Stolen Heir - Sophie Lark Page 0,95

would have let one fall.

Since then, she’s swung by Lake City Ballet several times to have lunch with me, something she never bothered to do before. We never used to spend much time together, so she doesn’t expect me to behave in any particular way. She just asks how the ballet is coming along, and whether we have a date set for the first performance. She asks me which music I’m using, and she makes a playlist out of the songs to listen to on her drive to work. She even books pedicures for us both on a Saturday morning, to ease my aching feet, though I can tell it’s killing her to sit there for forty whole minutes without checking her email.

Stranger still is the friendship that’s sprung up between Riona and Dante Gallo. She spent several weeks trying to get him released from jail the first time around, then she had to spend several more after he was “abducted by a rival gang” during a fraudulent prisoner transfer. In the end, she used Officer Hernandez’s shady history to get the murder charge dropped. It helped that Officer O’Malley agreed to testify against his ex-partner. I don’t know who paid the bribe for that—Mikolaj or the Gallos—but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap.

I guess Dante and Riona talked a lot, all the times Riona visited him in prison. Dante is a very calming presence. Riona seems less brittle around him, less ready to bite somebody’s head off at the slightest provocation.

I screw up my courage to ask her if she thinks he’s handsome. She rolls her eyes at me.

“Not everything is a love match, Nessa,” she says. “Sometimes men and women are just friends.”

“Alright,” I say. “I just thought you might be curious to see that particular friend with his shirt off . . . seeing as he’s built like the Rock.”

Riona snorts, like she’s above petty considerations like bulging biceps and six-pack abs.

My parents haven’t exactly warmed up to Miko, but they’re beginning to realize that what I feel for him is much more than a passing infatuation. Every day the bond between us grows stronger. I miss his house—the stone walls, the creaking roof, the dim light, the overgrown garden. The smell of dust, and oil paint, and Mikolaj himself. I miss wandering around that labyrinth, continually drawn toward the man at the center. The one who pulls me in like a magnet.

I know he’s lonely there without me. Now that Jonas and Andrei are gone, it’s just Miko, Marcel, and Klara. And even those two might be moving to their own apartment sometime soon.

Mikolaj keeps himself busy with work. Building his businesses, expanding his empire without directly clashing with my family or Aida’s. We’re all coexisting . . . for now.

The only hanging thread is the Russians. The afternoon of the library opening, we were all waiting: Miko’s men, the Gallos, and my father’s men, too. Dante was up on the roof of a neighboring building, rifle at the ready, keeping watch for any sign of Kristoff, or any of his men.

But there was nothing. Not a Bratva to be seen. The event went perfectly.

Maybe they gave up, knowing they were outgunned and outmatched.

After all, it’s a big city. Plenty of crime to go around.

31

Miko

It’s the night of Nessa’s ballet.

I’ve been waiting for this almost as eagerly as Nessa herself. Maybe more so, because I’m simply excited to see it, while Nessa has become increasingly anxious the closer it’s gotten.

I’m not worried. I already know it’ll be brilliant.

It’s being performed at the Harris theater. That fuckwad Jackson Wright is directing it. I had planned to visit him a few more times if he gave Nessa any shit—just casually, of course. As a gentle reminder. No broken bones required, unless he annoyed me. But it proved to be unnecessary. He got sucked into the project almost as much as Nessa herself.

Nessa got tickets for all her friends and family, deliberately seating me right next to her parents. It’s not the most comfortable position, but I have to take whatever opportunities I can to get to know them. I don’t expect that they’ll ever like me. They might not even stop hating me. They have to accept me, however, because I’m not letting go of Nessa.

Truthfully, my patience is running thin. I thought I could take my time—but I overestimated my own resolve.

I want her back. I want her fully. I want her as my bride.

I’m sitting right next