INSATIABLE CRAVINGS
Insatiable Cravings – Episode 117
Subtitle; {Loving You Is A Loosing Game}
TAGS: Age-gap, Mafia, Forbidden Love, Drama, Tragedy and Betrayal.
Settings: United Kingdom, Russia and others.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
~ Genevieve ~
The soft thud of my boots echoed faintly up the staircase as I made my way to collect my things. The sound wasn’t loud, but it was enough to remind me of the silence blanketing the house—Dominic’s house—now more familiar to me than my own.
I hadn’t been back to Liam’s in two days. I’d stayed here, by Dominic’s side, wanting to be present for him, with him. But now he was going to drive me home, and the thought twisted something sharp in my chest. I’d been dreading this—having to bring up the fact that I was due to return to China in just a few days.
I should’ve told him sooner. I meant to. But then his ship explodéd, and everything else was swallowed up in the aftermath. Now? Now, another blóody disaster had surfaced from nowhere, making it even harder to speak.
My thoughts were a mess—a proper jumble, thoughts ricocheting off one another like marbles in a tin. As I walked the length of the hallway, a shaky sigh clawed its way up my throat. My lungs felt tight, almost like they were punishing me for trying to breathe.
I inhaled, but it was shallow and stiff. My chest refused to expand. My brain felt fried, my lungs half-useless, and my heart… my heart bore a fresh wound, stinging with the betràyal I hadn’t dared to name aloud.
I couldn’t seem to pull myself together.
It would be easier to stay here, wouldn’t it? To stay with Dominic, help him through all of this. But staying meant being close to Blade. And that, I couldn’t do.
Seeing him—his face, his eyes—it lit something dark inside me. Fury. Húrt. And I couldn’t afford to feel any of that right now. The more I felt, the less I could think. And I needed to think.
I needed to shut it all off. Just for a moment. To go numb. To figure out how Blade—Blade, of all people—could stàb us in the back so cleanly, so effortlessly.
What was he promised that the Bratva couldn’t or wouldn’t give?
If I could just wrap my head around it, maybe—just maybe—I’d piece the rest together.
“Yes.” Aurora’s soft voice floated through the slight opening in her bedroom door, drifting across the hall like a breeze. “She’s here, Everett.”
My steps froze. My thoughts—chaotic as they were—stilled completely. Then, like fog creeping in, new ones slithered through the silence.
Everett? As in… someone else named Everett? Or Everett Walker-King, my older brother?
Surely, it could be anyone. Everett wasn’t a rare name. But who else would be asking after me?
Unless there was another ‘she’ in the house… which was unlikely. Rory wasn’t speaking about herself, was she?
“It’s been a màd couple of days. I’m sure that’s why she hasn’t answered your calls,” she continued, her voice calm. “Yeah, I promise she’s fine…”
I stopped listening. My ears had decided they’d heard enough.
She knows my brother?
How on earth did they meet?
My lips parted as the realisation hit me like a lorry slamming into my chest. I gasped—a short, stunned sound.
She was the one he was texting that day, when I saw her smiling at her phone…
Aurora Morozov—Dominic’s younger sister—was my brother’s mystery girl.
That had to be it. There was no other explanation for the way they spoke to each other. Sweet. Familiar. Intimate.
“It’s rude to eavesdrop on people’s conversations,” she called out, her voice tinged with its usual sass, though there was still a sadness beneath it.
She didn’t say my name, but I knew she was talking to me.
Still, I wasn’t about to admit to listening in, so I stepped inside casually. “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” I lied smoothly—too smoothly.
“Right,” Rory drawled, not even trying to hide her sarcasm. She nodded sagely as she sat on the edge of her fluffy pink bed.
She really liked pink. Capital P, underlined twice.
Her fingers slid through her ink-dark hair in two neat swipes, before she clipped it up with a claw clip. A pink one, naturally. “So, you heard,” she said plainly. Not a question—more like a fact. Her golden-brown eyes locked onto mine. “Are you going to say something?”
“Something like what?”
“Oh, come off it, Gen. You’ve got a question—ask it and be done with it.”
I nodded slowly. “Are you seeing Everett—my brother?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. Just that one word. Crisp. Clear.
“Since when?”
“A while now.”
“Does Dominic know?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t know you’ve got a brother.”
Her words stunned me so hard I forgot how to breathe. My lungs seized, like someone had wrapped a hand around my windpipe and squeezed. I couldn’t speak for five whole seconds.
Then the confusion arrived—riding shotguń with the shock.
“What…” I let out a breathless laugh, disbelief hanging on every syllable. “What do you mean he doesn’t know I have a brother?” A disbelieving scoff escaped me. “Who doesn’t know I have a brother?”
“Dominic, apparently,” Aurora said with a little laugh.
She laughed.
And then, perhaps realising I wasn’t joking, she cleared her throat and swallowed the rest of it. “Sorry,” she muttered. “But you have to admit—it’s a little bit funny.”
“Not even slightly.”
“Well, I thought it was,” she said, though her smile faded like steam on a windowpane. “More than ten years ago, my brother did a full background check on every single one of you Kings—hard copies. I took one of the files when I was little. Used it for colouring.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I drew all over Everett’s file as a toddler. That’s why Dominic never saw it. And by the time he might’ve noticed… well, your brother had changed his surname. It was around that time he stopped going to public events, remember?”
None of this made sense.
Even if every word of it was true, Dominic should’ve known something. This was Everett King we were talking about. Yes, he changed his name—but if Dominic had wanted to know, really wanted to, he’d have found out.
“And I’m guessing you never brought him up either?”
Because it never blóody came up!
Everett was always abroad—sometimes halfway across the world—trying to escape Mum’s grip.
“You didn’t know he had a sister—” I heard footsteps echoing down the hallway, each one louder than the last, steadily drawing closer. “And now?”
My heart was pounding, wild and erratic, like it was trying to escape my chest. I was pretty sure I was on the verge of a full-blown heart attack—and Aurora, bless her, just wouldn’t stop talking.
“He doesn’t know you’ve got a brother. Lovely dynamic, that, isn’t it?”
The footsteps slowed—right behind me.
“You’ve got a brother?”
His voice was low, almost quiet, but there was weight to it. I didn’t have to turn around to know he was there, towering over me. I could feel him—the heat of his presence, the stillness in the air, like everything had paused, waiting for my answer.
TBC📖✍️
