Apprehension rolls out of me when I say, “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to see me.”
Not fully understanding because I’m looking right at him, I reply, “I do see you.”
He gently releases my forearm, and my fingers curve around the thick paper packet when he places the manilla envelope in my hand.
“No, you don’t. Not like you seethem.”
I do see you, Aleksander.
And that scares the shit out of me.
Thirty
June
I lookout over the meadow. The tall stalks of wild sunflowers bend under the breeze, their happy faces tipped upward toward the cloudless, azure sky. It’s a beautiful place for a psychopath to spend his purgatory.
Because that is the persona Aleksei Stepanoff represented in my mind. A man with no conscience who got off on the pain he inflicted on others.
Like our father.
But I came here anyway. Partly because of my promise to Syn, and partly because I’m curious about my half brother. I glance at Aleksander standing quietly to my right. Both of them.
It’s funny how you view the world around you in a certain way, only to discover that it’s all an illusion. Francesco infused me with hatred for the Stepanoff twins from the time I was two years old. Such an early age to instill that kind of destructive emotion into your child. I never questioned why. I just blindly believed his word because that’s what he raised me to be throughpain and fear and punishment. Obedient and trained to obey, like an abused dog kept in a cage.
Francesco’s lies were self-serving. Pit one child against the other two because they represented the evil inside of himself that he hid from the world. Everything he did—to me, to Dierdre, to Syn, to Nina—the death he got was far from the one he deserved.
And Aleksander’s interest in Aoife didn’t help matters as we grew up. Aoife was the only truly good thing in my life. Con and Hen were my ride-or-die brothers, but Aoife was the light that existed in our dark world. She was our heart. Francesco had already stolen my soul, but he could never have the beating organ inside my chest. It belonged to her. And I would be damned if I let Aleksander take her away from us.
That was another misconception. Underestimating Syn’s capacity for love. She doesn’t love in pieces. Her love is boundless and fierce and endless and always growing.
I glance at Aleksander again, his profile stoic and filled with melancholy as he looks at the meadow where he scattered Aleksei’s ashes.
He loves her.
He always has.
I want to continue to hate him for it. But I can’t anymore.
Because she loves him, too.
Maybe not in the same way she loves me, Hen, and Con. But I see it. The way they are together. The instant friendship they forged when she got her memories back. Her unwavering trust in him. The way she seeks him out in a crowded room. How her smiles and laughter are a little brighter when we’re all together. How our family feelswholewith him in it.
Jumping the line from adversaries and enemies to friends and brothers will take time, but I’m ready to try. Not only for Syn, but for myself. I don’t want to be the man Francesco triedto create. I don’t want to be a man who chooses hate. I want to be a good husband and a better father…and brother. I want to be able to look in the mirror every day and not detest the reflection staring back at me because I look too much likehim.
And then there’s what happened at Christmas. It’s a startling, newfound revelation that I’m still trying to process. It’s difficult enough altering decades of rivalry between Aleksander and me, but for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, it didn’t bother me that he watched while I finger-fucked Syn. Iwantedhim to watch. To know that I was the one making her moan and giving her pleasure. To see how beautiful she was when she came all over my hand.
It’s messed up, but I don’t care.
“What was Aleksei’s favorite food?”
Aleksander’s gaze swings from the meadow to me. “What?”
“What was Aleksei’s favorite food?” I repeat.
He gives me a befuddled look before answering. “Uh, potato skins. Extra chives and bacon bits. No sour cream. He hated the stuff. Said it looked like the potato had a yeast infection.”
