Page 10

SASHA

S ometimes, death is better than staying alive.

In death, you can feel no pain, no shattering of your heart, and no need to cry every night before sleeping and every morning after waking up.

In death, there’s finally peace.

No more running, suffering, and having to witness your heart being split open while hopelessly watching.

Like every morning, I jolt awake after the same mixture of nightmares. My shirt clings to my back with sweat, and my hair feels damp.

The small room I’ve been using for weeks appears smaller, as if the walls are closing in on me and will crush me.

My heart that stupidly insists on beating goes overboard in its attempts to remain alive.

I tap my chest as images of the nightmare overlap in my mind. Some are filled with memories of my parents’ deaths. The look of despair on Uncle Anatoly’s face when he realized everything would be over.

The pure terror in Erik’s pale features when he begged me to stop screaming so the shooters wouldn’t find us.

Eduard’s blank eyes.

Timur’s half-shot face.

Erik’s raw shriek before he was silenced forever.

But most are filled with images of Kirill’s wedding. I always dream about it in red as if I’m witnessing it through a blood haze. I see Kristina’s throat slit open, her blood bathing him before he drops right beside her.

Till death do they fucking part.

I rub my hand against my face and slap my cheek. I need to focus.

It’s been a month since Anton found me in that cottage. We nearly died in that initial explosion, but my brother pushed me underneath him and we took cover beneath a table. We managed to escape before the second bomb went off.

I still refused to believe it was Kirill’s doing until I saw one of his guards speeding away from the site.

Makar.

He was Roman’s senior guard. After his death, he became responsible for various independent tasks Kirill put him on, including, but not exclusive to, spying and carrying out hits on some of the enemies Kirill shared with Roman.

Makar never answered to me or even to Viktor. Since he had direct communication with Kirill, I barely saw him, if ever. Sometimes, I forgot he was there, considering he doesn’t live in the house.

That moment, when I saw Makar, was when reality started to sink in.

After I foolishly told Kirill my real name, he knew I was part of the family he and his father couldn’t get rid of, so he sent Maksim to Russia to kill my remaining family members and tasked Makar with wiping me off the face of the earth.

When those facts hit, I wanted to die and honestly considered it until Anton shook me and reminded me of all our family members who died that day.

He reminded me of Papa and Mama and that it wasn’t my time to go.

I still needed to exact revenge on the only man I’ve ever loved.

The man who chose another woman over me.

And because he hurt me, I attempted to hurt him back.

That day, Anton was more concerned about getting out of that place.

But we weren’t able to make a swift escape since it turned out there were also gunmen near the property who attacked us. After we killed a few, I picked someone who was about my build, put my ring and bracelet on him, then burned him and what remained of the cottage.

A part of me wanted to ruin Kirill’s wedding day. But the other part knew he wouldn’t care, considering he sent those people to kill me and all.

Besides, a DNA test would immediately prove it’s not me.

I still wanted to ruin the ring and bracelet I once revered, just because he gave them to me.

“Sasha!!”

The door to my room hits the wall as my baby cousin Mike runs inside. He’s grown so much since the last time I saw him over two years ago. His golden hair falls all over his forehead, nearly getting in his eyes as he crashes into me.

I pat his back. “Morning, Mishka.”

“Morning! Morning!” He slides his hand in mine. “C’mon, we need to have breakfast.”

I smile as he leads me down the hall of a small house located on the outskirts of Siberia. I never knew it existed, but apparently, it’s one of several safe houses my family owns all over the country.

Since Siberia is relatively safer than Saint Petersburg or Moscow, it’s the best place to be after the last attack.

We still don’t know how many men were there, but I know for sure that Maksim was right outside one of our family warehouses. He and his men exchanged fire with my uncle and the mercenaries he employed before he left. But not before one of his men shot Babushka.

She’s been recovering, but it’s bad. She hasn’t been able to leave her bed since. She hasn’t spoken to me either, saying that I’m already dead to her.

“Papa! Antosha! Sasha is here,” Mike announces the moment we arrive in the small kitchen downstairs. He then side hugs Anton, and my brother ruffles his hair.

Uncle Albert smiles at me and offers me a cup of coffee. His face has sunken, and he looks way older than I remember.

When Anton and I arrived here, my uncle hugged me, and I cried like a fucking baby while apologizing. He didn’t say anything. He just consoled me like Papa would have.

