Chapter 36
JULIAN
“I’m not here to fight,” Alexander says as we step into my office.
He drops into one of the chairs across from my desk. I know that he’s at least a little sincere—if he wanted to screw with me, he would’ve sat in my chair and forced me to command him out of it.
But he doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to play around. He almost looks chastened. He folds his hands in his lap and looks at me with an expression that I haven’t seen since we were younger—open, wary, and uncertain.
He’s either about to be the most honest he’s been in years or do the best acting job he’s ever done.
“Then talk,” I reply.
“The council. Friday night.”
“What about it?”
He pauses, then looks away, as if he knows that once he says whatever is on his mind, there’s no going back.
“I’ll be there. I’ll support you.”
I let the words settle. I don’t react. Reacting is exactly what Alexander wants. He wants to see surprise or relief, maybe even gratitude. Any of those would give him leverage.
I give him nothing other than a flat expression as I wait for him to continue.
“Listen. I know you don’t trust me,” he says. “I know I’ve given you every reason not to. The board challenge, the Dobrov thing… I know how it looks.”
“It looks like a man who’s been building a coalition against his own brother for the better part of a year.”
“It looks like a man who was scared.” The words come out suddenly, his voice quieter than what I would expect from him. “Julian, you left. For three years. No return date and the barest of explanations. You were just gone.”
“I was building alliances, forging deals.”
“Right, that’s what you said. But nothing beyond that.”
“I told you what I knew when I knew it. And I didn’t want to make promises about deals that hadn’t been cemented yet.”
“Fine, I get that. But dropping off the map for months at a time wasn’t good.
I knew that I was only in charge for a little while.
But a little while eventually became a long while, and people started talking.
Rumors began to spread about how our group was without a real leader. So, I decided to become one.”
I say nothing, letting him go on.
“Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. But trying to hold together something that I wasn’t built to hold together was overwhelming. Every day I sat in that chair feeling like an imposter. And every day I sat there, I heard Dad’s voice telling me that I wasn’t good or smart enough.”
The mention of our father changes the temperature in the room.
“Dad never said that to you.”
“He didn’t have to. It was obvious in the way he treated me.
And you in comparison.” Alexander leans forward, his elbows on his knees.
“You remember that summer at the lake house? You were a grown man, and I was maybe nine or ten. You were teaching me how to fish at the lake, and I couldn’t get the cast right. ”
I remember. It was July. The lake water in the morning was flat as glass, mist coming off the surface. I remember Alexander’s small hands fumbling with the reel, his face getting redder and redder every time he had to start over.
“You kept tangling the line, getting frustrated.”
“Right. And you just stood there, patient as hell, showing me how to do it again and again.”
“You got it, eventually.”
“Because you didn’t give up on me. You stood there for what felt like hours.
” He almost smiles as he recalls the memory.
“Then Dad came down to the dock and watched us. Didn’t say a word.
He just stood there with his coffee and watched.
Afterward—you probably don’t even remember this—he pulled you aside and said something. I’ve always wondered what it was.”
I remember exactly what it was.
Take care of your brother, Julian. He’ll need you more than he knows.
I don’t tell Alexander that. Not because it would hurt him, but because it would give him something more to use against me.
“You were a kid,” I say instead.
“Yeah. A kid.” He sits back, looks away for a long moment. “And then I wasn’t. And somewhere between the fishing and the boardrooms and losing Dad, we stopped being brothers and started being rivals.”
I say nothing, letting him go on, still trying to determine how much of this is a performance.
He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “I don’t know when it happened exactly. But I know I’m the one who let it. I tried to tell myself for so long that it was your fault things turned out this way. But it’s not.
He changes the subject. “Do you remember the Christmas when Dad gave us the chess set? The really nice one?”
“Yes. The pieces were hand-carved from wood.”
He laughs. “I was so goddamn mad. Not only was it a boring gift, but it was a gift for both of us. Sharing with my grown-up brother was unthinkable.” His expression turns thoughtful once again. “You remember why Dad said he got it for us, right?”
“Because chess is the only game that matters, because it teaches you to think three moves ahead.”
