Chapter 30
Thirty
June
I look out over the meadow. The tall stalks of wild sunflowers bend under the breeze, their happy faces tipped upward toward the cloudless, azure sky. It’s a beautiful place for a psychopath to spend his purgatory.
Because that is the persona Aleksei Stepanoff represented in my mind. A man with no conscience who got off on the pain he inflicted on others.
Like our father.
But I came here anyway. Partly because of my promise to Syn, and partly because I’m curious about my half brother. I glance at Aleksander standing quietly to my right. Both of them.
It’s funny how you view the world around you in a certain way, only to discover that it’s all an illusion.
Francesco infused me with hatred for the Stepanoff twins from the time I was two years old.
Such an early age to instill that kind of destructive emotion into your child.
I never questioned why. I just blindly believed his word because that’s what he raised me to be through pain and fear and punishment.
Obedient and trained to obey, like an abused dog kept in a cage.
Francesco’s lies were self-serving. Pit one child against the other two because they represented the evil inside of himself that he hid from the world. Everything he did—to me, to Dierdre, to Syn, to Nina—the death he got was far from the one he deserved.
And Aleksander’s interest in Aoife didn’t help matters as we grew up.
Aoife was the only truly good thing in my life.
Con and Hen were my ride-or-die brothers, but Aoife was the light that existed in our dark world.
She was our heart. Francesco had already stolen my soul, but he could never have the beating organ inside my chest. It belonged to her.
And I would be damned if I let Aleksander take her away from us.
That was another misconception. Underestimating Syn’s capacity for love. She doesn’t love in pieces. Her love is boundless and fierce and endless and always growing.
I glance at Aleksander again, his profile stoic and filled with melancholy as he looks at the meadow where he scattered Aleksei’s ashes.
He loves her.
He always has.
I want to continue to hate him for it. But I can’t anymore.
Because she loves him, too.
Maybe not in the same way she loves me, Hen, and Con.
But I see it. The way they are together.
The instant friendship they forged when she got her memories back.
Her unwavering trust in him. The way she seeks him out in a crowded room.
How her smiles and laughter are a little brighter when we’re all together.
How our family feels whole with him in it.
Jumping the line from adversaries and enemies to friends and brothers will take time, but I’m ready to try.
Not only for Syn, but for myself. I don’t want to be the man Francesco tried to create.
I don’t want to be a man who chooses hate.
I want to be a good husband and a better father…
and brother. I want to be able to look in the mirror every day and not detest the reflection staring back at me because I look too much like him.
And then there’s what happened at Christmas.
It’s a startling, newfound revelation that I’m still trying to process.
It’s difficult enough altering decades of rivalry between Aleksander and me, but for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, it didn’t bother me that he watched while I finger-fucked Syn.
I wanted him to watch. To know that I was the one making her moan and giving her pleasure.
To see how beautiful she was when she came all over my hand.
It’s messed up, but I don’t care.
“What was Aleksei’s favorite food?”
Aleksander’s gaze swings from the meadow to me. “What?”
“What was Aleksei’s favorite food?” I repeat.
He gives me a befuddled look before answering. “Uh, potato skins. Extra chives and bacon bits. No sour cream. He hated the stuff. Said it looked like the potato had a yeast infection.”
My bark of laughter surprises us both. “That’s probably the most unpleasant image anyone has ever described to me. And I’ve lived with Hendrix for years.”
Aleksander’s quiet chuckle joins mine. “I don’t want to know.”
“I think that’s wise. What about you?”
Again with the bewilderment. “What about me?”
“Food. What’s your favorite?”
Awkward silence ensues.
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has one.”
He shrugs.
Okay. I try again.
“I could live off pizza for the rest of my life as long as no one tried to put pineapple or anchovies on it.” More awkward silence. “Has anyone told you that you are a difficult person to have a conversation with?”
His fingers drum against the side of his pants leg.
I always thought his “quirks” were just that—quirks.
Like how Syn changes clothes after being outside because she hates how they smell, or Hen’s obsession with food, or my tactile compulsion where I always need to touch something.
Preferably Syn. I love how soft her hair is.
And her skin. And her lips. Basically every inch of her.