“Morning, Uncle.” I lower my head and sit down beside Mike. “Tosha.”

My brother releases a sound from the back of his throat but says nothing as he cuts his eggs and eats in silence. It’s weird to even look him in the face.

Apparently, Anton killed the real Yuri. One of Uncle Albert’s close acquaintances in the KGB who’s a plastic surgeon and a master of disguise gave my brother a nose job and altered his jaw’s structure so it’d imitate the real Yuri’s features.

He also supplied him with some sort of pill to alter his voice.

My brother cut and dyed his hair, bulked up, and wore brown contact lenses.

The result wasn’t the perfect Yuri, but that was okay since Anton made everyone think Yuri had been in an accident and needed reparative surgery.

Hence, his look was enough to resemble Yuri, but not identical.

The reason he targeted Yuri out of all of Kirill’s men was due to a couple of circumstances.

Unfortunately, they shared the same body type, height, and eye shape.

Two, he was a loner, an orphan, and didn’t speak to anyone aside from Maksim.

It's like watching a psychopath in action. Anton didn’t hesitate to end the life of what was the weakest link in Kirill’s circle. He adapted some of his mannerisms and made sure to fit in within Kirill’s elite men.

He’d served in the Spetsnaz and had high-speed driving training, but he managed to hide his superior combat skills effectively.

Hell, he managed to fool me, and I’m his own damn sister. When I asked him why he did that, he said he had to do it to avoid suspicion. Besides, we all had to make sacrifices for revenge and the family.

Now that I know it was all a facade, I can see some of my brother’s old features in his face, but they’re subtle.

It helps that he removed the lenses and allowed his hair to grow back to its original color.

No wonder I always felt a sense of closeness and familiarity with Yuri.

Maybe a part of me already recognized him as my brother.

He’s an older, more frightening version, though. While he was always silent and grumpy, now, he’s like a wall.

His dark hair is messed up at the top, his jaw is set, and his movements are nearly robotic. There was never much light in my brother’s eyes, but now, it’s completely gone.

It makes me wonder if the laughs and smiles he sometimes offered back in the military or in New York were genuine or just another facade.

He surely hasn’t smiled since we got back to Russia.

Not even once.

He stands up, and I snatch a piece of toast, then hastily drink my coffee, managing to burn my tongue. “Are we going on a run? Give me five.”

My runs with him in the morning and the combat training that he’s never stopped giving me since Kirill was shot are the only things that keep me sane. I’ve been channeling all my rage and feelings of betrayal and directing it at shooting targets and imagining Kirill’s face on them.

He slips on his coat without paying me attention. “Not today.”

“Why not?”

“I have an errand to run.”

“Oh, okay.”

He stares at me.

I shift beneath his gaze. “What?”

“Don’t go out like that.”

He means like a woman. I refuse to dress as a man again. I don’t care if I have to die for it.

“I’m not doing that anymore. You stopped being Yuri, and I stopped being Aleksander. If we’re going to do something, we’ll do it while being ourselves.”

He shakes his head but says nothing.

“Bring me candy, Antosha!” Mike asks. No, more like he demands.

My brother offers him a warm look and nods. “Okay.”

“And cake!”

“What type?” Anton actually indulges our cousin.

It’s weird to see him this patient with a kid, especially since he’s stoic to a fault.

“Strawberry, chocolate.” Mike counts on his fingers, his brows drawn with concentration. “Cheesecake and…and…all the cake!”

“I’ll see what I can find.” Anton pats his head and leaves.

Mike grins with triumph, goes to the adjoining room, and turns on the TV. Soon after, the sounds of cartoons fill the house. It’s so tiny that you can hear everything from anywhere.

My uncle pats my shoulder. “Never mind Anton, Sasha. You know how close-minded he can get.”

“There’s something I still don’t understand.” I toy with the jam jar, even though I have no actual appetite. “He spent over six years in Kirill’s company. How come he never took action? He could’ve easily killed him.”

“It was only five. He spent the first year recovering from his injury and devising this plan.”

Right. My brother was hurt badly in the shoot-out that I thought killed him.

Anton has a gash on his back that’s covered by some tattoos.

Everyone back in New York believes it’s from the accident he supposedly suffered.

But it is, in fact, a souvenir from the massacre, after which Anton slipped into a coma for a few weeks, and Uncle hid it from us because he didn’t want to give us false hope.