Page 67 of Soulless Rivalry

“Why aren’t you close to your mom anymore?”

Fatigue and sadness made my tongue loosen that night. “She tried killing herself. Three times.”

He stopped moving at my confession and I felt the need to explain.

“I don’t resent her because she has mental issues. It’s just… sometimes it feels like she gave up on me.”

Konstantin squeezed my hand.

“I’m sure you know about my mother’s story. How she fled home to be with a poor taxi driver from Tunisia. Slumming it in Italy for years before she was found again.”

He didn’t say anything but I knew he knew. Everybody did.

“When I was twelve, my father died in a car crash back in Italy. Mom’s family found us and took us back to the US. Mom was… she was devastated by my father’s death. It felt like she lost her will to live after that.”

“But… you were still there. You should’ve been reason enough.”

I gulped, closing my eyes. “I should have been, yes. But I wasn’t.”

“Was she a good mother before that?”

I thought about it deeply. I had always been a daddy’s girl. I loved my mom, but my father… I was his little princess. He worked hard to put food on the table and get me everything Ineeded. Then there was also Jedde. I spent more time with her than Mom, but Mom was very much present in my life. She’d sew me the cutest outfit and do my hair all pretty.

“She was. We were happy together. But then Baba died for real and mamma died inside.”

KONSTANTIN

Aweek after we spent the night in the secret room, it had become a habit. Every night after dorm leads had checked our floors, we’d sneak out and meet there. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes our bodies did the talking.

I had never been prone to addiction, but I was when it came to obsession, and it turns out Elyssa Ayaari was my most addictive obsession.

I could never get enough of her. Flashes of her on her knees last night, looking up at me with her mouth full of my cock had me at half-mast in the middle of a fucking meeting at the Church with my brothers.

Even Roman had finally decided to grace us with his presence, which was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

He sat next to Mikhail, looking bored out of his mind. His black hair contrasted with the fairness of his skin, which also contrasted with the dark ink ornating it. Roman looked nothing like us, mostly because he was not biologically related to us.

Dad had rescued him when he was seven, back in Russia. His mother had been a victim of the skin trade and his genitor was one of the fuckers who led the operations.

“So, it’s official. You’re getting hitched.” Mikhail took a swig straight from the bottle of vodka he’d snuck in. “I’m taking it means the meeting with her went well?”

Dominik snatched the bottle from him and took a swig himself, under our startled stares. Then he gulped again, again, and… again.

“Or not,” Mikhail concluded.

Finally pulling the bottle away from his mouth, he set it back on the table with a bang.

“She is the most infuriating woman I have ever met in my life. I wanted to wring her neck within five minutes of meeting her.”

He looked into the distance as if reliving the meeting he’d attended yesterday. It was rare to get permission to go back to the mainland, but not impossible. And clearly, this called for an emergency, so Dominik had flown there yesterday early in the morning and came back today at the same time.

“Then… why are you marrying her?”

“Because I have to. I couldn’t back down after meeting her, Arsen would have taken it as an insult,” he growled at Mikhail.

“Was she that ugly?”

“Ugly?” Our oldest brother frowned. “She’s fucking gorgeous; it’s her behavior, her character that leaves a lot to be desired.”

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