Flashback - Archie
The cold was a constant.
It wasn’t the kind that crept in gently or lingered at the edges. It was the kind that settled into your bones and resided there happily—sharp, unforgiving, impossible to ignore. It was bitter and biting and stripped weakness from a man whether he wanted it gone or not.
Our father believed in it like it was a religion. He always said that comfort made men soft.
He claimed that pain reminded you of who you were. So we trained in it. In wind and rain. Ice and snow. There was never an in-between.
The yard stretched wide behind the estate, nothing but packed earth and frost-bitten ground, ringed by steel fencing and men who had long since forgotten what sunlight felt like against their skin. Snow clung to the edges, trampled into grey slush where boots had carved paths through it.
I stood opposite Rasputin.
My brother grinned like he was enjoying himself.
Where I measured, he burned. Where I calculated, he destroyed. It made him unpredictable, dangerous. My father thought it made him a problem.
“Again,” Viktor said.
Our father never raised his voice, because there simply wasn’t a need.
His command cut clean through the air, sharper than the cold.
Rasputin lunged first. As always.
He came at me like a storm—fast, reckless, all force and no restraint. His boots hit the ground hard, shoulders driving forward, hands already reaching to grab, to break, to overwhelm.
I stepped aside. Just far enough to let his momentum carry him past the point of control.
Then I struck. Precise.
Two hits—one to the ribs, one to the jaw. They were measured and effective, because I didn’t believe in wasting energy.
He staggered. Then laughed.
“You always do that,” he said, circling back. “Boring.”
“Effective,” I corrected.
He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing it across his skin like war paint. He was enjoying himself too much.
“Still boring,” he shot back.
I tilted my head slightly.
“If you are dead,” I said calmly, “you do not get to complain about how I killed you.”
His grin widened.
“That’s why I’m not dead.”
He came at me again. Faster this time. Less controlled. Exactly as I expected.
I adjusted my stance.
Rasputin swung wide.
I caught his wrist and twisted. I drove him down into the ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
My knee pressed into his spine.
My hand locked his arm behind him at an angle that would break it if I pushed a fraction further.
He went still. Not because he had to, but because he chose to.
We paused in that position when we heard a slow clap.
We both looked up.
Viktor stood at the edge of the yard, coat draped over his shoulders, expression carved from stone.
Approval did not come easily from him. But when it did—it mattered.
“Discipline,” he said.
It was one word, and it was directed at me.
Rasputin snorted beneath me.
“Boring,” he muttered again.
I released him.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the grey sky like he had just finished a pleasant afternoon activity instead of losing.
Viktor stepped closer, his boots crunching against frozen ground.
He stopped in front of us. First he looked at Rasputin. Then at me. His gaze lingered. Thoughtful. Judging.
“Archie will inherit everything.”
The words settled into the air like a verdict. Final. Unquestioned.
Rasputin went very still for half a second. Then he laughed. Loud. Unrestrained.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, looking at me with something sharp and amused in his eyes.
“Of course he will,” he said, shaking his head. “Our perfect little blue-eyed machine.”
He sat up fully, dragging a hand through his hair. Then he grinned at me. Wicked. Mocking. But there was affection buried somewhere deep beneath the edge of it.
“The Prince of the Bratva.”
The title landed heavily between us.
I said nothing.
Because titles meant responsibility. Power. Expectation. Chains.
All the things I didn’t want or aspire to.
Rasputin saw it differently.
He leaned closer, voice dropping just enough that only I could hear it.
“Tell me, brat…” he murmured. “Do you even want it?”
I met his gaze without blinking.
Rasputin didn’t flinch. He held eye contact like it was a national sport—steady, unrelenting, daring me to be the first to break. It was the kind of stare that made lesser men shift on their feet, second-guess themselves, fold under pressure. But I wasn’t one of those men. I knew him too well.
Knew every line of his face. Every scar he never spoke about.
His cheekbones were sharp, carved hard beneath skin that had seen too much weather, too many fights.
A shadow of stubble clung to his jaw—five days’ growth, uneven in places where old bruises had once bloomed and faded.
It gave him a roughness he wore like armor, like he’d walked out of a war and hadn’t bothered cleaning himself up.
His hair was darker than sin. Black, thick, and too long by most standards, it fell loose and wild, fanning out against his shoulders as though it refused to be contained.
It only made him look more dangerous. More untamed.
Standing across from him, I was his opposite in every way—my own hair a pale gold, almost bright under the light, an inheritance from a woman neither of us spoke about anymore.
He took after our father.
There was no denying it. Rasputin carried Viktor in the set of his jaw, in the breadth of his shoulders, in the way he stood like the ground beneath him belonged to only him. Strength bled from him without effort. Violence sat just beneath the surface, quiet but ready.
I had taken after my mother.
My features were softer, my movements measured, my anger buried deep enough that most never saw it coming. They called me disciplined. Controlled.
He called me cold.
And maybe he was right.
Because standing there, looking at him, I knew something I would never say out loud.
He would have been the better heir.
Rasputin was built for it. For command. For war. For the kind of leadership that demanded blood and never hesitated to spill it. He didn’t think twice, or weigh decisions until they suffocated him. He acted. He conquered. He took.
I calculated.
And in our world, calculation could look a lot like weakness.
His lip twitched, like he could hear the thoughts I wasn’t speaking, and he knew exactly where my mind had gone and found it amusing.
We sparred like this constantly. Not always with fists—but with looks, with words, with the kind of tension that hovered just beneath the surface. Anyone watching might have mistaken it for rivalry. For something fractured.
They would’ve been wrong.
Because beneath the jabs and the bruises, beneath the unspoken competition and the expectations that hung over us like a noose—there was nothing in this world I trusted more than him.
No one who had my back the way Rasputin did.
No one who would burn it all down if I asked.
He was chaos.
I was control.
And somehow, together, we worked.
“It does not matter what I want.”
Rasputin’s smile faltered slightly. Just for a second. Then it returned. Wider. Sharper.
“That’s the problem with you,” he said quietly. “You don’t want anything.”
He stood, brushing dirt from his hands.
“Men like you don’t rule,” he added, glancing back at me. “They maintain.”
Viktor turned away, letting us know that the conversation was over.
I watched him go. Felt the weight of his words settle onto my shoulders without resistance.
Because Rasputin was wrong.
I did want something. I just understood something he didn’t.
In our world—wanting was weakness. And weakness was something our father had spent years beating out of us.
So I buried it. And became exactly what he needed me to be.
Precise. Disciplined. Unbreakable.
The perfect heir to something built on blood and violence. Even then—even standing there with frost biting into my skin and my brother’s laughter still echoing in the air—I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
I would either inherit everything.
Or I would burn it to the ground before it ever had the chance to own me.