My fist balls up at my side, nails digging into my palm hard enough to leave marks. Our family has always been fucked up. Aleksei and I—well, we went through shit. I prefer to leave it at that.
But I can’t stand when he brings up our mother. He was the one who brought the news to me: that our mother had died giving birth to Sage while I was twenty years old, halfway through my second year at culinary school—the education that Aleksei’s blood money had made possible.
The irony wasn’t lost on me even then that the dirty cash from his protection rackets and loan sharking was funding my attempt at a clean life. I found out about her death three days after it happened, when Aleksei showed up at my cramped studio apartment near campus with a bottle of vodka clutched in one hand, a little baby bundle tucked in another, and eyes so red and swollen I barely recognized him.
He’d been crying—something I hadn’t seen since we were children huddled together in whatever shithole apartment Mama could afford that month. The great Aleksei Izotov, already making a name for himself in the underworld, reduced to abroken boy mourning the woman who’d brought us into this world and then spent most of her waking hours trying to escape it through the bottom of a bottle.
“Is that why you’re here?” I ask. “To reminisce?”
“Partly.” He stands finally and saunters around my desk, dragging one of those nails along the wood. The scraping sound makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “You’ve built something impressive here, little brother. Hale Hospitality. So pure. A blond and blue American boy, living the dream. Nothing dirty to see here, folks, nothing dirty at all.”
“It’s not a lie. I legally changed it.”
“You can change your name, but you can’t change your blood.” He drops the plaque on the floor. It lands with an ungainly thump, but it doesn’t break. “How is our youngest brother, by the way? Still in that cripple chair?”
The rage that floods me is instant, white-hot, and absolute. I don’t even have to tell Aleksei to shut the fuck up, because he takes one look at my face and raises his hands in self-defense.
“What? I’m not allowed to ask about Sage? He’s my brother, too, Semyon. Just because you decided to play Superman?—”
I cross the room in three strides, but no matter how badly I want to cave his face in, I don’t touch him. I learned long ago that violence is his language, not mine. “I decided to keep him away fromyou. Away from that life.”
“‘That life’ paid for everything you have now,brat. Do you forget where we came from? Or how we got here? I kept you fed when Mama was too drunk to remember she had children. Everything I did, I did for family. For us.”
“You did it for yourself.”
“Partly,” he agrees. “Partly. But it benefited you all the same.” He tucks his hands into his pockets and looks up at me. I’m half an inch taller than him, which he always despised. You’d never know it unless you saw us eye to eye, and it’s been a long time since I was close enough for that to happen. “Which brings me to why I’m here.”
Of course. There’s always an angle with Aleksei.
“I need to move some money through legitimate businesses,” he says, casual as could be. “Nothing dangerous, nothing nasty. Just some real estate investments that need clean paperwork. Your restaurants would be perfect?—”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the terms.”
“I don’t need to. The answer is no.”
“Semyon—”
“Bastian,” I correct again. “And Sage and I don’t need you, Aleksei. We haven’t for sixteen years.”
“Family debts don’t expire,” he purrs. “You can pretend all you want,Mr. Hale,but you’re still an Izotov. That crippled boy in the wheelchair is still an Izotov. And one day, that might matter more than your Michelin stars.”
“Is that a threat?” I snarl.
“No, no, no. Merely a reminder.” He reaches into his coat. I tense up, but he just pulls out a carved wooden box and sets it on my desk with care. “These are from the old country. A gift.”
I don’t need to open it to know what’s inside. I can smell them through the wood: white truffles, earthy and intense.
One more memory, just because bad things come in threes, I suppose: Aleksei and I cowering in the walk-in freezer at Tolstoy’s, wide-eyed in wonder as we stared down at the walnut-sized lump of truffle resting in my brother’s open palm. I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it and I knew better than to ask. But when he cracked it open and held it to my nose, we smelled things that gutter boys like us were never meant to smell.
And as I sat in that dark, frigid room, I felt like I wasn’t alone in the world. I had an older brother who would do terrible things to keep me safe.
I just didn’t know quitehowterrible those things would become.
Back in the present, Al is watching my eyes carefully. He knows where my head went, and I know that his is in the exact same place. It’s been sixteen years since I’ve met those eyes, but I know them every bit as well as I always did.
“Enjoy them while they’re fresh,” Aleksei says, heading for the door. “Everything decays eventually, little brother. Even the things we think we’ve preserved.”
