I didn’t know if that was for the better or the worse.
I didn’t know if I’d ever see Frankie again, if I’d make it to him, if we’d ever be able to reconnect and have a life together. But I knew I had to try.
I knew I had to try with everything in me, because I had nothing else to lose.
9
Frankie
I leaned against the kitchen counter and listened as Dom and Cullen went over the plan for our next heist. I was only mildly paying attention, although I knew this was important. It was hard to focus when all I wanted to do was go home and crash. My knuckles were bruised and scabbed over from the fight with that junkie, even though I couldn’t really qualify it as an actual fight. I allowed him one hit before I took his ass down.
Wilder had the fridge open and was bent over, shuffling around for more beers. I knew I sure as hell could use a new one. I picked up the bottle that was a quarter full of dark ale. It had been sitting on the counter for the past twenty minutes and was no doubt warm and flat as fuck.
“Fuck, we’re out of beer,” Wilder muttered before straightening and closing the fridge. He turned around and scowled. “That’s unacceptable for planning shit.”
Cullen and Dom stopped talking and looked over at Wilder, and I couldn’t help but feel my lips twitch in amusement. There was something about Wilder that got under their skin, but it had the opposite effect on me. I found his antics hilarious as hell. Maybe it was because we were the youngest out of the four brothers, or maybe it was because we were twins.
Maybe it was just because Dom and Cullen were too serious all the time. Even though they had women of their own, it was still like they had a stick up their ass, serious and no-fucking-around attitudes. It made for extensive and prolonged planning.
“I think we can manage without getting drunk while we’re trying to pull off a fucking heist, Wilder.”
I felt my lips twitching even more.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and internally told myself to man the fuck up and focus. There was no room for error, not even a fraction of time for a fuck up. We had to be on board completely, in sync, because if not, this whole thing would go to hell and we’d be behind bars, or worse, dead and buried in the ground.
Although that had always been the plan, that we wouldn’t go down without a fight, because my brothers had women of their own now, people they had to look after aside from themselves, it did drastically change things. It changed how people felt about life.
It put things into perspective, and I could understand that. I knew I’d do anything to protect Nadja. I knew I’d do anything to go home to her.
“Wilder, let’s just focus on this so we can nail it down.”
My twin looked at me, his scowl deepening, but he finally nodded, understanding the sooner we got this over with, the sooner we could all go back to what we were doing.
And that meant my brothers being with their women, and me being alone in a house that was too fucking big for just me.
We all gathered around the kitchen island at the house we grew up in, also known as now fully mine. We decided to plan any new robberies here, because it’s what we’d always done, but also because my brothers didn’t want this shit around their women.
And I could understand and respect that.
Cullen’s woman crashed early due to working a late shift at the hospital. Wilder’s female was having a girls’ night out with some coworkers she recently befriended, which in turn had my twin grumpy, because he always wanted to be by her side to protect her. And Dom’s woman was studying for what she called “midterms.” I knew if Dom had his way, she’d be at home twenty-four seven, because that’s where he could make sure she was safe. But he also wanted her to be independent, to have her own life, get the degree she wanted to.
But all my brothers’ significant others were independent as hell. And although Dom, Cullen, and Wilder were possessive, territorial, and alpha as fuck, the fact of the matter was, their women wore the pants in their relationships.
I would’ve laughed, but hell, Nadja ruled every single part of me, and if she walked right back into my life after all these years, she still would.
And so I got it. I understood what my brothers were going through, what they felt, even if I didn’t talk about any of it. Even if I kept all my feelings for Nadja to myself because that was safer.