Page 39 of Forged By Sacrifice

The man, who still hadn’t introduced himself, was slowly taking me in. “Did the officer have a warrant or cause?”

“No warrant. But the cause is the conflicting part, right? What exactly would deem a situation cause worthy?”

He looked down over my books. “Are you enrolled in summer classes or starting in the fall?”

“Starting in the fall.”

He smiled. “Professor Collins on your schedule?”

I nodded.

“Well, now you’ve met me,” he said. He stood up from his lounged position. “I have to head out now, but if you stop by my office tomorrow around two, I can get you started on the case studies we’ll be doing in the practicum course.”

“Really? That would be great,” I said, no longer caring if my enthusiasm topped the side of overly eager. “I’m Georgie, by the way.”

“See you tomorrow, Georgie.” Then he headed out the library doors.

My stomach squished with ridiculous happiness followed by an audible growl that had me looking around to make sure no one had heard my hunger cry. I didn’t need to worry. The library was obnoxiously empty during the summer.

I packed up and headed back toward the apartment.

I stopped at a deli I’d been frequenting on my way and was waiting in line when a text from Raisa came in.

RAISA: Please put me out of my gloom.

ME: Do you mean, out of your misery?

RAISA: This is no time to correct my English.

ME: What’s up?

RAISA: Father and Malik are at odds once more.

ME: Why now?

RAISA: They would not let me hear. They shut the door when I went by the study.

I often forgot about the dark side of Petya’s business. Maybe it was on purpose. Maybe it was so I could have “plausible deniability.” Raisa didn’t have that option. She lived it. I’d joked with Ava about Petya being followed by multiple agencies when he came to the States, but I wondered now if that was also the case for my siblings. Would they have their own tails when they came? With a sort of shock to my system, I wondered if I’d been followed whenever Raisa had visited me in New York. I wondered if our conversations had been listened to.

The happiness that had filled me at the library dimmed. Back in Rockport, I’d been hard on Mac for letting the idea of my family stop him from kissing me again. I’d pulled on my normal, to-hell-with-you attitude. But now it made me wonder if he’d been right to be wary. To step away from a woman with ties that could never mean anything good.

When I’d left Ava’s, I’d also expected to leave behind Mac, our one stormy kiss, and the pull he’d had on me. Instead, he’d tormented my dreams in a way that left me aching in the morning like I hadn’t ached before. As if I was suddenly missing something that had never been mine.

For the first time in a long time, my bitterness was directed at my parents instead of the person walking away from me. Would my family prevent me from more things in my life? Things other than kisses? Would I be admitted to the bar with their history sitting on my shoulders?

I returned to the last text from Raisa.

ME: It’ll pass. It always does.

RAISA: It will not matter once I am at Stanford. I wish I were leaving tomorrow.

Suddenly, I feared that everything with Petya might actually matter, for both her and me, but I didn’t want to be the one to darken her hopes.

ME: A few weeks more. September is right around the corner.

RAISA: Love you, moy dorogoy.

ME: Love you, malyshka.

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