I didn’t know Aleksander had OCD and panic attacks until I overheard him talking to Syn about it the other night when they were sitting on the back deck, gazing up at the stars. I hope one day he will trust me enough, like he trusts her, to share that part of himself with me.
Bridges can’t be built in a day, but maybe I can start laying the foundation.
“Ask me anything,” I tell him.
“Like what?”
“Whatever you want.”
He snaps the stalk of a sunflower. “Syn will like these.”
I appreciate how his first thought, his first concern, is always her.
“She will. Green is her favorite color, but she likes yellow because it’s Con’s.”
“I know.” He selects a few more and bundles them together in his hand. “Why didn’t you ever fight back?”
I guess my invitation for him to ask whatever he wants means going straight for the jugular.
“Every time I did, I spent weeks recovering from the brutality of his whip.”
I lift my closed fist in front of my face, the pinkish discoloration of a cigar burn still visible.
Seeing it brings immense shame because Aleksander’s query is one I have asked myself a million times.
I’m a grown-ass man. An adult. I was bigger and stronger than him.
So why did I let him continue to hurt me?
Maybe I thought it was my punishment for—what I believed at the time—Dierdre killing herself.
I spent ten years thinking that I failed to protect her.
Or maybe it’s because I felt like I deserved it.
When you’re told by your parent that you’re a worthless piece of shit your entire life, at some point, you start to believe it.
“The tiniest disappointment would set him off. Apparently, I disappointed him a lot. So, I bided my time and patiently waited. We had plans to take over the Council after we graduated. Kill them all. We’d been building alliances, positioning the pieces. And then I saw Syn, and everything changed.”
We may not have recognized the girl we loved because she had changed so much over the decade we were apart, but our hearts and our souls knew who she was, even when we didn’t.
The instant attraction I felt when I first laid eyes on her in the Bierkeller.
Our all-consuming obsession with her. My fierce need to protect her at all costs.
Aleksander watches me with unnerving intensity. “Why do you hate me so much?”
Spotting a lone dandelion puffball, I pick it and hold it out to the wind. Syn loves to make wishes on these things. The breeze plucks the feathery pappi from the receptacle and disperses the seeds. A hundred wishes float in the air. I steal one for myself.
“Because you’re in love with the girl who is my everything.”
“So are Hendrix and Constantine. You don’t hate them.”
“That’s different,” I hastily refute, even though his point hits its target because he’s right.
I’ve never been jealous of Hen or Con. Not once. Not when it came to Aoife when we were kids, and not now with Syn. So why am I jealous of him?
“Why?” he asks, mirroring my thoughts.
“Because they’re my bro—” I realize what I’m about to say and don’t, but Aleksander finishes it for me.
“Brothers,” he replies with a monotonously sad inflection.
Feeling like an asshole, I face him. We may not look alike, but for the first time, I can see the resemblance.
The shared traits. They’re subtle, but they’re there.
The same shape of the eyes and fullness of our lips.
The same dimples when we smile, which we do often whenever we’re with Syn.
The same heart-shaped freckle on the outer helix of our left ear that can only be passed down genetically.
Syn looked it up when she noticed we both had one.
“Yeah, they are. Syn once told me, sometimes the best families aren’t the ones you’re born into, but the people you choose to love, who love you back without end or obligation or expectation. Found family, she calls it. Francesco wanted us to be enemies. Don’t let him win.”
Aleksander’s eyes meet mine, and for the first time, they hold steady.
“Sorry I’m late,” Dierdre says out of breath when she joins us.
I hook my arm around her waist, then take a chance and cuff Aleksander’s shoulder, completing the sibling connection. “You’re right on time.”
Shielding her eyes with her hand, she looks out over the meadow of sunflowers. “Oh, this is beautiful, Aleksander.”
“Aleksei liked coming here. It was his favorite place.”
“It’s a perfect spot.” She slips out from my arm and walks into the meadow, playing her fingers over the tops of the tall grass. “Hey, Aleksei. It’s your big sis.”
Aleksander moves closer to my side, my hand still on his shoulder, and we listen to our sister talk to the brother I regret not giving a chance to know before he was gone.