I dropped my arm and stepped back, straightening my shirt while he coughed and sputtered, sucking in life-giving oxygen. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he rasped out.

“Good. Keep her safe, and you might live long enough to see New York again.” I turned away from the sight of him rubbing at his neck. “Otherwise, you should think about how sad your mom will be when she has to plan her only son’s funeral.”

12

Nova

I was awake before my alarm went off. Since Ramirez’s men had attacked me, sleep had been elusive. Anya had always told me that the first kill was the worst, that no matter how many she’d gotten under her belt over the decades, her first had stayed with her to this day. I just hadn’t thought it would be this hard.

The attack had shown me that I’d learned a lot from Anya, but it had also shown me that I still had a lot left for her to teach me. Number one being how to turn off my emotions when it was a do-or-die situation.

Rubbing at my forehead where a headache was already forming from lack of sleep, I flipped through my social media on my phone with my other hand. Ciana was already up and in her first classes of the day back in New York, but that hadn’t kept her from taking a selfie in her nursing scrubs that she had to wear to school every day. My beautiful cousin was going to make an amazing nurse, and she definitely knew how to rock the not-so-pretty green scrubs she and her fellow classmates had to wear.

Smiling, I loved her picture and kept scrolling.

The smile disappeared not ten seconds later when I saw a post by a girl I wasn’t familiar with. I frowned at the influencer’s name, wondering why she was in my feed…until I saw that my idiot brother had commented on her post. As I scanned what he’d said, my heart sank, and I tossed back my covers, jumping out of bed.

Not even bothering with a robe over my fuzzy Cookie Monster sleep pants and matching tank top, I stomped out of my room and straight into Garret’s. He was snoring away, blissfully unaware of his surroundings as I picked up one of his pillows and started pelting him in the face with it as hard as I could.

The first smack of the heavy pillow to his face startled him awake, and he started swinging his arms. But I’d had thirteen years to learn all my brother’s moves, and I stepped back before he could hit me, then swung and hit him again, knocking him back onto the mattress.

“What are you fucking doing?” he yelled when I connected again with a powerful hit to his mouth and nose. My only answer was to strike again. “Nova, stop!”

“You idiot,” I growled at him. “Do you think you can taunt Ramirez through his stepdaughter and get away with it? Are you so stupid that you don’t realize you are only baiting a pissed-off panther?” I hit him again just as he was trying to sit up, the force snapping his head back where it connected with the headboard—hard.