Tyler signs, “They’re hiring servers, and you also have experience as a server. It’s a Fancy event. Formal wear. Lots of rich kids sipping wine, pretending to understand paintings that probably look like a toddler went wild with finger paint. All you have to do is carry trays, smile, and get paid.”
The bite in my mouth suddenly feels heavy. My stomach turns. The last thing I want is to spend an evening serving spoiled brats who already look down on me enough at the café.
Tyler sees it in my expression; he always does, and slows his movements. “It pays well, like, stupid well.”
I rub at my temple, skeptical. “How well?”
His grin widens, smug. “Enough to cover half of your share of this month’s rent.”
That makes me pause. Rent. Bills. Numbers I can’t outrun. My share alone is a thousand, and I barely scrape it together most months. The thought of being surrounded by glittering dresses and tailored suits makes my skin crawl, but saying no feels impossible.
I swallow hard, then sign slowly,“Fine.”
He lights up and throws an arm around my shoulders, tugging me in with mock cheer. “That’s the spirit! Just… try not to glare at the guests too much. Give them your nicest, fakest smile, okay?”
I snort, rolling my eyes. “I don’t glare.”
He barks out a laugh like he doesn’t believe me for a second.
And maybe he’s right.
THREE
ALEXANDER
The engine hums as I guide the car along the winding road to the university, city lights slicing through the tinted glass in streaks. My mind refuses to settle. Restless—that’s what I’ve been for a week straight. It’s unfamiliar, irritating. All my life, I’ve lived by control. Discipline. Order. Every decision calculated, every move deliberate, just as my father demanded. I was born to structure, molded to perfection, raised never to falter.
Born here in the States, then sent to Russia at nine, my fate was already drawn in blueprints I didn’t design but perfected regardless. At ten, I began Bratva training. It was tradition, expectation. Petrov’s bloodline was never meant for softness.
For seven years, I studied and trained there, leaving only on holidays to visit the United States and Thailand. At sixteen, I returned to the United States, navigated high school and university with practiced efficiency, and graduated summa cum laude in finance and international business. At my grandfather’s insistence and tradition, I completed one year of mandatory military service in Russia. Afterwards, I moved to Thailand, where my mother placed me into the family resort headquarters. Two years of corporate work in Thailand polished the experience I needed before I returned to the States to earn my MBA ininternational finance. By twenty-seven, degree in hand, I had followed the map drawn for me to perfection.
It has always been like that, life plotted like a chessboard, and each move anticipated. Nothing wasted. Nothing unscripted. Even when I briefly allowed myself the indulgence of the Bratva life in Russia after completing my MBA, it was not chaos; it was observation, execution, and control.
Now at twenty-nine, I sit as CFO of my father’s company, a role I never wanted but took anyway because of my mother. I never wanted to live in my father’s shadow, or in the hollow bond he and I never shared. My father has always been a man of severity, never one to show affection. His attention was Anton’s and mine to fight for, but we never bothered. Maksim, the youngest, earned it—maybe because he came years later, maybe because tragedy forced my father to notice him. What happened to Maksim at ten nearly destroyed him. Perhaps guilt turned my father into a parent. Too late for me. Too late for Anton.
But I didn’t need him. None of us did. Our mother was enough; she’s our anchor, our warmth, the only proof we had of family beyond bloodlines and names.
So yes, my life has always been measured. Every step precise, every achievement stacked exactly where it should be. At twenty-nine, I know what I want, and I take it. Always. Nothing distracts me. Nothing unsettles me. Nothing gets past my control.
Except him.
The boy with hair like sunlight tangled into curls, and a face sharp yet delicate, marred with freckles like someone painted him in constellations. He unsettles me. From the first moment, I knew something in me had shifted, something unwanted, unplanned. His beautiful eyes, wide and too heavy with the kind of grief only time and cruelty can carve into a person struck me harder than any blade could. I know trauma when I see it. Itclings to people. I have seen men broken by it in training, in service, on the streets, and in my brother, Maksim. Lucas wears it too, though he tries to hide it, and he does a great job with it.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t want. And yet the urge to take him, to pull him into my world, chain him to me, burns through me with a force I do not recognize. It’s constant, consuming, maddening.
But for the first time in my life, I hold back. For the first time, I do not move the piece forward.
Because something in him seems fractured, and I want to understand the shadows behind his eyes.
With a sigh, I pull into the parking lot. The engine rumbles low before cutting off, leaving me in silence.
The exhibition. Maksim’s big night. Again.
My little brother has been painting since he could hold a brush. And he isn’t just good, he’s brilliant. Critics eat his work alive, foam at the mouth, call him a prodigy. He breathes color, lives in the chaos of oils and turpentine. And, annoyingly, he deserves every compliment.
Me? I hate these events. The fake handshakes, the shallow conversations, the thinly veiled passive aggression of rich people trying to outdo one another. All of them pretending they understand brushstrokes and palettes when they wouldn’t know art if it bled in front of them.
But if I don’t show, Maksim said he would kill me. So here I am.
