Page 98 of Cruel Romeo

But then the pieces click together.

“Meet Dimitri,” Petyr whispers quietly. “ My brother.”

My stomach twists hard. I paste on a neutral expression, but inside, I’m spiraling.

This is his brother. The manmyfamily gunned down.

The only survivor of the attack that killed Petyr’s father.

Calling him “survivor” feels like a stretch, though.

Petyr stiffens next to me, his jaw locking, hands flexing once before he stills them. For the first time, I can see the cracks in his armor. He just stares at Dimitri, silent, as though the sight of his brother in this bed is both unbearable and impossible to turn away from.

It reminds me of Lara. The way she looked on her wedding day, half-gone already.

My fingers twitch. I almost reach for Petyr. I want to comfort him, tell him everything is going to be okay, even though we both know it’s not. Even though it’d be just one more lie between us.

But then I let my arm drop back to my side.

I don’t have any right to comfort him. I’m not here to stay, and lying about that, even with a simple gesture like this, would be too unfair. Worse—it’d be cruel.

So I just watch, aching with him in silence, and come to stand by his side.

The ache is what scares me most. Because it’s yet another reminder that I’m breaking my first rule: I’mcaring.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. It’s the only thing I can think to say.

Petyr nods once. He doesn’t seem to hold my lack of eloquence against me. “You have nothing to feel sorry for. You didn’t do this.”

But I did.The truth churns uncomfortably in my chest. I may not have pulled the trigger, may not have known that this was going to happen, but it was still my family who did it.Myfather,mybrother.Myblood.

“Will he ever wake up?” I realize the question is insensitive seconds after I’ve spoken it.

Again, Petyr doesn’t hold it against me. “No.” He shakes his head once, eyes fixed on Dimitri’s ashen face. “The doctors say it would take a miracle. And I don’t believe in miracles.”

I don’t, either.I keep that to myself, but my silence speaks just as loud.

It’s the one thing I can’t bring myself to lie about: hope. When I lost all hope for Lara, the single worst thing anyone could have done was tell me everything was going to be okay. That she was going to come back to me, the same as she’d always been.

Fairytales don’t come true. Not in this world, and not in the next.

Petyr brushes a stray curl out of his brother’s forehead. Then he leans in closer, murmuring something low in Russian. The lilt of my native language is familiar, but I still can’t catch the words.

I wonder if he’s telling his brother the same thing he told me.

Brother… meet my wife.”

But that would be ridiculous, so I push it out of my mind.

I’m not important. Dimitri is. He’s family, he’s here, he’s real. And if lives could be traded, I’d be the first to say he should do it. Trade me in for the brother he lost.

Again—fairytales.

“Do you think he hears you?” I whisper before I can stop myself. “That he knows you’re here?”

“I don’t know.” When he straightens up again, I watch him fix his ice mask back into place. Seeing him rebuild his walls right in front of me makes my chest tighten painfully. “There are studies. But I’d like to think that, if he heard me, he’d answer.”

“You must miss him,” I say eventually. “The way he was.” It’s the only thing I know from experience—the pain of losing your sibling to senseless cruelty.