“You can’t, can you.” Ani blew out a breath. “Yeah, neither could I once I really stopped to think about it.” He chuckled, the sound empty and humorless. “What exactly have I been chasing all this time? Revenge? For a brother who left me behind without a second glance?”
“What about the letters?” Bridger crossed his arms. “Didn’t Gannon say those were from Flix?”
He smiled bitterly. “There are five in total and they’re not from Flix. Russ wrote them. Want to know what they say?”
“Yeah—” Kage went to reach over the bed toward the bag, but Bridger grabbed his collar and hoisted him back.
“He was asking for money. Each and every one of them mentioned it.” They got more and more angry as they went on,too, with the last one basically just Russ calling him ungrateful and telling him they were no longer related. “He disowned me in the end.”
The guy Aneski had been trying all of this time to get closure for had been living on the other side of the globe, perfectly content without him. There’d been no mention of the Shepards or how they were doing, or of Haroon and the things he’d done. Russ hadn’t even asked once how Ani was.
“What a waste.” Ani dropped down on the edge of the bed and rested his head in his hands, feeling the full weight of how pathetic he’d been now that he was finally talking about it. It’d been a lot prior to now, with him finding Flix afterward and stabbing himself for attention.
He’d been desperate, though. Desperate to cling to the last good thing he had from back then. His brother and their bond had been a lie, and after realizing that, Ani hadn’t been able to deal with the thought of his relationship with Flix also having been one.
“I knew we weren’t close,” he continued. “ But I thought…I don’t know. We’re brothers? I thought that meant something.”
“It does,” Bridger tried to reassure, but Ani wouldn’t hear it.
“I’m done tricking myself into thinking something that isn’t true just because it’s easier to live with than the alternative. Russ took me in after our dad died because he had to, but he was never around. I thought he was working, but it turns out that wasn’t true either.”
“What do you mean?” Rexton’s frown deepened.
“It’s all in the letters. He asked me for money, even gave suggestions on how I could get it.”
“But didn’t he leave you with a ton of coin?” Kage asked. “That’s how you’re paying for school, isn’t it?”
He was silent, and after a moment, Bridger put the pieces together.
“It didn’t come from Russ, did it.” His friend swore and sat down next to him. “I’m sorry, man.”
“Do you know who gave it to you then?” Kage glanced away when Bridge glared at him.
“I have an idea.” There was only one person in Aneski’s life who had that kind of funding and would have been willing to piss it all away on someone like him.
“Flix.” Rexton leaned back against the desk, clearly shocked by this revelation.
“He really did that?” Kage let out a low whistle. “Is it too late to ask him to be my daddy too?”
Bridger leaned over the bed and snatched his earlobe. “Excuse you?”
“Kidding! Kidding! Ow!”
“Have any of you spoken to Gannon about last night?” Ani hadn’t seen him, which meant he must have left immediately after talking to Flix.
“Other than when he came in crying and answered where he’d been, no.” Bridger sat back up. “Why? I’d give him some space. You know how he can be.”
“I was just curious if he saw what happened with Pavel Hart, that’s all.”
“The Retinue member?” Kage sounded intrigued. “What happened with him?”
“He murdered someone in front of all of us for hitting on me.”
There was another moment of silence, and then Kage said, “Wow, they really are different from us, aren’t they?”
“The Shepards were never going to be anything more than a laughingstock to people like the Brumal and the Retinue,”Bridger confirmed with a sigh. “But that’s fine. None of us joined this gang to take it seriously.”
“Actually,” Kage said. “If Aneski is leaving, couldn’t we all just…go?”
