“Who did you have in mind?” I asked, reluctantly picking up the envelope.
“No, Yannick. Start your process and let me know when it’s time. You’ll have your answer then.”
“And Irina?”
Lev grinned at me, his eyes narrowed slits as he gave me a lingering once over. “Ah, see. You do care. Irina will be fine, she may not like the decisions I am once again making for her, but I think it will work out somewhere down the line.”
The conversation was over, it would be the last time I spent in his company and I was fine with it. If I never saw him again, it was no skin off my nose. The noose he’d tightened around my neck was now slack, and I could take it off without peril or consequence. Every breath I took, with every step I made from the house, came easier and I gulped in a lungful of the pine scented air before getting back into my car and leaving old man Lev behind.
I drove away from the house tucked away in the trees far more disconcerted than I’d arrived. The expected joy at having a future I could decide for myself was oddly vacant, and I couldn’t quite manage to feel more than the quiet flutter stretching its wings in my stomach. I was so far from the end, there was still work to do and I wouldn’t be free tomorrow or even the next day but it was coming and I for one was more than ready.
Irina
“Fear smells good on you.”
Evil eyeing Tayte, I slumped back down on the chair and rubbed at my bruised neck. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“Maybe you should be?” He raised two perfectly sculpted eyebrows at me.
“Why are you in my house again?” I asked, irritated by the man who kept popping up when he felt like it, embarrassed he’d seen Yannick getting the better of me.
“Lucky for you I am.”
“Yannick wouldn’t hurt me.” I didn’t quite believe my own words this time, Yannick had been close to toppling over the edge and unleashing his fury on me.
“God, you’re so fucking naïve, Irina. He most definitely would and most likely will if you don’t get out of his way and give him what he wants.”
“He wants out.”
Tayte sat down where Yannick had been, swiping the broken iPad off to the side. “He does. And you’re going to let him.”
“You don’t tell me what to do, Tayte.” This man was a cheeky son of a bitch who had never quite learned his place when it came to me. His antagonising nature had always been evident to anyone who cared to look closer, but he’d done well all these years to stop a step short of riling me up to the point of no return.
“I don’t need to. Just do what’s right for a change, huh?”
Wiggling my fingers toward the door, I sneered at Tayte, the man seriously getting on my last nerve. “Shouldn’t you be running after your Master?”
Slanting his head to the side, Tayte smirked. “One day you are going to meet your match, and fuck, that’s going to be such a fun thing to watch. Someone putting you in your place, on your knees, making you heel.”
My laugh couldn’t have been louder at the absurdity Tayte had spoken. “Be a cold day in hell when that happens.”
“We’ll see.” Up he got, straightening his suit jacket, the yellow tie obnoxious and garish enough to compliment the blue. “Might want to put some ice on your neck and stop your yapping for an hour or two.”
Oh my God, what the actual fuck? Had Tayte had a personality transplant, had someone else crawled into his body and taken over?
“Who are you?”
“See you later.” He grinned as if he had not a care in the world.
Tayte left the way he’d arrived - silently. I couldn’t help ogling him on the way out of the kitchen though, he’d always carried himself tall, always turned women’s heads, and it seemed I was no exception. The stupid man was confusing me, and I couldn’t afford the distraction. I’d have to be a little more careful around him, the giant pain in my arse wasn’t as useless as he made out. Tayte was changing, and I feared it wouldn’t be long before he showed us all the man he really was.
Jolie
Julie Summers’s funeral was miserable. Actually, it was one of the worst things I’d attended in all the years I could remember. Carol and Fred, bless their beautiful hearts, sat in the crematorium with me while I stared blankly toward the front, the maroon velvet curtains hiding the coffin where my mother lay. An old friend of mums sat with Jared. That was it. Five people to say goodbye, it was awful. No one was going to miss her except me. What a miserable existence, no wonder she’d ended up sitting on a recliner drinking herself to death with a bottle in her hand.
I vowed never to be my mother, never in a million years.
Jared had tried to strike up a conversation, managing a pitiful apology before Fred picked up on my anxiety and showed his alpha side, standing as a solid barrier between me and my ex. I had nothing to say to the prick; he had nothing I wanted to listen to, he could stick his sorry up his arse for all I cared.
Twenty minutes was all it took, then the world was finished with Julie Summers once and for all. Depressing as fuck.
I had two more nights at Carol’s, another week off
