“You have got to be shitting me,” he explodes. “You’re really going through with that inane idea of Misha’s? You’re just going to offer yourself up to the Triad like that?”
“I am,” I answer, my voice empty of all emotion.
“Are you insane?!” he shouts, throwing his arms up and pacing back and forth. “You’ve really lost it. This is the vodka talking. You don’t mean any of this. Tomorrow you’ll forget this idiotic plan ever existed.”
“I won’t.”
“Yes, you will!” he shouts. “You have to. You belong in Chicago! You belong with…” But he doesn’t finish the sentence, though I can read it just fine in his pleading gaze.
That I belong with Stella.
But there’s where Kostya is wrong. There is no room for me in her life. And worst of all I know that if I lived in the same city as her, I would falter. I’m too weak when it comes to her. All it would take is one look…one single look…and I’d be on my knees, begging her to take me back.
I can’t do that to her. Or to myself.
This suffering needs to end somehow.
If Stella’s life will be ruled by duty, then why can’t mine?
“I’ve thought long and hard about this, Kostya,” I say quietly. “And I’ve made up my mind.”
My baby brother looks at me with that pitying expression again, and it stabs straight through my chest. So deep that I have to drop my gaze from his just to escape it.
“If you do this, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
A small, disheartened chuckle slips from me as I lift my eyes back to his.
“My life is already full of regrets. What’s one more?”
I grab the vodka bottle and my sunglasses and move to pass him, but Kostya catches my arm, stopping me cold in my tracks.
“Kill, please… don’t fucking do this,” he pleads. “Just talk to her. Go home and talk to your woman. This… this misery can all be avoided with one good conversation. I know it can. She loves you, Kill. And you love her. Just… fucking talk this shit out. And whatever’s tearing you apart, I know you’ll find a way to stop it.”
This time, I’m the one who looks at Kostya with pity.
Maybe if I talked to Stella, we could fix us. But the underlying truth would still remain.
Stella will never reach her true potential with me in her life. And I love her too much to be the thing that holds her back.
She will always be an Outfit princess.
And I will always be aBratvaprince.
There was never a world where we could truly exist together, and I was a fool to ever believe I could build one for us.
“You can’t marry Lily Sun, Kill. You can’t,” Kostya says desperately. “I don’t care how pissed Misha will be. You can’t marry a woman you don’t love.”
“I’ve already decided,” I deadpan. “Tomorrow I’ll tell Misha to start putting everything in motion. I’ll go to San Francisco and marry her. The Triad and theBratvawill become one, littlebrother. And there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind.”
“It will kill her when she finds out,” he mutters softly, twisting the knife already buried in my heart.
“Probably,” I swallow hard. “But it’ll also make her even more of a force of nature than she already is. This…what I’m doing… is a gift, Kostya. A gift to set her free.” I meet his gaze, steady and unflinching. “Won’t you give me the same gift, brother? Don’t I deserve to be set free too?”
“Do you honestly believe that marrying some stranger will stop you from loving Stella?”
No. The word clogs in my throat.
I know it won’t. But I have to try something. I can’t keep living like this either.
