Chapter 25 Alexei
Alexei
Iturn from the door, adrenaline still burning through my system.
Blood still drips down my neck. Kelly launches himself at me, legs wrapping around my waist. I catch him, arms locking around him on instinct.
Burying my face into his neck, his shoulder, his hair.
Kissing him there without thinking, just needing to feel that he’s real and safe.
The gun felt right in my hand. Pressed against Father’s temple. Finger on the trigger.
I was going to do it. Kill my own father in my house, in front of his guards, with my mother watching. And the only thing I felt was calm.
Not anger. Not fear. Not even regret about what it would mean. Just cold certainty that if he made one more move toward Kelly, he was dead.
Should probably feel something about that.
Guilt, maybe. Horror at how close I came to committing patricide.
But nothing. Just the clinical assessment of how I’d have done it.
Where the bullet would’ve gone. How fast the guards would’ve reacted.
Whether I could’ve gotten Kelly out before they shot me.
Probably not. Didn’t matter.
Better to die with Kelly than live without him.
Simple math. I’d have torn my own heart out with my bare hands and pressed it into Kelly’s while I still had breath left, made sure he knew he was worth dying for.
Father saw it in my eyes. That’s why he didn’t push further.
He knew I meant it. I did mean it. Still do.
“Are you okay?”
“I was about to ask you that,” I murmur into his skin, breathing him in.
He kisses me, soft but urgent. “I’m proud of you,” he whispers against my lips. “What you did was huge. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. This isn’t wrong. Who you love, none of it is wrong.”
I close my eyes and nod once. There’s too much lodged in my throat to speak.
He stays wrapped around me the whole walk to the bedroom.
When I lay him on the bed, I don’t let go. Follow him down and pull the covers around us, then wrap myself around him. Arms locked across his chest. I press my face into the crook of his neck, just needing to feel him breathing. He’s here. I didn’t lose him. Not over this. Not today.
Mikhail was right about one thing. Our father was always going to find out we killed those cops without permission.
But I don’t regret it. Not for a second.
After what they did to Kelly, I’d do it again without hesitation.
Over and over. I’d carve that bastard up a thousand different ways. He deserved worse than what I gave him.
This will spread like wildfire through our world.
Every family we work with will smell weakness, start circling like vultures.
These aren’t new rules I’m breaking. They’re the foundation everything was built on.
But lines are drawn now. I know exactly where everyone stands.
Father wanted me to choose, so I did. Kelly’s with me, and anyone who wants to challenge that can try.
I’ve been killing for this family my whole life.
Time to see what I can do when I’m killing for something I actually give a fuck about.
The worst part was the look on my father’s face when he saw Kelly in that room with me.
Pure disgust. I’ve never seen him look at any of us like that before.
Not even after the worst stunts me and my brothers pulled growing up.
Nothing came close to how he looked at me in that moment.
Like killing me would’ve been easier than having to see what I’d become.
When he said I wasn’t his son anymore, he meant it.
“Alexei …”
I hum and press a kiss to the top of his head.
He turns in my arms, wrapping his hands around my neck and looking at me. His eyes are glassy, that soft green a little darker.
“I love you so much it physically hurts. I’ve been completely lost to you from the start, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about how we got here. I want to spend forever showing you what love is supposed to feel like.”
The words slam into me harder than any punch I’ve taken. First time anyone’s said that to me. My mother doesn’t count. That was different. This is something I never thought I’d hear from anyone.
I close my eyes and feel something crack open in my chest. “I love you too.”
He wraps his arms tighter around me and buries his face in my neck.
“You’re mine until I stop breathing. Maybe longer. I don’t know how death works, but I’ll figure out a way to haunt you if I have to. You’re never alone again. I won’t let you be.”
He huffs a laugh and nods into my neck.
I’m sick with how much I love him. Twisted up in ways that would send him running if he knew. I’ve been his since the second I met him in that clinic, those green eyes soft with kindness I didn’t deserve. Stitching me while he rambled. Every word from that night is burned into my memory.
I replay it when I can’t sleep, when I can’t think straight, when I need to remember why I’m still breathing.
He lets go of me and walks to the bathroom, returns with the first aid kit. His entire gray shirt is covered in my blood from hugging me, even some smeared across his chin. He wipes away the blood on my neck, looking at the cut. “This needs stitches.”
I’d forgotten about it. Don’t even feel the pain, so I just nod.
His hands are steady as he stitches me up. When he’s done, he puts the kit aside and lies with me. He moves his hand through my hair, slow and soothing.
“What did you and Mikhail do?”
I will not lie to him, no matter how much it might hurt him. He deserves the truth from me always.
“We killed David and Mendez.” I pause. “And David’s father. William.”
He clears his throat, looks back at me with eyes a little wider than before, processing what I just told him.
“What? Why would you kill Will? What did he do?”
“He was dirty when he was on the force. Was working with someone who wants to hurt my family now. He had to die.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then lets out a breath. “Will was a horrible person. He had serious temper issues. Once drove into my car when he was drunk, then blamed me for the way I parked. He helped David cover up the abuse with his connections.”
Fuck. If I had known that I would have drawn out his death. Motherfucker deserved worse than what he got.
Kelly winces. “What about Gary?”
“He did that himself. I startled the hell out of him when I clicked the safety off my gun and then I watched him choke on a cookie in front of me.”
“Oh my god, he did not.”
I raise my brow. “He did.”
“And you didn’t save him?”
“Why the fuck would I save him just to crack his neck after, and then throw him down the stairs? That would’ve been cruel.”
He opens his mouth like he wants to argue, then closes it, then opens it again while scrunching his nose in that way that means he’s working through something. “Wow. That’s some next-level compassion right there. Death by Oreo … Cracking his neck would have been faster.”
I tilt my head. “It was homemade. Not an Oreo.”
“Jesus, not the point.”
“You’re not angry we killed them?”
He exhales and drops his head to my chest, his breath warm against my skin.
“I’m not angry. I feel like I can breathe again. He’s been this nightmare I couldn’t escape, always wondering when he’d come back to finish what he started. I’m relieved he’s gone.”
I glance down at him and breathe in the smell of his hair, filling my lungs up with his scent until it hurts and I have to breathe it out.
“We used his money to pay off all the debt he put you in. It’s the least that asshole could do since he’s the one who caused it in the first place. It won’t get traced back to you. Daniil made sure of it.”
“Thank you,” he whispers. “Are we safe? Will your father kill us?”
“Safe for now. I won’t let anyone hurt you. We can trust my mother.”
At that, he goes slack.
I wrap my arms tighter around him, pulling him closer until there’s no space left between us.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out. None at all.
But I trust my mother when she says Kelly is safe. If she says it, she’ll make it true because she doesn’t make promises she can’t back up.
I know what it cost her to stand in front of him like that today. I know what it brought up for her. All those memories she keeps buried. She was never the same after her brother died.
I was eight the day it happened. I still remember her cries, the way she screamed so hard she fell to the floor. I remember the sound of it, raw and endless.
I’ll never forget it. I was old enough to understand that he died for loving another man. Old enough to realize I was already like him. The terror of ending up the same way has lived in my chest ever since, waiting for the day someone would figure me out.
My father proved me right. The disgust, the blade, the immediate decision that I deserve to die.
I’ve carried that nightmare since I was eight years old, and it played out exactly how I always imagined.
Expect it didn’t end with me bleeding out like Evgeny, condemned by everyone who mattered.
My mother stood with me. I don’t know how to process that, but it’s more than I thought I’d get.