“Solange, come look!” Mama called to me and I walked into the caretaker’s suite.
“It’s pretty, Mama.” I smiled.
“What do you think of this?” she asked, motioning to a small sitting area just off to the side of the bedroom.
“It’ll be a nice spot for you and Papa to relax on your days off,” I replied, taking in the bay window and envisioning a couple of comfortable armchairs and maybe a table.
“No, no. I was thinking for you.”
“For me?” I frowned at her.
“Well, yes. We can put a daybed there and that can be your room.”
“My room?” I arched my brows. “Why on earth would I sleep here when I have six other rooms to choose from?”
She pursed her lips. “Solange, there are only six other rooms and one of them has to go to Kostya. If we give you another, we can only rent four per night and that would cut our profits significantly. We’d give you privacy, of course, and you’ll be paid a full salary, so you can—”
“I see. So Kostya gets his own room and doesn’t have to do anything but greet guests and occasionally get out of bed before noon, but I have to share a room with my middle-aged parents and scrub toilets? Does anything about this seem wrong to you?”
“Solange, you’re being dramatic. I know you’ve been unhappy but we’re doing the best we can. Your father and I didn’t want to leave Vinake but I know how much you’d rather spend the winter here. So until we can rebuild the café, we’ll work hard to run the inn and do right by the king. You need to learn your place, my love. Perhaps then we’ll be able to find you a husband.”
I loved my parents, but I’d had about enough of the idea that my only use in life was to get married, have babies, and help them run their business. “You know, I don’t understand you,” I said finally. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me except when you asked me to marry Felix. That was never going to happen. But I’ve worked in our café since I was old enough to reach the counter. I’ve worked ten to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for the last seven years. I—”
“Solange, there’s no point—”
“Just this once, Mama, you’ll listen to me.” I turned to her, my voice rising slightly. “I’ve had no life. None. I do nothing but work, three hundred sixty-five days a year. On my feet, cleaning and serving and making small talk. I do the bookkeeping, I place the orders with our vendors, I digitized our inventory system, I make sure Mr. Roma and Mrs. Freela don’t drink themselves silly at the back table every night, and that someone gets them home safely. Without me, our café would have gone bankrupt years ago.”
“And how do you think you learned to do all those things?” Mama demanded, her eyes flashing.
“I taught myself!” I snapped. “You and Papa never did inventory until I learned about business and computers in high school. And I did it because I love you, and you’re my family, and even though I hate everything about running a café and living in a frigid hellhole, I have been and will continue to be a devoted daughter. But this—this is too much. I’m twenty-four years old and I deserve a goddamn bedroom of my own. I know Kostya is your favorite, and I love him too, but just this once, can you acknowledge that he’s lazy and self-absorbed, drinks too much, and he’s the reason the Brat showed up on our doorstep in the first place?”
“Solange!” Mama glared at me. “You will not speak this way.”
“I’ll speak any way I want,” I said evenly. “If it wasn’t for me making that phone call, Kostya, and probably Papa too, would be dead.” I turned on my heel and walked out of the room—and right smack into Axel.
“Hey.” His eyes were filled with concern as he looked at me, hands on my upper arms to steady me.
“Excuse me.” I brushed past him and out the back door into the garden.
I was pissed and now a little embarrassed that Axel had heard my family’s dirty laundry. I couldn’t be sure how much he’d understood since we’d been speaking Limaji, but I suspected it was more than he let on.
I walked to the far edge of the property and stared out into a wooded area that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was pretty here, and at least I’d have something nice to look at once I went back to working twelve- or sixteen-hour days, but I was bitter about it. Kostya was my younger brother and I loved him, but all of this was his fault. I didn’t have any proof, but I knew him, and though I wouldn’t have told anyone before now, I was done covering for him. He was a good kid, but lazy and always looking to score a deal. Drugs, gambling, who knows what else.
“You want to tell me how this is your brother’s fault?” Axel spoke from behind me and I sighed.
“Not particularly, no.” I turned to him. “What are you doing here? I thought Natalia was going to be our guide today?”
“She was, but her mother took a fall and was rushed to the hospital, so she needed to go to her and I offered to take over.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me about your brother.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It kind of does. The king is putting a lot of time, effort and money into rebuilding the café and keeping the residents of Vinake safe. If your brother is involved with the Bojovnik Brat—”
“He’s not involved with them the way you think,” I said. “And I don’t know anything for sure, but what I do know is that he drinks and gambles. He and his buddies go over the border to Turkey and get involved in who knows what. I’m sure he owes them money or something and that’s what brought them to Vinake. When they came to the café that night, they were looking for Kostya specifically. Papa offered them more money, they took it and then laughed, said it wasn’t enough. He’s a good kid, but this is what happens in small towns where the young people have no hope for the future. He was desperate to find something, anything, to get him out of there. I’m sure he hooked up with them hoping for a way out.”
“I’m thinking the king is going to want to have a talk with Kostya.”
“He’s not a bad kid.”
“I get it, but this has to be dealt with.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re a stranger. I couldn’t betray my brother.”
“I’m not really a stranger anymore,” he said quietly, meeting my gaze.
“Look, you can’t have it both ways,” I said, irritated. “If you want to keep your distance, then keep your distance. If you want to be my friend, then stop playing games with me.”
“Honey, I do want to be your friend. I just can’t be anything else.”
“Who asked you to be? I’m not a child. I didn’t expect a marriage proposal because we had sex.”
14
Axel
Damn, she was frustrating as hell, but she’d had me twisted up inside since the first time I’d seen her. Spending time with her would only make it inevitable that I’d hurt her, and she’d given me the perfect out that day at the hospital when she’d said she knew better than to get attached. Between that and her being sent to Greece for a week, I’d figured I’d have forgotten about her by the time she got back. That hadn’t happened and now she was pissed at me and I was inadvertently pissed at her for putting me in an untenable situation.