15. Daniil
Daniil
Dropping my face onto my keyboard, the system beeps, and error messages pop up across the screen, destroying the spreadsheet I’ve been pretending to work on for the past hour.
I don’t even care because my whole life is burning down anyway.
Everything replays in my head on a loop.
Every conversation at the cabin, the way he touched me, how he looked at me, what we did together.
Hearing him call it a mistake guts me, but I was the one who said it didn’t mean anything first. I pushed him there, and now he’s throwing my words back at me. I wish I could take it back, but telling him the truth now would only make things worse and push him further away than he already is.
I’m a guy. He’s spent his entire life hooking up with girls, and whatever we had doesn’t change that. This whole thing could just be him experimenting, scratching an itch, whatever bullshit straight guys tell themselves after they fuck their best friend and then regret it.
Women are easier for him, and they make sense in a way I never could. No one questions it when he brings a girl home.
What we did is completely different, and this thing between us is a ticking time bomb that we both know can’t last. One slip, one wrong look in front of the family, and everything blows up in our faces.
They see us as brothers and always will, and Roman would explode if he ever found out.
He’s a homophobic piece of shit who can’t stand the idea of men being together, and the fact that it’s two of his sons would send him over the edge.
If anyone ever found out, we’d be screwed.
Dead if we’re lucky, something much worse if we’re not.
The whole situation is fucked, and there’s no clean way out of it, and I just made it worse. I panicked and said all the wrong things, shoved him away when I should’ve pulled him closer and been honest for once in my goddamn life.
Pulling my face off the keyboard, the ruined spreadsheet stares back at me. Error messages fill the screen, broken formulas scattered everywhere. Nothing works the way it should.
My phone sits on the desk beside me with the screen dark. I sent twelve texts and made six calls today, and I’ve gotten nothing back. Maybe this was the final straw, and he’s done with me for good. Nausea crawls up my throat at the thought.
I’m giving this a couple of days. If I see him with another girl now after everything that happened, that’ll be it for me.
Grabbing my phone, my thumb hovers over his contact. Sending another message won’t help, but I can’t stop myself from typing one out anyway.
Me:
I’m sorry.
“What are you doing?” Lev suddenly snaps at me.
Blinking at him, I rub out the keyboard marks on my face.
“Have you figured out who messed up the shipping?”
I shake my head.
“Jesus.” He drags a hand down his face. “I’m so stressed. You need to figure it out and then explain it to me. Something happened with that shipment, and I need answers. Today, Daniil. Not next week.”
Some port worker appears behind him with a clipboard in hand, and Lev spins around so fast the guy nearly drops it. He snaps something at him in Russian, and the worker practically runs away.
“I need a vacation from my fucking life.” Shaking his head, he pulls out his phone and scrolls through something with his jaw clenched tight.
We’re at the port he controls, the one on Halperin Terminal.
Something went wrong with one of the crates from the Balkans, and he needed me to track them. Except I got distracted and ended up looking into that old woman in Germany instead. Turned out to be another dead end. Literally. She’s been dead for years.
So I’m back at square one with nothing to show for it except wasted time and more questions I can’t answer. I’m so confused trying to figure everything out on my own now. The thing is, I think Germany has the answers somewhere. Or something connected to it does. I don’t really know.
It’s not that I don’t think of the Avrorins as my family. I’m not trying to be selfish by looking into this. I just have so many questions that won’t leave me alone. I want to know about my scars, where they came from, what happened before Roman brought me home.
I love Lina so much. She’s incredible and strong, always keeps us in line and takes care of all of us.
When I fell off my bike once while out with Alexei, he had to carry me back for over an hour, and we left our bikes behind on the trail.
Lina saw us coming through the gates and ran to meet us, brought us inside, and sat us down with ice cream while she patched up my knees.
She even started leaving vacuum-sealed cookies in the hollow of our tree after she realized Mikhail and I kept sneaking out there. I think she must have followed us one day to figure out where we were going.
Whenever Roman had his work trips, we’d always have movie nights as a family.
Lina’s the one who got us all hooked on Uno because she used to play it when she was young, and then we all became obsessed with it.
