Page 92 of Ruby Mercy

But maintaining an alliance with Natalia could still prove advantageous down the road.

“My concern is not rejection,” I tell her. “My concern is Rayne’s stubbornness. She is going to get in her own head and make the wrong decision for herself and Yuliana. She’ll decide to try to take care of herself and shut me out.”

“You won’t let her shut you out.”

“True,” I say. “But it’ll be easier if she’s on board.”

There’s a long sigh from Natalia’s end of the phone. “Don’t tell Rayne I told you where she’s at.”

“This will be our little secret.”

“I’m only doing this because I think you genuinely want what’s best for her,” she reiterates. “Because I was there with her after Yuliana was born. I saw how hard it was for her to do things alone. No one deserves a partner and a break more than Rayne. So you better be that for her.”

“I need the address, not your advice.”

“Asshole,” she mumbles, but I hear her digging through a drawer. A second later, she reads out his address. “She’s there with her sisters. I don’t know the whole story, just that she went to visit her dad for the first time in years. Yuliana is with her. Please don’t make a scene.”

“Me? Make a scene?” I close the broken door behind me, hanging in tatters from groaning hinges. “Never.”

35

RAYNE

“The emperor of all maladies,” Dad says, raising his glass. “If I have to die, at least I’m being taken out by the biggest and baddest of all.”

“Dad, we are not toasting your cancer,” Lana snaps. She reaches out and pushes his arm back down.

“Plus, you aren’t being ‘taken out,’” Alexis chimes in. “You still have that appointment with the oncologist tomorrow.”

Out of everyone, Alexis seems to be taking the news the hardest. She’s broken down in tears several times today, and each time, all I could think about was how she couldn’t even bother to come say goodbye to Mom. Where were these tears then?

Dad gives her a sad smile and a gentle pat on the hand. “It’s the fourth opinion. He isn’t going to say anything the others haven’t. The treatment isn’t working anymore. It’s time to get comfortable with the idea that this is the end for me.”

Impossible, I think.How am I supposed to get comfortable with my dad dying if I can’t even be comfortable around him when he’s alive?

Yuliana and I arrived just after breakfast, and I still feel like I’ve accidentally crashed someone else’s birthday party. Like everyone is looking at us and wondering what we’re doing here.

Honestly, I’m wondering the same thing.

I wouldn’t have agreed to come visit so readily if the shit hadn’t hit the fan with Kirill. I couldn’t just sit at home and wait for him to kick down the door.

“I’m just glad to have all my kiddos with me.” Dad tosses a special look my way, throwing in a wink.

He’s trying to make me feel even more welcome, but it’s having the opposite effect. I hide my grimace behind a drink of my ice water, but even that shtick is getting old. I’ve gone through three glasses since dinner started.

“And my grand-kiddos, too, of course,” he adds.

The grandkids in question are too busy hiding their steamed vegetables under their napkins. Lily is teaching Yuliana how to carefully scrape the food to the edge of her plate and then inconspicuously slide it off the plate with her napkin. Every so often one of them makes a dart to the trash can to throw away their full napkin and grab a new one.

I’d say they were a bad influence on her if she wasn’t having so much fun.

“They’re making fast friends, aren’t they?” Lana whispers in my ear.

“They really are. Considering how hard the last few days have been, I’m surprised how well Yuliana is handling all of this.”

Lana frowns. “What has been going on?”

“Just, uh, just some trouble at school. It’s nothing.”

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