Page 23 of Hey, Daddy

“Do they think you did it?” she asked.

“God, I hope not,” I grumbled. “Because that would fucking suck.”

“It would,” she agreed, her eyes narrowing. “What’s that?”

She pointed at my neck, and my cheeks immediately flamed. “Oh, nothing.”

She rolled her eyes, but we both knew what it was.

A hickey.

I’m not sure when I’d gotten it, but I definitely knew it was there now. There was no way you could hide something that big.

Even my brother probably noticed it, but he was wise enough not to ask about his sister’s sex life.

He’d learned that particular lesson when I’d lost my virginity to one of his friends in high school, and I’d given him every single detail and more. I’d then told him about our two-and-a-half-month-long relationship every single time I saw him so he’d know what kind of sex I was having.

I’d even asked him to give his friend advice on how to please me.

That’d been the last time he’d ever asked, mostly because he knew that I’d make his life a living hell if he did.

I was wise enough not to tell him that I’d slept with a cop who’d wanted to investigate him, though.

“We need to talk about the next steps.” Elianora crossed her legs to get comfortable. “Don’t ever talk to them…”

She went on to explain how the next several days would go. How I shouldn’t talk to the cops without her present. How I needed to be careful, because why would someone specifically give me a box with a dead body in it. How a lot of this could be related to Shasha and his business practices—i.e., the Russian Bratva that he now ran with an iron fist.

Blah, blah, blah.

“I think you should stay with us for a few days.” Shasha paused. “Or, perhaps, the perfectly good house that I built you.”

I winced.

Shasha had finished the houses—or more accurately, his wife’s brothers’ company had finished it—two years ago, and I’d yet to move into mine.

Dima’s was also sitting empty, even though it was empty because he was in the military and actually not even in the country.

Milena didn’t have any issues with staying in a suffocating jail cell—though she had her reasons that she didn’t exactly share with the rest of us.

“Um, no,” I said. “I will not change a single thing about anything that I’m doing. I’m literally running my business out of my apartment right now. If I move to your house, all of my stuff won’t just follow me over there.”

“We can…”

“No, Shasha,” I said. “This is a hard limit for me. No. I don’t want this. If you suffocate me, I’ll push back.”

They’d tried that when I was younger, and it’d only pushed me away.

He knew I’d leave and not come back, too.

And it would kill him.

He loved his family.

I knew he did.

But I would not go through that again.

I’d done it throughout my childhood, and it wasn’t healthy.

---