Which also led to everyone fighting and shouting and screaming at each other over cards.
I think she regretted showing us that game pretty quickly after seeing how competitive we all got.
Lev shoots me a look, the kind that says he knows I’m just sitting around doing nothing, and I throw up my hands in frustration before flipping him off.
He glares at me harder but keeps his mouth shut.
If I could talk, I would tell him exactly where he can shove his fucking shipping manifests and his attitude problem.
“Figure it out,” he says, shaking his head.
“I don’t care what you have to do. Father’s already up my ass about Baltimore and now this.
I need something to go right. Just one thing.
” He turns and walks away, phone already pressed to his ear, barking orders at whoever picked up in that same clipped, furious tone.
My eyes drop to the screen, and I pull up the shipping manifests, trying to make sense of the complete mess in front of me.
It takes forever to get through everything, cross-referencing dates and weights and border checkpoints, but I think I found the problem buried in there.
Now I just have to figure out how to explain it to Lev.
This is just as frustrating for me as it is for everyone else.
More frustrating, actually, because I can see the solution right there in my head and I physically cannot get the words out to share it.
My throat closes up completely when I try to speak to anyone who isn’t Mikhail.
The words are there, perfectly clear, but nothing comes out.
On the rare chance I can force out one letter or maybe a single word, it stutters so badly it takes up to a minute, and by then the other person has already given up on me. My mouth won’t cooperate, and my voice shuts down entirely.
It’s humiliating. People treat me like I’m stupid, like there’s something wrong with my brain, when really the problem is I just can’t force the words past whatever block exists between my thoughts and my voice. I have the answer, but I can’t make anyone hear it.
“Well?”
Handing him the laptop, he stares at it, scrolling through my highlighted sections. “I don’t know what I’m looking at, Daniil.”
He shoves the laptop back into my hands and glares at me. God, is he stupid? Just look at the screen. It shows you exactly what you need to know. The timestamps, the weight differences, the border delays. It’s all there.
“Just tell me. It’s not that hard to talk, seriously. I need to know right now. Father is going to murder me.”
Maybe if you weren’t such a stressed-out asshole constantly, you’d be able to think straight for five seconds and see what’s right in front of your face instead of complicating everything.
“What did you just say to him?” Mikhail’s voice cuts through the tension.
He’s on him in seconds, grabbing Lev and slamming him against the nearest shipping container. His hand wraps around his throat, squeezing hard enough to make him claw at the grip. “Don’t fucking talk to him that way or I will end you.” He shoves him away, and Lev stumbles backward.
Mikhail still won’t look at me. My stomach twists into knots watching him keep his gaze anywhere but on me.
Lev gestures toward me, rubbing his throat. “He can’t tell me what went wrong with the shipping, and I need to know now. That’s why I called you here.”
Mikhail curses under his breath and takes my laptop, scrolling through the spreadsheets and all my highlights.
His brows pull together as he scans the data, jaw tight. Then he sighs. “Someone skimmed at the Balkan border. The manifests don’t line up. The delay shows weight differences from the pauses in the system checkpoints. That’s why there’s a holdup.”
Lev presses his hands to his head. “It’s money for the club event. Someone stole from us?”
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like.” Mikhail rubs his jaw, the motion irritated. “This is going to mess things up. We were depending on that cash to clean.”
He’s talking about the big event he’s been planning for months, the one where they’ll wash everything through the club’s systems. It’s not for another month and a half, but it’s going to be massive.
High-profile clients, huge amounts moving through in one night.
Father’s been breathing down his neck about it.
“I know. That’s why I’m worried. This is bad, Mik.”
Mikhail shrugs. “We can get more from the other families under us. Don’t worry about it. Just let me talk to him, and I’ll sort this out.” He pushes the laptop into Lev’s hands and turns to leave.
I can’t stop myself from staring after him, disbelief flooding through me. He didn’t even look at me. My gaze drops to the floor, and I exhale slowly, the ache in my chest spreading.
“What a mess,” Lev grits out, walking away from me without another glance.
