Stolen Heir - Sophie Lark Page 0,57

and abandoned on the ground, I run away from him as fast as I can.

I flee the west wing, back down the stairs and across the main floor. I run out the back door into the garden, and then I hide in the very furthest corner of the grounds, in the shelter of a willow tree where the boughs hang all the way down to the grass.

I hide there until it’s night, too afraid to go back inside the house.

19

Miko

Kurwa, what am I doing?

As I pick the old copy of Through the Looking Glass off the ground, I feel like I, too, have passed through a mirror into some bizarre, backward sort of world.

Nessa Griffin is getting under my skin.

First the tattoos, then sneaking into my room. . .

I feel like she’s peeling back my layers, one by one. She’s looking into crevices where nobody should see.

I’ve kept myself closed off from everyone for ten years. From my family back in Poland, from my own brothers in the Braterstwo, even from Tymon. They knew me, but they only knew the adult version. What I became after my sister died.

They didn’t know the boy before.

I thought he was dead. I thought he died at the same time as Anna. We came into the world together, and I thought we left it together. All that remained was this husk, this man who felt nothing. Who could never be hurt.

And now Nessa is digging into me. Unearthing the remains of what I thought could never be resurrected.

She’s making me feel things I never thought I’d feel again.

I don’t want to feel them.

I don’t want to think about some young, vulnerable girl. I don’t want to worry about her.

I don’t want to walk into the kitchen and see Jonas leaning over her, and I don’t want to feel a furious spike of jealousy that makes me want to rip the head off the shoulders of my own brother. And then, after I’ve banished him to the opposite corner of the house, I don’t want my brain stewing with thoughts of what he might do if he ever got Nessa alone . . .

These are distractions.

They weaken my plans and my resolve.

After I shout at Nessa, she runs out and hides in the garden for hours. Of course, I know exactly where she is. I can track the location of her ankle monitor within a couple of feet.

It gets dark and cold. We’re midway through the autumn now, at the point of the season where some days seem like an endless summer, only with more color in the leaves. Other days are bitter, windy, and rainy, with the promise of worse to come.

I sit in my office and stare at my phone, at the little pin drop representing Nessa Griffin, huddled up against the far wall. I thought she would come back inside, but either I terrified her more than I knew, or she has more grit in her than I would have guessed.

My thoughts are swirling around and around.

I’m at the perfect position to strike again. I bled out a large portion of the liquid cash of the Griffins. I have a solid alliance with the Russians via Kolya Kristoff—in fact, he nags me daily as to our next move. Dante Gallo is trapped in a holding cell, while Riona Griffin burns every bridge she has at the DA’s office trying to get him out.

My next target should be Callum Griffin. The beloved older brother of Nessa.

He was the spark that lit this conflict.

He was the one who spat in Tymon’s face when we offered him friendship.

He has to die, or at the very least he has to be cut off at the knees, brought low in abject humility. I know him—I know he’ll never accept that. I saw his face when Tymon plunged his knife into Callum’s side. There wasn’t a hint of surrender.

Nessa’s tracking device sends me a warning. It’s not reading her pulse through the skin. She might be fucking with it, trying to get it off.

Before I can check, the screen switches over to an incoming call—Kristoff again.

I pick it up.

“Dobryy vecher, moy drug,” Kristoff says smoothly. Good evening, my friend.

“Dobry wieczór,” I reply in Polish.

Kristoff chuckles softly.

Poland and Russia have a long and stormy history. As long as our countries have been in existence, we’ve struggled for control of the same lands. We’ve fought wars against each other. In the 1600s the Poles captured Moscow. In the 19th and