Page 72 of Past Due

“I’m sick of your face! And your voice!”

“Then, you know what, Rina? You can stay in your room for the rest of the day. You won’t have to see me or hear me in there.”

She laughed meanly. “Are you going to ground me? Like I’m some little girl?”

“If you keep acting like a child, I’ll treat you like one!”

She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “If you want to ground me like I’m still thirteen and broke the rules, here’s a much better reason for it.” She leaned over the rail and spitefully snarled, “I’m the one who was sneaking around last night! I’m the one with a secret boyfriend!”

Besian glanced from sister to brother. Oh, shit.

“What?” Luka demanded through gritted teeth.

“You heard me. I have a boyfriend. A much older boyfriend,” she added. “He has a big, beautiful flat with an incredible view of the sunrise right out his bedroom windows.”

Besian tensed as Rina suggested she had been having sex with her secret boyfriend. Luka reacted with shock more than anger.

Rina grinned maliciously at Luka’s stunned expression. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve been dating Niklas for months right under your nose. You think you’re so smart and that you have everything under control!” She laughed. “You can’t even keep your own house in order! No wonder you fucked up the crypto deal!”

“How do you know about the crypto?” Zec interjected himself into the family squabble.

Rina rolled her eyes again. “Like there are any secrets in this city? Everybody knew about the scam.”

Zec glanced at Luka who still seemed shaken by Rina’s revelation of her secret life and his organization leaking information like a sieve. “You have a big problem you need to sort.”

“You think?” Luka sarcastically muttered. He looked back to Rina who seemed utterly pleased with herself. Besian watched the two of them, wondering how quickly he could separate them if they got into a fight. Finally, Luka said, “We’ll talk about your boyfriend later.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said with a careless shrug. “He’s leaving for South America soon. We’ll break up and that’s that.”

Not giving Luka a chance to reply, she whirled away from the railing and disappeared. Luka exhaled roughly and rubbed his face. He pointed an angry finger in Zec’s direction. “Do you see what you’ve done?”

“Me?” Zec hissed.

“You’re the one who told me to let her go to university!”

“And I also told you to let go of her leash and let her live a normal life,” Zec snarled. “I warned you what would happen if you tried to be her father instead of her brother.” Zec gestured toward the second floor. “Exhibit fucking A.”

Clearly unwilling to face his responsibility in all of this, Luka instead turned his ire toward Drita who sat in horrified silence after Rina’s outburst. “Do you see what you’ve done? Spoiling her like you have?” He shook his head. “If you had simply left things alone last night, none of this would have happened this morning! What were you thinking throwing Marley out of the house?”

Besian went from wanting to defend Drita against Luka’s blame for Rina’s behavior to wanting to shake her. “You threw Marley out?”

Even as he yelled at Drita, he felt immense shame. Hadn’t he told Marley to pack her things? He tried to tell himself that it was different because he wouldn’t have actually thrown her out, but Marley didn’t know that.

God, she must have thought he had asked Drita to throw her out on the streets!

“Tell him the rest of it,” Zec ordered.

Drita shook her head and started crying into her apron again. Besian glanced at Luka for answers, but his nephew wouldn’t meet his gaze. Certain he was about to hear something that would sicken him, he looked to Zec for answers. “Tell me.”

“Drita met her at the door with her luggage. Threw it out like trash,” Zec said, his dark eyes blazing with fury. “Then she made her strip.”

Besian went slack. His shock was replaced by anger unlike any he had ever experienced. “She. Did. What?”

“In front of the security cameras,” Zec added, making sure to drive the knife of regret even deeper into Besian’s gut. “Had her stripped down to her underwear in the driveway with her tits out for everyone to see.”

Besian thought he was going to be sick. “And then what?”

“Marley walked away,” Luka said, his voice tired and hoarse. “Down the drive, out the gates and onto the road.”

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