Page 24 of Beautiful Forever
Keith is the baldheaded giant behind the bar who owns the Bierkeller. He’s also a former enforcer of the Society. He was lucky. He was able to get out and have a normal life. A wife and kids. Although, I don’t know why he’d want to live in Darlington where he’s constantly surrounded by Society nepo-babies. Guess you never can really walk away, even when you want to.
Not in the mood to battle through the throngs of bodies crowding the bar to get drinks, I note where Tristan is sitting and head toward the opposite side of the room where a table is being cleaned off.
“Move,” Aleksei says to the two guys trying to claim the table first.
They look at him, then at me, and decide it’s best to walk away. My brother and I may not have Hendrix’s or Constantine’s reputations because we like to keep our shit low-key, but our height and our size say not to fuck with us.
The wood chair groans when Aleksei sits down, and I take the seat next to him near the wall. The recessed ceiling light directly above our heads creates a spotlight effect on our table. I want Tristan to see us.
“You good?” Aleksei asks, flagging down one of the servers.
“Yeah.” I drum my fingers against my thigh, a distraction to help block out the cacophony—overlapping conversations spoken in raised voices, the excited shouts of the commentators giving a play-by-play of the football game being shown on the wide screen, the low music being pumped out that only adds to the auditory chaos.
“This stalking bullshit is getting old. Why can’t we just kill them?”
Because I know what Francesco Amato did to Aoife. I’m going to take everything he covets, one by one—his power, hismoney, his son—and then carve out his beating, black heart while he watches. Revenge is all about the long game. It requires patience and moving the pieces of your chessboard into position until the opposition’s king is surrounded. I’m almost there.
“What can I get you?” our server asks.
“Whatever IPA Keith has on tap tonight,” Aleksei tells her.
She aims an overbright smile at me. “What about you?”
I’m distracted by the fragrance of gardenia that suddenly invades my space, but the sweet, floral scent doesn’t belong to our server. It belongs to the woman with red flame hair five feet from us. She hastens a quick glance in my direction toward the wide screen when shouts of celebration erupt at the touchdown that was made, and I lose my damn breath. Not because the woman is gorgeous, but because of her eyes. Cornflower blue. Those same color of eyes have haunted me most of my life.
Turning her attention back to her table, she uses the end of her pen to swipe at a curl of crimson hair that falls across her brow, inadvertently exposing a fibrous patchwork of skin and old scars on her left arm—remnants of burned flesh that run all the way up to her shoulder and disappear under the shirtsleeves of her T-shirt.
“He’ll have an IPA,” Aleksei eventually says for me.
“Sure thing. Be right back.”
Aleksei kicks me under the table. “Fuck, A, stop being a weirdo.”
That snaps me back, and my scathing glower tells him to fuck off. He knows I hate being called that word. “Who is she?”
“Our waitress?”
“No. Her.”
Resting his elbows on the table, he follows where I’m staring, then sits back. “Haven’t seen her before. I’d remember that fucked-up arm.”
I let his insensitive remark slide, along with the “weirdo.”
He juts his chin out. “Seems like you’re not the only one interested.”
Sure enough, Tristan’s gaze is intensely engrossed on the redhead as he tracks her across the room to the bar. He and Hendrix like to share women, and for some reason, the idea that she is on his radar makes me uncomfortable.
Our server returns with our beer, and Aleksei, being a little shit, asks her, “Can you help my socially inept brother out?”
“Sure,” she replies.
Taking out his money clip, he unfolds three hundred-dollar bills and hands them to her. “The other server, that one right there.” He points her out. “What’s her name?”
She twists around. “Oh, that’s Syn. She just started working here a couple weeks ago.”
Aleksei flashes an amused grin my way. “Her name is Sin.” He waggles his eyebrows, and I mouth,Stop it.
“Synthia, spelled with a ‘y,’” the girl says.
