Page 135 of House of Lilith

I have to take a deep breath to calm myself. “Were there actual papers signed, Nikolay?” I ask in my most serious voice. “Did you have a lawyer present?”

He frowns. “No, it’s not at that stage yet.” He pauses for a second before he adds, in a much less cheerful voice, “And Max told me he’d recommend someone.”

“Max?” I snap.

“Yeah, well,” he says, starting to avoid my eyes. He doesn’t sound so happy with himself when he explains, “I got a little help from him. No big deal.”

“What kind of help?” I ask, this sense of unease spreading through my entire body.

“He found new buyers for me,” he snaps as he frowns at me. “Bloody hell. What does it even matter? As long as we’re selling.”

And he looks away, his face flushing and his teeth gritting.

But it’s making me so mad, that they’d sooner ask my ex fucking fiance for help than believemewhen I say I’ll fix it.

And since we’re no longer engaged, I know Max isn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart. After all, when it came to business, he was taught to think like a businessman.

“What did he ask for in return?” I demand as I grab my brother’s forearm and make him look at me again. “What did you promise him?”

He breaks his arm free and just looks at me for a second. “What did I promise him?” There’s bitterness in his voice when he asks, “Why do you keep doing this?”

I blink at him. “Doing what?”

He doesn’t say anything. He just grits his teeth some more.

“Look, Nick,” I tell him, deciding to be upfront. “It’s just dumb.” I angrily wave my hand in no direction in particular. “Itoldyou I got Mother off my back.”

I don’t tell him about my own investigations into different types of investments. I just say, “She promised she’d give me until the end of the school year to make up my mind about the engagement and I was going to—”

“I don’t care what you were going to,” he hisses at me, putting one hand on the ground so he can get in my face. “And I don’t care who you’ll marry, Max or a bunch of bloody cats. And I don’t care how good you are in whatever you do.” Only growing more upset, he throws a warning finger at me. “You’ll stop acting as if I’m not the man of the house and you’ll shut up about the bloody land and you’ll let me take care of it.”

With that, he pushes himself off the ground and moves to walk away.

“Nikolay,” I call after him, pissed-off, but trying to keep my voice down.

“And the day after tomorrow,” he orders, as he throws a look over his shoulder, “you’ll take it down a notch.”

He’s talking about the Fourth Game. And the look he’s giving me… The look is so painfully familiar.

Fuming, I kick myself off the ground and rush after him. “Oh, so it’s not me using Blood Magic that’s the problem?” I demand as I follow him, my eyes fixed on the back of his head. “Just me winning, huh?”

But he doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even look at me. I stop and he just keeps walking, leaving me standing there, wanting to pull all my fucking hair out.

*

By the time I’m in the portrait room, I’m not mad, I’m seething. And I know by now that Vasilisa was only able to use Mind Magic on me that time because she’d practically just had a lick of my blood, but she’s still here, aware of everything that’s going on in front of her. And I really need to stop this thing with my brother from really getting to me and just move on, but somehow, I can’t.

I can’t get his look out of my head.

So I sit on the cold stone floor and just sit there, frowning and wondering about this tightness in my chest, one that feels impossible and at the same time so familiar.

It makes me think of Father’s death for some reason, something I haven’t let myself think about for a really long time. And with that always come images of bloody bandages, syringes and people whispering as they gather around him, the great patriarch of the family.

But the great patriarch of the family had the same thing his brother Aleksei had. It’s the main reason I learned so early to brew the perfect blood purification potion. Because some vampire blood infections work similarly to human hemophilia, making every single cut into a danger of bleeding out. And the only thing that works against it is a perfect blood purification potion.

To an extent, of course, as I learned over the years, watching Father slowly get weaker and weaker.

But just thinking about it makes me feel so sick and so eager to stop going in that direction. And why am I even thinking aboutthatall of a sudden? After all, it’s one of those memories that have successfully flung me into a depression spiral many times so far and I never know when they might do it again.

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