“Alek? What the hell is happening?” my twin asks, though I think it’s painfully obvious.
“They found us, dammit! How the hell did they find us this fast?”
Alek crosses to Lupe and grips her by the shoulders, and it’s strange to see this arrogant man so visibly afraid of something — or someone.
“We have to leave. My men will hold them off. If we’re going to take this chance, it has to be now.”
Leave?
We just got here.
My whole body feels bruised, and there’s still something about him, something whispering that I do not want to remain anywhere near this man.
“Isn’t there any other way?”
Before he can answer, Julia steps in from the hallway. Behind her enters a tall man with eyes like glaciers in the middle of a storm, a leather jacket, and faint scars threading the side of his face.
I feel like my heart might burst out of joy at the sight of my older sister, alive and standing in front of me. It’s been thirteenyears since I last saw her eyes. Since I last heard her voice. Since I last held her.
Alek’s soldier raises a gun, and I find myself taking a step toward Julia.
“See! I told you they’d never let us be together! They both hate me!” Alek shouts, but my mind can barely process the fact that I’m looking at her.
“Julia?” I ask, my voice trembling on the last syllable.
She has the same warm, honey-colored eyes that watched me every time I rattled off the calculations I’d just memorized. The same eyes that let me stay up another ten minutes for cartoons. The same eyes that carried us to safety on that wretched night.
“Let them go, Aleksandr,” the man with the scars says.
“Let them go?” Alek answers with a laugh. “I’m not keeping them here by force. They came with me willingly.”
Our older sister searches our faces for an answer, and that’s the moment I realize she has no idea about our connection to Alek.
“Aleksandr is Lupe’s boyfriend. They’re in love,” I whisper.
I see the way she stiffens, and something tells me that was the very last answer she expected.
You don’t need to be a genius to understand that everything our older sister feels for Aleksandr Rastovski is hatred. Disgust.
“Please, you need to come with me. ¡Ahora!” Julia says, urgency cutting through her tone.
Outside, bullets thud against the walls of the house and the soldiers’ shouts climb higher.
I know my decision before it’s even fully formed in my mind.
Between the person who, for as long as I can remember, has only ever wanted what was best for us and this stranger who has always had a giant question mark hovering over him, the choice is simple.
I step toward Julia, feeling Lupe’s gaze burn against my cheek.
“Amalia…,” my twin whispers, and I know that, in this second, she’s begging me not to do this.
To stay with her. To trust her and Alek. But I can’t.
I let my feelings cloud my reasoning once already, and at the end of it I was left with a heart in pieces.
This time, my mind speaks first. And it tells me that, somewhere behind those photographs, there is an explanation.
I turn back to my twin and try to pour everything that matters into a single look.