A sudden burst of gunfire explodes through the space, and I jerk my head up, heart slamming against my ribs. Bullets.
The sound is deafening, echoing off metal and concrete.
I take off running toward where Mikhail left, sprinting through the warehouse.
The door hangs open, and I see him throwing himself behind a car as an SUV unloads rounds at the building.
Bullets hit everywhere, metal pinging, concrete cracking, glass shattering.
Dead guards line the security gate, blood pooling beneath them.
The SUV fires more shots at Mikhail’s position and then peels out, tires screeching.
My lungs seize. He could have been hit.
He rolls around the car and sprints back inside as they take off. I’m already moving toward him, needing to see for myself that he’s okay. He finally looks my way but only for a second.
“What was that?” Lev says, breathing hard.
Multiple guards sprint toward the entrance and rush outside, weapons drawn.
More follow behind them, shouting commands I can’t make out over the chaos.
Port workers scatter in every direction, some ducking behind shipping containers while others run for cover inside the warehouse.
A few shoulder past us without looking, too focused on getting away from whatever’s happening outside.
“I don’t know. As soon as I walked outside, they just tried to light me up. I’m fine,” Mikhail says, still trying to catch his breath.
Closing the distance between us, I reach out before I can stop myself.
My fingers graze his, and he stops breathing. His eyes lock on mine, and we’re frozen there staring at each other, the air thick between us. His thumb sweeps across mine, feather-light and gone in a second, before he pulls away and breaks eye contact.
“Who the fuck would be stupid enough to hit the port?” Lev snaps, running a hand over his head.
Workers keep running past our position, some stumbling in their panic. One slams into my shoulder hard enough to spin me around before disappearing around the corner. The frenzy is disorienting, everyone moving at once with no clear direction except away from the entrance.
“Did you see anyone?”
“They all had masks on. Uzis, looked professional.” Mikhail pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are you going to report this to Father? Because I’m staying far away from him when he finds out.”
Lev glares at him. “I can’t deal with him being pissed at me. I’m barely holding it together as it is.”
“I have so much to do with my club, Lev. It’s your warehouse.”
“Fine. Can you at least pour some vodka on my casket at the funeral?”
Mikhail rolls his eyes. “Calm down, drama queen. Just call him and tell him what happened. We’ll figure it out. Get the security footage, and we can track the plates through the city.” He glances at me. “Danya can look into it for us.”
An officer rushes up to Lev and leans in close, whispering something urgent while holding up an iPad.
The screen flashes blue and red, but I can’t see what’s on it from this angle.
Around us, workers are still running and scattering, some shouting to each other in Russian and English.
The commotion at the front entrance gets louder, more chaotic, and I can hear multiple voices yelling commands.
The guard’s expression is tense when he speaks loud enough for us to hear. “Police and press are on their way. ETA five minutes.”
Lev’s jaw tightens, and he glances at the iPad again before looking up at everything unfolding around the port. His brows pull together. “You don’t think they’re going to hit your club event, do you? The opening?”
“Security will be tripled for the event. Different setup entirely.”
“We had security here too.”
“The club will have everyone there. They’d have to be insane.”
“Or confident they can pull it off.” Lev crosses his arms. “Maybe we should postpone.”
“No.” Mikhail’s voice goes tight. “We’re not postponing. That’s exactly what they want. We’re not canceling.”
“I’m calling Father. And doubling security here.”
Lev picks up his phone and starts making calls, yelling at someone about incompetent security and how did they get this close. He hangs up and throws his hands in the air. “You two need to leave. Now. Daniil, take your car and go home together.”
Mikhail shakes his head. “I’m not going home. I’ll get one of the drivers to take me to Ozero instead.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until it stings and stare down at the floor. It hurts watching him pull away, knowing he doesn’t want to come home with me, that whatever we had is already over.
“Whatever. Just leave before the press shows up. We don’t need this plastered everywhere. We need to find out who this was,” Lev says, already walking away, barking orders at the guards.
Mikhail mutters something and walks off toward where the guards are gathering, not even glancing back at me. My heart shatters watching him go, each step he takes away from me breaking off another piece until there’s nothing left.