Page 148 of Bratva Bidder

I nod slowly. “I won’t say anything.”

He starts to turn away, but something in me speaks before I can stop it. “Alexei.”

He stops.

I take a step closer. “Can I ask you something?”

He exhales like he’s been expecting this. “Go ahead.”

“Why do you think he’s doing this?” I ask.

He nods, face tight. “It’s like…part of him is trying to make up for something, and the other part still doesn’t know how to stop being him. You know?”

I do. God, I do.

“I didn’t think he had it in him,” I murmur. “To choose someone else over himself.”

“He didn’t,” Alexei says bitterly. “He chose himself, in the only way he knows how. Legacy. He doesn’t want to die with everyone calling him a monster.”

“But then…” I trail off, struggling to put it into words. “I saw his face before the procedure. He looked…tired. Not physically. Just—tired in his soul. Like he’d run out of whatever dark fuel he runs on.”

Alexei looks away, biting the inside of his cheek.

“Do you think people like him can change?” I ask quietly.

He’s silent for a beat.

“No,” he finally says. “But I think maybe, for one second, he wanted to be remembered for something other than how many lives he’s wrecked.”

I nod slowly. “Even if that something is saving a child he barely knows.”

“Especially if that child is yours and Konstantin’s,” he says, and there’s no venom in it, only weariness. “Maybe it’s his way of making peace. Or maybe he’s just trying to stay in control even as he fades. I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.” I look down at the floor, then back at him. “Maybe…it’s both. Guilt and love. Maybe it’s his version of showing up.”

He gives a dry laugh. “You’re kinder than I am.”

We stand there for a moment in that strange understanding. Two people trying to reconcile the impossible.

Then Alexei runs a hand through his hair again and says, “Take care of my brother. He’s the only good thing to come out of this family.”

“Alexei, I’m glad you came.”

He looks at me for a long beat. “Me too.”

And then he walks away, down the hall, his hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched like the weight of the world is finally catching up to him.

I step into the room after a moment, letting the door click shut behind me.

Dmitry’s eyes are still closed.

33

KONSTANTIN

I stand outside his door,the dull hum of machines on the other side more ominous than any silence. My fingers twitch near the handle. One breath. Another. Then I push it open.

Dmitry sits propped up on a single pillow, IV line threading into the crook of his arm, monitors ticking soft green constellations behind him. He looks smaller than I remember, as if parting with marrow shaved inches off his height. Yet, his eyes, so like mine, track me the second I cross the threshold.