Page 41 of Inked Athena

The look she gives me could freeze hell twice over. “I suppose you want me to thank you?”

What I want is for her to let me hold her while she falls apart. What I want is to piece her back together with my hands, my mouth, my soul—what’s left of it.

But she’s planted her feet in the rocky Scottish earth like she’s ready for war, so I stay where I am and meet that frozen gaze head-on.

“You don’t need to thank me, but you have to understand. If we’re going to make it, Nova… If this thing is going to—” I blow out a harsh breath as I drag a hand through my hair. “I’m not keeping you from them to be cruel. I have to tread carefully. We have to lie low, and?—”

“You’re still talking to your father, aren’t you?”

It’s an accusation. For me, it’s an unfortunate reality.

“I have to speak with him.”

“And you can do that safely, but I can’t speak to my family?”

I want to shake her and hold her and toss her in the loch and kiss her. I settle for shoving my hands deep in my pockets. “This is a chess match,krasavitsa. There’s one board and many players. I have to lay my traps carefully. In order to do that, I have to be patient.Wehave to be patient.”

“How many people are going to die while I’m busy being ‘patient’?” She stands up, her hair rippling in the wind like the water across the loch.

“I get why you’re angry,” I say softly. “It’s hard not getting the closure you crave from the people who’ve hurt you the most.”

She whirls on me, lips parted for battle. But several heartbeats pass before she finds her voice. “I don’t need closure from any of them.”

Bullshit.

“I mean it,” she doubles down, like she can sense my doubt. “I was never going to get closure from my father or my brothers. They were all assholes and they weren’t ever gonna change. Theonly thing they ever gave me was permission not to mourn their deaths.”

“And yet here you are, raging at me because of it.”

“I’m not raging at you because they’re dead!” The words echo across the water. “I’m raging at you because I can’t go home or call my grandmother to ask how she’s doing! I’m angry because I’m helpless out here and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’m frustrated because this is my life and you’re treating it like it’s a game.”

“Nova—”

“Don’t you get it?” she interrupts. “This is not what I signed up for—chess and players and midnight shootouts. Who’s the king and who’s the pawn? Who comes out on top and who ends up the loser? You think I don’t know what that means? It means that sooner or later, every player in your stupid game will end up dead, Samuil! And all the time and money in the world won’t mean shit!”

If her words were blades, I’d be bleeding from a thousand different cuts.

“You wanted to know the plan, Nova. That’s why I told you. I thought you could handle it.”

“Icanhandle it,” she snaps defensively. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Before I can respond, she strips off her sweater, casts it at her feet, and strides straight into the loch like she’s got a death wish. The water reaches her waist, her thin shirt going translucent in the moonlight, and still she doesn’t stop.

It’s too fucking cold—the kind of cold that can kill. Every instinct screams at me to drag her back to shore, but I know my Nova. The more I try to save her, the deeper she’ll go just to prove she doesn’t need saving.

Which is why I bite my tongue and follow her to the edge of the loch.

After a few silent seconds of standing with the dark, frigid water lapping at her hips, she picks up a rock and flings it across the surface.

She tries to make it skip, but it just sinks to the bottom with a sad littleplink.I grab a stone myself and flick it casually across the lake’s surface. It skips half a dozen times before it’s swallowed up.

With a little growl, Nova picks up another stone and tries again.

Another sad little thump.

Another sinking stone.

I skip another. This one goes nearly twice as far as the first.

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