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Then Alexei turns his eyes toward me, and the humor fades from his face.

“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” Alexei says quietly. “At my house. When you were spiraling.”

I blink, thrown off. “Lex, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Alexei insists, leaning in until his broad shoulder presses against mine. “I understand why you did it, and I’m grateful you did. If you hadn’t… I’d be dead, and Marco would be alone.”

“Listen to us, Ilya,” Dimitri says. “Rei is my heart. Alexei is my blood. But you’re the one who pulled me out of the snow when we were thirteen years old. You’re the one who covered for me when I broke my father’s rifle. No matter who comes into our lives, your chair is bolted to the fucking floor. You don’t lose your seat in our hearts. Ever.”

“Even if Kento tries to lock you up,” Alexei adds, “we’ll just bring enough C4 to blow the doors off.”

A tear spills over my lower lid and rolls down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away. I don’t have the energy to pretend I’m made of iron anymore.

“You’re both sappy as fuck,” I whisper, my voice cracking right down the middle. “It’s disgusting.”

“Shut up,” Dimitri says softly, and then he tugs.

I let my head drop sideways onto Dimitri’s shoulder. On my other side, Alexei leans in, throwing one arm over my shoulders, effectively locking me between the two of them like a shield.

I have a family. It’s small, but it’s mine.

Anton

Ilya,

I am writing this in case I ever die.

I don’t know how to start. You probably don’t even want to look at my handwriting. If you tear this up and throw it into the incinerator right now, I don’t blame you. You have every right to spit on the ashes.

I wanted to say I’m sorry.

That looks pathetic written out. Three words on a page after what I did to you. But I have to say it anyway.

When I first walked into that house, my mother was barely two weeks in the ground.

Before that, it was just the two of us living a scraping life in a freezing walk-up. She worked herself to the bone day and night just to keep food on our plates. Vladimir wasn’t giving her a single penny. I suppose he couldn’t, or wouldn’t. The moment he married your high-born mother, acknowledging an illegitimate child or sending cash to a woman like mine would have ruined his standing in the syndicate.

When she died, I was devastated. But I was also exhausted, and terrified. Somewhere beneath the grief, there was this shameful feeling of relief, because Father finally showed up and took me away from that rotting apartment.

Your mother had died around the exact same time. To this day, I don’t know if the timing was just some sick coincidence or something else, but with her gone, the door opened. He brought me into the mansion. For the first time in my life, I was warm. I had three meals a day, hot water, clean clothes, and a real bed.

The house had heat, but the people inside were made of ice. Every whisper in the corridors made sure I knew what my mother had done to pay the rent. They all called me a whore’s bastard. I was so terrified that our father would take one look at my face, decide I was completely worthless, and kick me back onto the pavement.

Everyone in that mansion looked down on me. The guards, the staff, the cousins.

Except you.

You came tearing down that massive staircase, tripped over your own untied shoelaces, scraped your knee, and didn’t even cry. You scrambled up, shoved a melting piece of stolen hazelnut chocolate into my hand, and asked if I wanted to see your plastic dinosaurs under the piano. You were small. You were ridiculously soft. You didn’t see a bastard or a threat. You loved me from the very first second your eyes met mine.

And I loved you too.

No. That’s a lie.

If I loved you enough, I would have taken the beating for you. I loved you, Ilya, but when the pressure came down, I loved my own skin more.

Your twin sister is a poisonous creature.

She saw me shaking on day one, and she smelled the terror on me. She knew exactly how desperate I was to belong and how terrified I was of being thrown away. She’d corner me in the walk-in pantry before dinner, or behind the drapes in the library, whispering into my ear: “Father doesn’t want you here. One word from me and he’ll dump you back in the gutter where your whore mother died. Who do you think he will choose? His daughter, or you?”