I deserve every second of this agony.
I turn and start walking. I throw the knife down the first storm drain I see without breaking stride.
Ten or fifteen or twenty minutes later, I find myself outside Project Olympus. The building looms against the dark sky. My ambition. My dream. My nightmare.
Then, as I stand and watch, it begins.
One by one, the lights inside Project Olympus flicker on.
First the lobby. Then the second floor. Then the third.
They wind up through the building like a slow infection. Like blood returning to a body that’s been drained of the stuff. Each window shines yellow against the black glass, and I think about how light is supposed to mean hope, warmth, life.
But standing here in my soaked tuxedo with a dead man’s blood caked on my hands, the lights just look like eyes opening. Watching me. Judging what I’ve become.
The fourth floor illuminates. Then the fifth.
As the sixth goes on, and the seventh, and the eight, I can only shake my head. Aleksei kept his word. He said he’d have everything restored by tonight, and here’s the proof.Down to the last bolt and screw.He gave everything back.
All it cost was a stranger’s life and Eliana’s love.
At last, the final light goes on. It’s my office light, up at the very top. Four nights ago, Eliana and I pressed ourselves up against that glass and made love for the first time. I thought then I had everything I could ever want.
But now, as the building gleams…
… I feel nothing.
I sense him before I see him.
Aleksei steps out from the shadows near the entrance, a cigarette dangling from his lips. I might’ve expected him to look smug, but instead, his face is solemn and drawn.
“Brother,” he says softly, “you did well.”
He opens his arms.
And I—God help me—I step forward into his embrace.
He smells like menthol cigarettes and Mountain Breeze Glade PlugIns, like stolen truffles and our childhood and every bad choice I’ve ever made. His hand claps against my back, solid and certain.
“Welcome home, Semyon,” he murmurs against my ear.
I hug my brother, and just like that, I take one irreversible step into the dark.
I leave Eliana behind me.
TO BE CONTINUED
Bastian and Eliana’s story concludes in Book 2,
TASTE OF THE LIGHT.
