And it’s not Skokie.
If I lead Aleksei to the safe house, I’m handing him everyone I love on a silver platter. Brandon might be dismissed by now, but that doesn’t mean shit if I bring the whole Bratva down on their heads.
No. I need to draw my brother out somewhere else. Somewhere that matters.
The waterfront materializes through my windshield, fog rolling off Lake Michigan in thick gray waves. And there, rising against the predawn sky like a monument to everything I almost had…
…Project Olympus.
The building looms above me, beautiful and doomed. I kill the engine and sit there for a moment, staring up at what should have been my legacy. This place was supposed to prove I’d clawed my way out of the gutter for good. Violence wasn’t my only inheritance—there was some beauty left in the world, one perfect bite of it, and I’d put it on a plate to show everyone watching that these hands could do more than cut and kill and maim.
What a fucking joke.
I get out and drag my way across the lot. When I get to the front door, I press my palm against the stone. It’s cool beneath my ruined fingers. Solid. Beautiful.
Goodbye, I think.I’m sorry.
This late, all is empty and still. That’s good. It gives me time to gather what I need from the construction supplies. Acetone. Paint thinner. Propane tanks staged for the outdoor grills.
This building will burn beautifully.
I work as quickly as I can, even as my body threatens to quit on me. I dose the liquid accelerant on every square inch of flammable material I can find. I stack chairs in a huge pile, flipping tables around the edges, strewing napkins and tablecloths all around. When I run out, I duck into the kitchen in search of more?—
—and pause.
The walk-in freezer door looms at the far end. A heavy steel door, almost black in the darkness. I don’t consciously decide to go to it, but I blink and find myself there, within arm’s reach. My hand goes out to flatten against the cold surface.
As soon as I touch it, it drags me backwards in time.
Aleksei, let me out. Aleksei, please. ALEKSEI?—!
It’s my own voice I hear, shot through with terror, screaming itself raw while something unspeakable happened on the other side of that door. The muffled sounds of a man begging, then not begging. Living, then dying.
Then the door opening again. Aleksei, framed there, a silhouette edged with blood.
“I’ll carry it for both of us,”he’d sworn. “You stay clean, Semyon. You stay good.”
And I’d believed him. For years, I’d believed that was love.
Now, I understand it was just the first cage he built for me.Hedecided who I got to be. What I got to know. Which parts of the family legacy I was allowed to touch and which parts he’d handle alone, noble fucking martyr that he is.
My palm presses harder against the steel until my knuckles ache.
I’m not a boy anymore.
I’m no longer scared.
And I’m done letting Aleksei Izotov decide my fate.
I tear myself away from the freezer and finish my work. The final canister of paint thinner glugs out across the chef’s station, pooling across the stainless steel, dripping down onto the floorwhere it mingles with acetone and propane residue. The fumes burn my sinuses. That’s a good thing. It means the mixture is volatile enough to catch fast.
I fish a matchbook from a drawer and try to strike one, but my broken fingers fumble with the cardboard. I drop it, curse, bend to pick it up again. “Light, you stupid motherfu?—”
The front door crashes open.
The sound booms through the building. Heavy footsteps. And then a voice I’d know anywhere, even in hell:
“SEMYON!”
