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“Interesting.” Anton turns his head toward the hallway. “Alex.” A moment later, an elderly man appears in the doorway.

“Take these out,” my brother says, gesturing at the whole room. “And burn them.”

I’m ready. I’m genuinely fucking ready to risk everything over a room full of flowers, but then he adds, as an afterthought, in the same mild voice: “Ah, and tell Alya I’ll be seeing her tonight. She’s been saying I don’t spend time with her enough.” He pauses for one beat to let it land. “I should fix that.”

I go cold and don’t say a single thing, because I can’t. He just put his hand on the one surface in my life I can’t afford to let him touch. Alex nods. “I’ll let her know.”

“Deal with the flowers first.”

“Yes, sir.”

And then I have to stand there and watch them take them. Anton had to pin me down while two men were gathering armfuls of something I never asked for and now can’t keep, carrying them down the hallway, past my door, toward the stairs. And I know exactly where they’re going, and I can’t do anything about it because my sister’s evening is on the other side of the equation.

After everything is done, I sit down on the edge of my bed, and there’s nothing in the room anymore. The smell’s going to linger for a day or two, and then it won’t, and the whole thing will be like it never happened.

My eyes burn.

No.

No. We don’t do that. Men don’t cry. There is nothing to cry about. They’re flowers. Just flowers. A room full of flowers that didn’t belong to me anyway, and I never asked for and didn’t want and never would have accepted out loud.

I rub my eyes hard with the heel of my hand, and I don’t cry.

I never cry.

***

I sit in the high-backed velvet armchair across from my father’s desk, hands shoved into my pockets so he can’t see if my fingers are twitching.

My father doesn’t look up from his ledger immediately. It’s so silent, and the fountain pen scratching against paper with a scrape makes the base of my skull itch.

He caps the pen with a click and finally lifts his eyes. “You’ve been acting strange lately, Ilya.”

I give him a grin that doesn’t reach a single muscle in my upper face. “Strange is my natural setting. You should be terrified if I start acting normal.”

His brow doesn’t even twitch. He leans back and lets out a sigh through his nose. “Are you taking your medication?”

“Aha.” I pop the syllable against the back of my teeth. “Down the hatch every morning like a good, obedient boy.” I lie.

“Don’t take that tone with me.” His fingers drum once against the mahogany. “Do you need to see Dr. Levin again? If your moods are becoming unstable, I need to know before you make a public embarrassment of this family.”

“I’m fantastic,” I say flatly, the sarcasm coating every vowel. “Never been saner. Dr. Levin can keep charging you six hundred dollars an hour to tell you I have authority issues, but my head is completely clear.”

My father’s eyes narrow slightly. “Anton told me you smacked your own head against the wall this morning. That you were tearing up your room.”

I shake my head, looking down at the intricate grain of the desk. If you only knew it was your golden boy Anton who pinned me, who ground his knuckles into the stitches behind my ear, who nearly cracked my skull open on the floorboards while his men dragged armfuls of crushed camellias out the door.

If I told him, he’d just ask what I did to provoke my brother. He’d tell me Anton was only trying to instill discipline in a malfunctioning heir.

I lick my dry lips and shrug, leaning back into the velvet. “I was in a mood. That’s all. Minor interior decorating dispute.”

My father studies me, searching for cracks he can exploit. Finding none, he reaches for a silver lighter on the desk, rolling the metal across his knuckles.

“Kento Kazuma will be joining us for dinner tonight.”

My pulse kicks right against the wall of my throat. “What?” The last time I saw Kento was at that party where he left me with my legs shaking.

“You heard me.” My father flicks the lighter open. The small flame snaps to life, reflecting in the cold green of his irises. “Kenji has given the boy significant operational authority in the city, and we need to ensure our shipping corridors remain undisputed. And hopefully I can strengthen his relationship with Alya. We need that alliance as soon as possible. He will be sitting at our table in two hours.”