When my world first crumbled, it was hard to recognize myself without the armor I’d strapped on for years. Suits and watches, glitz and glam, wealth and power I wore like jewelry. All the trappings of a man on the cusp of billions. I lost the taste for allthat shit soon after I joined Aleksei’s side. Then, while under his wing, I avoided mirrors for a while.
But now, I’m finding that it’s not so terrible to look at myself. I see just a man. Neither a saint nor a sinner. Just flesh and bone and exhaustion, fixing things one pass of the razor at a time.
In an hour, I’ll be sitting down with the FBI to tell them everything I know. I’ll be stabbing my brother in the back as I do, but he made his choices. I’m making mine.
I’m choosing my family.
I rinse off the blade and resume my work. I’m almost done when the razor catches on my jaw and tears through the skin. As I wince, a daub of blood wells up, bright red against the white shaving cream. I watch it swell and slide down toward my chin, and I think,This is the smallest wound I’ve sustained in months.
I’ll take it. One last wound. Tonight, if everything goes according to plan, the bleeding will finally stop for good.
I pull on clean clothes and step out of the bathroom to find the safe house bustling. Zeke stands at the stove, spatula in hand, while Yasmin perches on the counter beside him, gesturing critically at whatever he’s got sizzling in the pan.
“You’re going to burn the garlic,” she warns. “It’s already turning brown.”
He scowls at her. “Are you aware that I am quite literally a James Beard award-winning chef?”
“Tell that to the burnt garlic, wise guy.”
“It’ssupposedto be golden,” Zeke insists. “There’s a difference.”
“There’s about three seconds of difference, and you just blew through two of them.”
Sage wheels past me with a tablet propped on his lap, barely grunting acknowledgment as he navigates toward the living room. I catch a glimpse of code scrolling across his screen. He’s been teaching himself Python, apparently, because the kid can’t sit still even when the world is falling apart around him. My heart bursts with pride.
Across the room at the kitchen table, Georgia fusses over Eliana, trying to force-feed her olives. “You’re eating for two now, sweetheart. That means double portions.”
“Mom, fattening me up won’t make?—”
“Less talking, more chewing.”
I lean against the doorframe and let the warmth of it all wash over me. This chaotic, imperfect family, cobbled together from trauma and circumstance, is everything I never knew I wanted. I want a thousand more evenings exactly like this one.
I decide not to make a fuss about my exit. This group has had enough dramatic departures and reunions to last a fucking lifetime. Instead, I just slip toward the door and slide out into the night.
I almost make it, too.
“Bastian.”
Eliana’s voice stops me when I’m halfway to the car. She doesn’t have her cane and she’s half an inch away from tripping over the edge of the sidewalk, so I double back to steady her.
“Jesus, Eliana. You’re going to break your neck.”
“And you were going to leave without saying goodbye,” she accuses.
“Caught red-handed,” I admit. “I’m all out of good speeches.”
Her hands go flat on my chest in that habit we’ve both become accustomed to, the thing that first brought us together all those months ago in my office, when she stumbled into me in the dark and neither of us knew how thoroughly we’d ruin each other.
“Your heart is racing,” she observes.
“Tends to happen when you touch me.”
“Sure it’s not just because you’re scared?”
She’s teasing, but it hits a little too close to home. “Of course I’m scared,” I confess freely.
“Then don’t go.”
