I know that word.
Matthias’s men use it all the time with one another. It means brother.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Matthias admits as he continues. “He called me brother, but I’d never seen him before. Never knew of him, but I knew instantly what he said was the truth. We were blood brothers.”
My brow furrows, perplexed by his words. He must sense it because he pulls down the arm he has resting behind his head as he turns himself slightly toward me, so I have a better view.
“My father was a bastard,” he hisses venomously. “A mean son of a bitch who used and abused my mother until she couldn’t take it anymore and overdosed on the drugs he supplied her with.”
Matthias shows me his right wrist. There is just enough light for me to make out the dark hue of a birthmark that lies beneath the Dashkov crest tattoo I have absently stroked so many times in the past few weeks.
I thought it was a vanity tattoo.
A reminder of his power.
Now, I see that it isn’t that at all. He is ashamed of that birthmark. Of what it represents. Ashamed of the name he bore before and its connection to a man who spat him out without a second thought.
Dashkov is who he chose to be.
It is a name he built for himself from the ground up.
“Everyone born into the Kasyanov family has this birthmark,” he sneers, contempt biting at every word. “The boy I killed has the same one. Our father sent him to kill me. He sent a fifteen-year-old boy. And he wasn’t the last.”
“I’m sorry.”
There is nothing else I can think to say. No child should have to worry about their father sending assassins after them. No brother should have to kill the other.
It is barbaric.
We both have mothers who died too soon and fathers, well, supposed father on my side, who are nothing more than bastards. Our childhoods aren’t perfect, and while mine has been lived in a gilded cage, I am no stranger to pain.
Neither is he.
“There is nothing to be sorry for, Red,” Matthias assures me with a grim smile.
“What was his name?” I ask curiously. “Do you know?”
“Antony Kasyanov.”
Antony Kasyanov. I’ve seen that name scrolled across his back in dusty navy ink. Now I know who he is and why it is there. A reminder of what he lost.
Innocence and a brother he never knew.
Letting out another long, deep sigh, Matthias stands from the bed, his hand outstretched for mine.
I don’t bother to ask where we are going. He knows I won’t be able to fall back to sleep, so he is going to do the one thing he normally does to get me to relax.
Run me a bath.
I suspect Mia told him about my love and fascination for the egg-shaped tub and the city view. I’ve spent so long locked up that I long for this view.
This perceived freedom.
Even with Matthias, I am not free. Not in the way I want to be. Part of me hopes that once Elias and Christian are no longer a threat, he will give me the freedom I crave, but I know better than to press the issue.
At least for now.
Slowly, I follow obediently behind him, a slight blush creeping up my neck when his head turns, those stormy eyes taking in every inch of my naked body. You’d think by now that nudity wouldn’t bother me, but Matthias’s heated gaze constantly makes my skin tingle with warmth, causing desire to pool between my legs.
