Page 15 of Breakdown
There was no good answer to this, no easy solution. The guilt gnawed at him.
“Please, Peter.”
“Alright.” Peter exhaled heavily and took Nik’s hand, pressing a kiss onto it. It left an ominous smear of red. “Together then.”
Interlude
Olivia, Four Years Ago
OLIVIA TENSED UP THEmoment she stepped out of her car. Her front door was open a crack; the lock hadn’t been forced but definitely bypassed. Liv hadn’t received a call from her alarm company, so whoever was in there had managed to disarm that newly pointless twenty-thousand-dollar investment. She was dealing with a professional.
Liv had been out making a cash pick-up for her father, and she realized that she’d allowed herself to become predictable. She had done it at the same time for the past three weeks, settling into a routine. That sort of careless shit got you killed in this business. She was lucky she was getting off with a burglary.
She briefly debated if she should call one of the family’s enforcers to come take care of it in case the culprit was still around. But it washerhouse, damn it and she was already picturing the contemptuous look on Erik’s face if he had to fix this for her.
She pulled the knife out of her Hermès Birkin bag and flipped it open, locking it into place. She briefly considered the Taser instead, but the knife had a personal touch she liked. Leaving her Louboutins on the porch, Liv slipped into her home.
Liv could feel the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. Nothing looked out of place, but she was struck by an unsettling and unshakable feeling of violation. Someone was likely looking for the Bauer’s books now that she had taken them over. Liv was offended that they thought she was stupid enough to keep them in her home. She had secured several safe-houses under different names for all of the physical paperwork, and four more decoy apartments with cooked books. On top of that, she started renting half-a-dozen other places and twenty-four lockboxes at various banks across the city to throw anyone off the scent. It would take someone a good month of hard work to pull everything together, and even then they’d never be sure what was legitimate or not. Perhaps it was over-elaborate, but it made her feel safer and it never hurt to have access to extra storage.
There was a sudden shifting in her pantry, and Liv moved quietly, knife held out in front of her. She put her open palm on the door, steeling herself to push it open. Without warning, it jerked inwards. Her wrist was grasped tightly and wrenched behind her back, spinning her around unceremoniously. Liv held on despite the pain. She twisted her body, swinging the knife wildly, but she couldn’t get enough leverage to make it connect.
“Jesus, Liv, you should have called somebody,” Peter chuckled in her ear, then let her go. “We have people for this.”
Liv inspected Peter. She hadn’t seen her brother in over two months, and he looked fucking awful. He was painfully thin, his suit hanging off his once broad shoulders, and the veins in his hands too pronounced. His skin was sallow. His eyes were half-open and blood-shot, the circles beneath them so dark that they could’ve been bruises.
“Peter,” she breathed out.
“Hiya, sis.” He gestured to the knife in her hand. “Nice to see you, too. I would have gone for the Taser myself.”
Peter grinned widely at her. It made Liv think of a skull. She suddenly couldn’t shake the image of him in that hospital bed at nineteen: broken and barely alive. Peter cleaned up for a while, but it never stuck. No difference, just rapidly declining odds of survival.
Perpetually caught between enabling and abandoning him, she knew she would never get ahead of this. She finally amassed enough power to take care of any of the street-level dealers who wanted to sell to him, and then Peter went and supplied himself through the youngest son of one of the most dangerous men in LA. She couldn’t just make Stavros disappear.
There was Stav’s family to consider, naturally, but if it was only that, Liv was almost willing to risk an all-out war with the Giannopouloses. But deep down, she knew Peter couldn’t survive Stav taking a one-way trip to the bottom of the reservoir, not in this state. Peter thought the drugs helped him forget about his problems, but they left him so fragile that the smallest thing could shatter him. Something like somebody he loved leaving him without a trace again, for example. And Peter did love Stav, toxic as that love was.
The last time she’d seen Peter had been here, two months ago. He’d been high then too. They’d fought about Stav. He’d stormed out.
