Chapter 26 Little Sister #2
The realization hit me like a moving train. I tried to breathe from the shock, but the pain in my chest was sharp and violent. Was Sergei fucking responsible for what happened to my sister? The seed was planted by Claudio, and now it bloomed into a full-out fucking panic attack.
I knew Sergei liked Natasha. And I also knew she never gave him the time of day, never took him seriously, never paid him any real attention. He used to joke that he would marry her one day, and he morphed into a different man when she was around—flirty and mellow.
When did that start?
Very early on. Like me, he was five years older than her. He would tell me thousands of times what a great sister I had.
Your sister is great.
Natasha is such a good girl.
Are you inviting Natasha?
Will Natasha be around?
Let’s hang out with Natasha, make sure she comes too.
She’s so funny.
She’s so innocent.
She’s adorable.
She’s such a smart woman.
She has such a pure smile.
She’s such a grown-up now.
She, she, she, she.
And it intensified right before he left to go to Russia when he was nineteen and she was…fourteen. I never picked up on the fact that he could have been dangerous. I always thought he was just being playful with my little sister, that he loved her like I loved her—like a brother.
"What is it, Roman?" Isla interrupted my mental gymnastics, but I couldn't say anything.
Had Natasha ever told me she felt uncomfortable with him? God, I tried to think back to all those years ago. Sergei was destroyed after her death. He bawled at her funeral, his deep sorrow mirroring mine. It couldn't be him then! He was so devastated when we lost her.
I was grasping at straws, I thought.
But then I also remembered that it was him who was absolutely hellbent on finding out who was responsible.
In fact, he was so adamant about it, he spent more time on it than I did.
..or so I thought. What was Denis doing?
Denis was just around. He didn't really speak about it, but he didn’t know her very well.
Sergei was always around. When we were young, when my mom passed, when Natasha went to university.
Denis was just a friend; he never really came over or spent any time with her.
But Sergei was a close friend. A close friend who was here when Natasha passed, while Denis and I were on vacation in the Caribbean. Sergei. Was. Here.
Did he…destroy her life because she didn't want him?
Holy fucking shit.
Nausea crept up my chest, cutting off all oxygen. My face blazed, and I was about to keel over when Isla hopped off me, giving me room to breathe. I folded over my knees, staring at the floor and forcing myself to remember the details.
Sergei came back from the Russian army a changed man. He always played with boundaries, but after those years he was broken, as if he had PTSD. He became pitiless. Rough and explosive, he was belligerent toward everyone.
He said he wanted to forget it all, to have a family and a normal life, but it was obvious that he was fucked in the head.
When did he start dating Lena, the woman who became his wife? Almost immediately after Natasha passed away. And proposed within a few months. And Lena got pregnant before the wedding even happened. And that was that—he got his normal life and family.
Before I processed my actions, I was already rushing toward my closet, looking for the box that had a few of Natasha’s belongings. Her phone—there must have been something I missed. I threw the top off the box, tears at my eyes just from the memories.
I had ransacked that phone endless times when I finally got my hands on it. But so did Sergei. I grabbed the phone and the charger, plugging it in with shaking hands.
Isla stood at the door, apprehensively watching all my actions. I tried to explain. “My sister’s phone. I—maybe I missed something.”
In silence, I paced the room and thought about it all again. Just like his other one. What the fuck? Maybe he tracked down my past flames and fucking raped someone?! My mind worked overtime to come to some kind of—any—viable conclusion.
He said Isla was girlfriend and wife material and that she was cute and innocent.
He used to say that about Natasha all the time—that she was cute and innocent.
Was this his way of confessing? Was this his way of taunting me?
Had he gone completely fucking unhinged to start threatening women he didn’t know with rape?
The phone charged to one percent, and I unlocked it, my fingers trembling as I opened the photos app.
My sister’s life ended so abruptly.
The last night of her life was supposed to be just a fun time but turned into a horrific tragedy. She had been out with some friends, celebrating a birthday at some fancy restaurant. They went clubbing after, and the last photo was her with a group of girls, all smiling widely at the camera.
I roamed my eyes over the photos, meticulously studying everyone’s face, and there, in the background of my sister’s group of friends, was the profile of a woman who I couldn’t recognize in the past, but now…I knew very well.
It was Lena. Sergei’s wife.