Page 142 of Rise of the Queen

“You should ask Ilya that question, not me,” Misha said, his wide smile stretching across his face.

“Ilya, you dog. Did you get her number?” Sephie asked.

The shade of red that his face turned was a very clear answer. “What? She’s really cute. I’m a sucker for short, blonde girls,” he said.

Sephie looked at him for a few moments, smiling at him. She finally said, “I’m just glad you feel good enough to consider it. She seems like a sweet girl, but you tell me the first moment she shows you otherwise.” We could all feel her hackles going up as she felt protective of Ilya. It wasn’t surprising in the least that she felt that way about the guys, but it did surprise me just a littlethat she already felt that way about Ilya. I was still happy to see it.

Vitaliy caught it too. He laughed. “Malishka, it’s his job to protect you, not the other way around,” he said. She just turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes at him, silently reprimanding him for teasing her.

We all quietly left the fundraiser, making our way back to Vitaliy’s house. The guys and I were all happy to ditch our jackets and ties while Sephie was only able to ditch her shoes. Sephie looked at all of us as we walked into Vitaliy’s house. “It’s just not fair that you’re all still so handsome with just half your tux on,” she said, smiling at everyone.

“We can’t help it, spider monkey. We just woke up like this,” Andrei said, his wide smile across his face.

She walked to him, sliding her arm around his waist as we walked up the steps to the front door. “I just kind of love you,” she said wistfully, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Once we were all convened in Vitaliy’s new office, we started to go over the evening’s events. Battista and Vitaliy weren’t aware of what had happened when Stephen got rid of the things hanging around the hospital administrator and the mayor.

“Is that what made them cough uncontrollably?” Vitaliy asked.

“We think so. When it happened, the demons were almost desperate to find a way in. It really agitates them when they hear Stephen speak,” Ivan said.

“I think the coughing is the body trying to reject it,” Sephie said.

“Does this mean the mayor is good to go now? We don’t need to worry about him further?” Battista asked.

“Not exactly. He still has weaknesses that a different demon can exploit. Viktor is what fixes that, but we haven’t figured out away to do that subtly yet. It’s visually very obvious when he fixes someone,” I said.

“It’s visually obvious to you. Has anyone who is not you seen him do it yet?” Battista asked. “You all can see things no one else can anyway. Maybe the average person couldn’t see it.”

He did bring up a valid point. Viktor hadn’t used Kostya around anyone else outside our group yet. I glanced at Ilya, asking, “Did you see it?”

“Yeah, but maybe it was just because I’m his brother?” Ilya said.

“Or maybe Kostya wasn’t thinking about being discreet,” Sephie said. She looked at Viktor, asking, “Can you ask him if there’s a way that he can do it so no one else would notice?”

Viktor was silent for a few moments. None of us had any idea that he could communicate so quickly with Kostya, but apparently he could. He said, “He thinks he can make it so it’s not obvious. He still needs me to touch the person to make it happen, but that’s easily explained.”

“Want to test it?” Sephie asked, grinning at him.

Viktor smiled his sweet smile that was reserved specifically for her. “Who did you have in mind?”

Sephie looked toward my father’s men, Eduard and Sergei. “I’m really sorry, Sergei, but you need help. You’ve needed help since I met you. I just wasn’t sure you’d let anyone help you.”

Sergei had been with my father since I was a kid. Not as long as Aleksei, but I’d still known Sergei for most of my life. He was a hard man, but he was a good man. Whatever Sephie had picked up on, I was sure that Sergei deserved help with it.

Vitaliy was surprised. He looked at Sephie, then looked at Sergei, asking, “This is true?” Sergei was silent, but everyone could tell from his body language that he was fighting something he never spoke about.

Sephie answered for him. “I don’t mean to call you out in front of everyone, Sergei, but you’re struggling. It’s getting louder, which means it’s harder for me to ignore.”

Andrei said, “I can hear it too. You don’t have to deal with all that on your own, you know.”

Misha got curious and did his own searching when Andrei said something. “Sergei, you know that wasn’t your fault, man.”

It was that moment I knew what Sergei was still struggling to deal with. When I was a boy and the other bosses tried to get to my father through me the first time, Sergei was the one who was with me. The attack killed the driver, Petr. It almost killed Sergei. I somehow managed to survive, but that was the first time I found myself in my own darkness. I was out for days. My father never left my side and he never left Sergei’s side.

Sergei struggled to not blame himself for what had happened. He said he felt like he should’ve been able to see it coming. He was overprotective of me from that point until I hit adulthood. We all thought he had handled it, but clearly, he was still carrying around guilt from it. Silently beating himself up for it for almost my entire life.

Sephie went to him, placing her hand on his shoulder. “You are very good at your job. You always have been. You always will be. What happened that night is not a reflection of you. It needed to happen, Sergei. He needed to go through that experience so he could save me when the same thing happened to me. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” she said quietly. Sergei looked at her, his eyes wide. He was trying to comprehend what she’d just told him.

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