“Going somewhere?”
My hand clenches around the handle of the front door. “I have some business to attend to in the city.”
Back and forth. Leaving before dawn, not coming back until night has fallen over the house and I’m certain Anastasia is asleep.
Kit leans against the doorframe. “You can’t avoid her forever, Rafe.”
“Take your own advice, brother.”
A dull flush crawls over his face, but he counters my accusation. “I’m not avoiding her. I’ve been looking into things.”
Frowning, I let go of the door and give him my full attention. “What kind of things?”
In response, he tosses the newspaper in his hands at me. Unfolding it, I glance across the front page. “So, all is not well in the royal household.”
“The staff are quitting in droves,” he says quietly. “It doesn’t quite fit with the picture of the poor, mistreated sister. Does it?”
My eyes take in the large photograph. Anastasia’s stepsister is front and center. She’s pretty enough, I suppose. Big blue eyes, although they look a little bulbous to me.
Nothing like the sleek, deep brown of Stasi’s eyes.
She might not be the impossible standard of beauty that society holds up, but I’d take her quiet looks in a moment over her so-called sister.
The kind of beauty that creeps up on you, stealing your breath away. Strong and fierce and passionate, until it’s all you can think about.
“Rafe?”
Jerking, I look up. The paper crumples beneath my grip. “You think she’s lying.”
Kit nods. “Silas refuses to believe it. But all the evidence is circumstantial. It just… it doesn’t make sense to me. That’s not the Anastasia we knew.”
Perhaps not then.
“People change, Kit,” I murmur, holding the paper out. “Just because we don’t want to believe it doesn’t make it wrong.”
And I know he doesn’t want to believe it. He still sees the Anastasia we once knew.
I toss the paper back to him. “You’ve always been the soft one.”
My twin raises an eyebrow. “Tell that to the men.”
I snort. The men under our command are more scared of Kit than Silas and I combined. “One little testicle removal and none of them will even look at you.”
He grins. “It was a little more than that, if I recall.”
The man in question was an abusive fucker, and we took great pleasure in removing him from our pool of associates when we found out that he was beating seven bells out of his wife at home. A useful warning to the others, too. Not to step out of line.
I cross my arms. “I still have to go. Call it avoidance all you like, but the work doesn’t do itself, you know.”
Silas oversees all of our business interests. Our family is richer than Croesus, thanks to a long history of savvy investing, and he inherited our father’s skill. My twin prefers his music to the family business, but he gets involved when he needs to, cultivating his rather unfair reputation as the scariest Tate brother. The shadow, they call him behind his back.
Fucker.
But me? I’m the face. The point of contact for our men. And whilst it’s quieter than normal, thanks to us reorganizing everything to make space for Anastasia, there are still a dozen demands on my time.
And if it’s convenient that it keeps me out of her way, then that’s just a bonus.
“She doesn’t want to see me, Kit.”
My words are quiet, and he sighs.
“This is not how it was supposed to be.”
None of this is how it was supposed to be.
We should have been together. If she’d stayed. If she’d trusted us. But instead, she ran.
She broke Kit’s heart. My twin become more withdrawn, more silent. Even his music room turned silent after she left.
And Silas. Silas turned cold, as though ice had spread from every place she’d ever touched him.
As I get into my car, switching on the engine, I catch my own reflection in the mirror. And I wonder what changes she pulled from me.
