.
I’m so used to seeing her in her a housecoat lately that it’s a thrill just to see her in a dress. It’s a pretty yellow sundress, made of eyelet lace.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says.
“I might be in London, too,” I remind her.
She cocks her head to the side, examining me with her wide-set eyes. “Really?” she says. “I thought you might stay in Chicago.”
I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks.
“Why did you think that?”
“Oh, because of whoever you’ve been sneaking out to see.”
I blush even harder.
“I’m not—”
Serwa shakes her head at me. “You’re a terrible liar, Simone. I’ve seen you smiling, texting on your phone. And when did you ever want to go shopping five times in a week?”
“Well . . .”
“Is it the thief?”
My mouth goes dry.
“What makes you say that?”
“I saw the picture in the Tribune. Not many guests at the masquerade ball are ‘unknown.’ Not to mention he was the size of a house. I think I remember you saying that the man who stole our car was big . . .”
“You can’t tell Tata,” I beg her.
“Of course not,” Serwa says. Her expression is serious. “But I don’t know how you think you can keep this a secret. And a criminal, Simone? It was funny to talk about after he took the car. But you can’t seriously be dating him.”
“He’s not what you think,” I snap.
I don’t mean to have such a harsh tone, but I can’t stand Serwa calling Dante a ‘criminal.’ I know what she’s picturing. Dante’s not like that.
“You don’t have much experience with men,” Serwa says. “You’re trusting, Simone, and you’re sheltered. You don’t know what’s out there in the rest of the world.”