“Yep. And you beat me every single time. I’d get so pissed and Dad would say—”
“’Losing teaches you more than winning. Pay attention to how he beats you.”
“Right.” His mouth twitches. “I never did learn how you beat me. Never had a head for chess. I just got angry about it and eventually stopped playing.”
I laugh. “Not entirely true,” I say. “You just found another way to compete with me.”
The words come out harsher than I intend. Alexander holds my gaze, something like acknowledgement passing between us. He changed the game—board votes instead of chess pieces, media manipulation instead of strategy, charm instead of competence.
“Maybe I did,” he admits. “But I’m tired of it, Julian. Tired of fighting you. Tired of looking in the mirror and seeing a man Dad would be ashamed of.”
I’m unexpectedly moved by his words. But I don’t show it.
“Anyway, no need to waste any more time strolling down memory lane. This Friday, I am going to stand up and publicly support you. I’ll tell every family I’ve built a relationship with that the Volkov house is united.
Dobrov will lose his leverage, and Lee will see stability.
You’ll get your deal and your leadership, and whatever this is happening between us stops. ”
I take a moment to let his offer settle in my mind.
“And what do you want in return?”
“Nothing.” He says it with zero hesitation.
“Alexander.”
“I’m serious. I mean it. Nothing. No conditions. Not this time.” He meets my eyes. “Family unity is more important than anything else. I’m ashamed that it took me so long to see it, but I finally do. Better late than never, I suppose.”
I study him. My little brother, sitting in my office, invoking our dead father and childhood memories. Every instinct I have says that this is a play, that somewhere beneath the nostalgia and the vulnerability, there’s an angle.
But there’s another part of me, the part that stood on a dock for two hours teaching my ten-year-old half-brother how to cast a line, that wants me to believe him, that wants a relationship with him.
I take a long, deep breath through my nose.
“Then I’ll see you on Friday.”
He opens his mouth to speak, as if he’d been expecting more resistance. Then he closes it, nods, and gets up.
“Julian.”
“Yeah.”
“Dad would’ve hated all of this, the fighting, the rivalry.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “He would’ve forced us to sit down and make us talk until we figured it out.”
“Yes. He would’ve.”
“I… I miss him.”
“So do I.”
Then he walks to the door and opens it, pausing before stepping through.
“For what it’s worth,” he says without turning around, “Lyra’s good for you. I didn’t see it before, but I see it now.”
He leaves, closing the door gently behind him.
When he’s gone, I let my gaze linger on the chair where he’d just been sitting. I feel something, a sentiment that I’d buried so long ago that I’m not quite sure what it is or what to call it.
He’s lying. I know he’s lying. The childhood memories, the fishing trip, the chess set, the practiced vulnerability… it’s all a performance, one calibrated to disarm me.
And it almost worked.
It almost worked, because somewhere between the rehearsed lines and the strategic pauses, there were moments that felt real, feelings from him that weren’t an act.
But I learned long ago that the best way to tell a lie was to add a little truth to it. And Alexander most certainly learned the same lesson. He is a gifted liar, after all.
And one of the key skills of a gifted liar is to make you hesitate, make you doubt yourself, even when you know they’re not telling the truth.
My father, the one who made me look out for my much younger half-brother, the one who taught me to think three moves ahead, the one who believed that his sons would work together to keep his empire running and not tear it apart through fighting, would be devastated to know what we’ve become.
That’s the part that breaks something in me. Not the politics, not the council, not the threats.
It’s the simple fact that my father, our father, raised me to look out for my little brother, and I’ve failed. I failed to stop him from becoming the man he is, the one who would betray his own blood.
I sigh, indulging just for a moment in thinking of a different world, one in which my half-brother and I are not rivals.
But that world is most certainly not this one.
I push the thought aside and pick up my phone to call Ethan.
“What’s up?” he answers.
“Double every security protocol for the council on Friday. I want eyes on every entrance and exit, every window, every car in a three-block radius.”
A pause. “You think Alexander’s play is real?”
I glance over at the empty chair.
“He came in here and told me exactly what I wanted to hear. So yes. I do.”