Page 18

“Die, Diamante scum!” The shout accompanies the knuckles that take me right in the cheek. Good thing I’m good at taking a hit these days.

My body is in motion with the momentum of the strike, my hands blocking the slash I know is coming next. With a whip of my fingers, I disarm the knife, numb the attacker’s wrist, and spin him away from us.

Matvey tumbles to the ground, laughing painfully.

“Fuck! Even with guard down, I can’t get you, Ci!”

“You hit me just fine. You’re lucky I know your fist so well or I might have delivered a fatal blow.”

“You can certainly blow me,da?” Mat rolls to his feet, bobbing on his toes like a boxer.

“Only if you kiss my ass.”

“We will have plenty of time for such things. We are neighbors!” He points to the two rooms to the right.

“Ugh. I see a bullet did not do anything to make you less…you.” Vanya sighs, her hands on her hips. “You two together? This is trouble.”

“Ah, come on, sis, don’t beoblom.You always say I need to make friends!”

“Sis?” I ask, already realizing the similarities. How did I not see it before? Oh. Right. Prison. Death. Plus, they have different hair color. The eyes are the same, though. And the gestures. The almost smile and the stern, flat stare that they both level at me when I’m being…me.

“Holy shit, you are siblings,” I state the obvious, at a loss for a joke.

“Twins, actually.” Mat grimaces.

“We have more in common than I thought.” Fiero’s face flashes through my head. I miss that morose mother fucker.

Shaking the thoughts away before I go straight to sappy shit town, I take in the rooms. Simple. Spartan. A cot, a dresser. Way better than the prison, though.

Maybe they did that on purpose so they could skimp on accommodations. Feels like a palace after hell.

“So, this is his home sweet home from now on. Huh?”

“The one on the left is mine. I already moved my mattress down from the house,” Mat snickers.

“You are the most spoiled initiate we’ve ever had.”

“Hey, I had to practically beg Pyotr to go to the Gulag.”

“You already proved your place here,” Vanya scoffs, shaking her head. “Not sure why you insisted.”

“I am not entitled brat like you.” Mat sniffs.

“Why wouldn’t you stay in the house, dipshit?” I ask, genuinely baffled.

“He has a, how you say? Potato on his shoulder?” Vanya muses. I desperately wish I had a beverage to spit across the room.

“Chip, I think you mean chip.” Good God, now I know how my twin felt all those years correcting my terrible memory.

Although Ero would have said,“It’s chip on your shoulder, fuckwit.”

Makes a guy homesick.

“Yes, chip. Matvey was sickly as a little child. Papa made him wait to train and tested him in other ways. Now that he is manchild instead of baby boy, he thinks he needs to show everyone he can do it.”

“Maybe I just wanted to meet your boyfriend. Not every day theVolchitsapicks a candidate. Actually, you are the first and only, Ciro.”

Vanya lashes out faster than I thought possible, chopping Mat in the throat. To his credit, he almost gets his hand up in time. The taller man doubles over, choking and spitting, his breath rasping somewhere between a cough and a laugh.