Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Alexei
Isettle down to sleep in an unfamiliar bed, regretting agreeing to stay at the DeMarco mansion for the night.
Their place was closer and it was late. What a stupid reason to agree.
What a stupid reason to listen to Fallon when he suggested it to Isla.
What a stupid reason to let Isla talk me into thinking it was a good idea.
I was too engrossed in what I found of my brother to think clearly.
What I saw in that shop will haunt me forever. A front-row seat to the depths my brother went to for Chet. How close they became and how deep he kept me in the dark.
What I'd assumed was a clandestine agreement turned out to be more like something friendly. I'd seen maybe a simple shake of the hand. Envelopes exchanged over dark meeting places. A notion that Victor didn't really want to work with Chet. He was just using him as a means to an end.
I see it differently now. The two of them sitting in that room together, talking and drinking like old friends as they lazed on the couch. Exchanging stories about the DeMarcos. About me. Sharing more like family than my brother had been treating me.
How could my brother entertain him at all?
My throat squeezes with pain like a knife that my brother stabbed into my back himself. What my father put me through as a boy was only second to what Uncle Chet was like.
Both of us second sons, and every slight he perceived against his position he repeated onto me. Sage isn't the only one with scars from him. Mine are simply covered by enough artwork to attempt to erase it.
Losing this image of Victor feels like losing him all over again. Was he really someone I knew at all? What a delusion to think I could've had any hand at stopping him or changing his mind.
All the reasons that Victor was wronged, the justification driving me to avenge his death, none of them exist in that space.
But now we're in so deep.
Am I too blanketed by grief to care? Is she?
Her scars are worse than mine are. I can at least admit that even if her grief pales in comparison. But she doesn't have the same burden on her shoulders. She isn't responsible for an entire empire of men.
One day, surely, we will hurt each other. One day we will kill each other. One day it won't be fun anymore, there will be no teasing, no playing and no silly pranks with insulin and poison wine. One day it will be the end.
How soon that day comes, I don't know.
I sigh as I slip into bed and close my eyes.
Clarity feels a lot like confusion.
How do I suppress the instinct to lash out and kill her? Whatever I've promised, my hate for her is so visceral that I lose myself when I see her. The desire to kill her is out of my control.
I sit up, looking around the room they've given me at the DeMarco mansion, same as my old one. It's just as I remember it, bar the furnishings I'd put here to make it my own, but my favorite black silk linens are still on the bed.
I see the last place Victor sat and talked with me.
The last place he threw a bottle of vodka at my head in a disagreement.
If I'd been better at convincing him to leave this may not have happened.
Now not only do I have Sage to kill, but I have Chet on my tail, too.
All because I wanted to help that fucking ridiculous girl.
This is a room full of regrets.
Mostly for the poor, sad, son of a cunt who sat here thinking he'd lost his heart to that poisonous snake. Who was, in fact, everything I thought she was.
I gave Anton my word that I wouldn't fight the death promise on his property, and while I will try to uphold it, I'm not sure my sanity can bear it. I can only hope that Chet is easy to kill with the weight of both the Rushkoff and the DeMarco empire behind the mission.
After tonight, I see Victor clearer than I have before.
He really needed this. Why? I can't possibly know.
But unlike my brother, I don't need to take out the DeMarcos in order to consider our family powerful.
As far as I'm concerned, once Sage is dead, I'm happy to split the city right down the middle as it's always been and never see each other again.
I can't stay within these thoughts for a second longer or the ache in my chest where my brother is supposed to be will turn into a full-blown black hole.
I loved my brother. And I'm still not even sure I know what love is.