“Yulik!!”
I’m half sitting in bed when Alina rushes in, her auburn hair a mess, her eyes bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles. She’s wearing a beige tulle dress with a jacket over it, her appearance that she takes great pride in an absolute mess.
I let the nurse wrestle me into a sitting position on the bed.
I’m back in Chicago, right? I have to be. Dad would never allow my sister to travel away from home.
If I’m in Chicago, then where’s Vaughn?
Alya grabs both my hands in hers, fresh moisture cascading down her cheeks. “I t-thought we’d lost you… I thought you were gone.”
She’s sobbing now, her tears dripping down my hands and onto the mattress.
I groan.
Fuck.
Fucking hell.
If anything were to happen to me, Mom and Alya would be defenseless. Goddamn it, what was I thinking when I took that bullet?
Was it instinct? Fucking recklessness? An inherent, inexplicable need to prove myself to someone who looks down on me?
Daddy issues much, motherfucker?
“I’m completely fine, Alya,” I tell her in a softer voice as a horde of doctors come in and check me left and right.
My sister barely gives them any space, continuing to hold on to my hand for dear life.
“You were abandoned on a mountain and almost died. That’snotfine.” She’s sobbing again, always the sentimental one, my baby sister.
While she’s only two years younger than me, I’ve always made it my mission to protect her. Whether it’s from outsiders, the truth of my mom’s sickness, or from my dad’s wrath—by directing it toward myself.
She and Mom are the only splash of color in my world and the main reason I’ve been in survival mode since…well, ever. So I want to protect her innocence and let her live a completely different life from mine.
“Alya…don’t cry.” I stroke her hair. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“But what if you won’t be here for long?”
“Nonsense. I’ll always be by your side. I promised, remember?”
She nods, a little smile brightening her face.
Alya and I have been inseparable from the moment I first saw her tiny face the day she was born. I don’tremember it well, but Mama said when she put my sister in my arms as I sat on the bed, I stared in awe at her full head of coppery hair and those impossibly bright blue eyes—so wide, so startling against her delicate features. Mama said Alya stopped crying the instant she looked at me and even smiled as if she already knew I was her older brother.
From that moment on, I swore I’d always keep that smile on her face. Because when she smiles, she’s everything I’m not—radiant, innocent, carrying none of the weight that’s crushed me since I was a boy.
“You’re finally awake.”
I tense, the pain in my side paling in comparison to the tension that crowds my shoulders in an instant.
Yaroslav always has the worst effect on people. The barely-there smile that appeared on Alya’s face falls, and the doctors line up and then exit one after the other.
“Nothing major, just a bullet.” I plaster on a grin, staring back at my father’s stone-carved expression. “They make a man, right? Injuries and scars, I mean.”
He narrows his eyes at me but then directs his gaze at my sister. “Alina, go to your mother.”
Her grip tightens on my fingers. “But I want to stay?—”
