Page 43 of Cruel Redemption

Our heads whipped around when we heard a heavy fist pound on the bathroom door.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“What is it?” Amara called with venom in her words.

“Katya Petrov is downstairs. With a suitcase,” Ciro shouted through the door. “You need to get down there.”

We looked at each other. I helped Amara to her feet. I kissed her forehead and reached for the wall panel. We needed the water again.

“We’ll be right down,” Amara replied.

I assumed Ciro left. I pulled Amara into my arms. “I’ll go find out what’s going on with my sister.”

“We need to go together,” she countered. “From now on, it’s together. All of this, the beautiful and the ugly, we do it together.”

I pushed her up against the wall. My cock pressed into her stomach. Our lips were blistered by the time I finished kissing her and we walked out of the shower.

Twenty-Three

Amara

I pulled my hair back into a bun. There wasn’t time to dry it. I hoped it looked intentional, and not thrown together. When Luka and I walked out of my bedroom suite, the floor seemed empty. Ciro must have returned to the front floor.

There wasn’t time to create and dissect theories about his sister. We had to get downstairs.

I spotted the suitcase first.

“Katya?” Luka called out for his sister.

“In here,” she answered. She was pacing in the drawing room across from my office.

“What’s going on?” Luka reached her first and gave her a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re out of the police station.” She squeezed him tightly before looking beyond his athletic frame to acknowledge me.

“Hi.” I smiled at her. “Are you all right?”

“I didn’t know where to else go. I tried your apartment first, but then realized you would be here with Amara.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” I suggested. “Bella, can you bring us something to drink? And Luka needs to eat.”

He nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Sit down.” He pointed Katya to a sofa. “Tell us why are you here with a suitcase. You realize the press is everywhere.”

She fidgeted with her wedding ring. “I know. I know. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t.” She looked at her brother, then me.

“Why not?” Luka asked. “Are you saying you left Andrey?”

“I did.” She jutted her chin forward. “I’m not going back to that house.”

I saw the furrow on Luka’s brow start to form. They had had this conversation before.

“Can you tell us why?” I suggested. “Something to go on.”

She sat back abruptly. “Ohh.” Her hand moved to her stomach. “A hard kick,” she explained. She buried her face in her hands. “And Enzo isn’t here.”

I stood to find Bella and closed the drawing room doors behind me. I walked over to the chair closest to Katya and sat next to her.

I could see the pain she was in. I could feel it. I didn’t know how to be a sister. How to be the comforting type. I couldn’t fathom what Ciro told me that somewhere in Philadelphia my half-sister existed. Luka’s sister was here now. She needed us. I had to push out the idea that I might have a sister. It didn’t do anyone any good and for all I knew she was some woman’s concocted story to extort my father for money. It was useless information in the middle of our current crisis.

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