Another knock.
“Come in,” I sighed.
The door opened.
To my utter shock, Ruslan walked through.
His hair was cut short—close at the sides, neater than I had ever seen it. Dark jeans, dark top. It made the blonde stand out more than usual. I didn’t have time to assess him properly.
I ran to him and threw my arms around his waist.
He chuckled and wrapped his arms around my back, and for a moment we just stood there in the middle of my borrowed room and held on.
I pulled back to hold his face and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
His wide smile dimmed. I searched his eyes.
“You didn’t—” I stopped. Started again.“Ruslan. Tell me you didn’t join them.”
He patted the top of my head the way he used to when we were small and the roles were reversed and I was the one doing the comforting.
“Do you think we are the masters of our fate in this city?” he asked, with a rueful smile that was too old for his face.
The words landed like a blow. How had he grown so much in a matter of weeks? When had my baby brother become someone who spoke like that—quietly, without bitterness, having already made his peace with something I was still fighting?
He didn’t need my recriminations. He needed his big sister.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the couch.
“Tell me everything,” I said, squeezing his fingers.
As he talked I became aware of the distance between this conversation and every conversation we had ever had before. Classes. Pass marks. Girls. The ordinary noise of a boy becoming himself. Now he was telling me about Bratva sites, errands, the people who surrounded him—the infrastructure of a world that had swallowed our father whole and was now digesting him.
My father’s face flashed before me while I smiled and nodded and kept hold of his hand.
How was I any different?
My children—one, two, however many the contract required—were being handed to the head of a criminal organisation. By me. Through my compliance. Through the signature I had pressed onto that document in the bedroom of my parents’house while my mother squeezed my hands and told me I would never struggle.
I was my father.
The realisation sat in my chest like a stone.
After catching up over lunch Ruslan began to glance at the clock.
“Do you need to leave?”
He nodded.
“You’re staying in the city?”
“Home for now,” he said, standing up. He looked around the room—the high ceilings, the chandelier, the artwork that had nothing to do with either of us—then nodded toward the doorway where Radovan and Spartak were stationed.“I see you’re well guarded.”
I didn’t miss the fact that both of them were present. Not one. Both. Did they think I would run off with my own brother?
“It’s just a safety precaution,” I said, with a smile that asked him not to push it.
