Chapter 32 - Alexei
Rei took Marco away and I felt panic.
God fucking damn it.
I was biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. It was a habit I had developed recently, one I hadn’t had before.
Dimitri joined me near the wall. “Are you alright?” he asked.
I looked at him. My cousin. My blood. The heir to the Morozov empire. The man whose father I had killed a while ago.
Okay.
That was a thing that had happened.
In my defense - and I didn’t often bother with defenses because I didn’t care what most people thought of my actions - Ivan had been about to disown Dimitri. For dating Rei. He wanted to strip Dimitri of his position, remove him from the line of succession, and install me in his place.
So hell fucking no.
That was too much work. The Morozov empire was a machine that required constant feeding, constant attention, constant vigilance, and I had neither the patience nor the inclination to provide any of those things.
Right now I couldn’t care less about whatever mafia war was going on.
I was so stressed all the time that my body had started behaving in ways I didn’t recognize.
My heart was in my throat every second of every day.
I couldn’t sleep properly. I couldn’t eat properly.
I couldn’t think about anything except the rhythm of Marco’s pulse under my fingers and the knowledge that the rhythm was getting weaker.
So forgive me for not wanting to take over an empire.
It was the fastest solution. Dimitri remained the heir. I remained the spare.
Worked out fine if you asked me.
Would do it again.
“Do you know where he took him?”
“Probably showing him the garden.”
I arched an eyebrow. “The one I made?”
Dimitri’s head snapped toward me so fast I was surprised his neck didn’t crack.
“The fuck you mean you made?” His voice rose in pitch in that way it did when his pride was being threatened. “You just dug the holes!”
“Yes,” I clicked my tongue. “The hardest part.”
His face was doing the thing where it went red from the neck up. “I planted those flowers. I made it. Say that again and I will kill you.”
“You’ve been saying that since we were seven.”
“And one day I will mean it.”
“Today isn’t that day.”
He glared, then he sighed and switched the subject. “Don’t worry about Marco. He’ll bring him back.”
Dimitri found out about Marco’s condition because he was a certified fucking stalker.
He had gone through Ilya’s stuff and found the files I requested about Marco’s history.
Dimitri didn’t understand boundaries. He was, at his core, a man who believed that everything in his orbit belonged to him.
And then because apparently reading them wasn’t enough, he went to Ilya and started demanding answers.
Ilya, to his credit, didn’t want to tell him anything. He refused to answer, but then Dimitri threatened him with a spider and Ilya spilled everything in under a second.
Not that I cared, but I did tell Dimitri not to tell Rei. He was Marco’s best friend and it was his choice if he wanted to tell him. Dimitri agreed not to tell him because apparently that would make Rei sad and that was unacceptable.
Ilya appeared out of nowhere. He wrapped his hands over our shoulders.
“Helloooo, my favourite boys,” he said, his voice bright as he started yapping about something I was only half listening to.
Dimitri tolerated it for a bit before his patience ran out. He grabbed Ilya’s wrist and pulled his arm away from his shoulder. Ilya winced.
I turned my head and looked at him.
Dimitri hadn’t grabbed him hard. The kind of contact that shouldn’t have caused pain in any normal, healthy person.
Dimitri noticed too.
His hand was still on Ilya’s wrist, and he looked down at it, then up at Ilya’s face, his expression shifting from irritation to something more focused. “What was that?” he asked.
Ilya took a step back, his face arranged itself into an expression of studied confusion.
“What was what?”
Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. He reached out, grabbed Ilya’s arm again, and pulled it back to the front.
Ilya resisted, which wasn’t something he did, because Ilya folded under pressure but this time he resisted, his muscles tensing, his body leaning backward, his free hand coming up to push at Dimitri’s grip.
Dimitri held firm and squeezed Ilya’s wrist.
Not hard, but Ilya’s face scrunched.
His eyes squeezed shut, his mouth pressing into a tight line, his whole expression contracting around pain he was trying very, very hard not to show.
He tried to pull away. “Let go,” he said, and his voice had changed. Dimitri released his wrist. But only so he could grab his sleeve.
He rolled the fabric up.
My eyes went a little wider than usual.
Ilya’s arm was a mess.
From the wrist up to the elbow - and possibly above, the sleeve hadn’t been rolled high enough to tell - the skin was covered in bruises.
Layer upon layer of them, in various stages of healing, a map of damage painted in shades of yellow and blue and purple.
Some were fresh, others were older, and between the bruises, there were cuts.
“What the fuck is this?” Dimitri’s voice shook a bit.
Ilya didn’t answer.
His eyes weren’t looking at either of us. They were looking at his front.
I followed his gaze.
It led to Kento.
He was standing a few feet away from us. Not close enough to be part of the conversation, his eyes were on Ilya’s arm.
I had never seen Kento show much emotion. He was often smiling and threatening people with that sweet tone, but it was all very surface-level. I had never seen him show true emotion. Even when he was angry before he would smile and make fun of the situation in a very deranged way.
He was a bit similar to me, but not really.
We both didn’t show emotions in normal ways.
For a long time I thought I didn’t have them so there was nothing to show, so my control came from the void, but his came from somewhere else - as if he was keeping something enormous locked behind a very small door.
He wasn’t a cold wall like me for sure. I always reacted with boredom; he reacts with…
disinterest? I can’t find the word for it.
He just seems to not care for anything in this world, even his own life.
I mean, Ilya stabbed him once and the idiot laughed like a maniac and said to do it again.
So this expression is something I hadn’t seen on him before.
His pupils blown wide, the irises swallowed by the expansion.
His jaw was clenched so hard I could see the muscles jumping beneath the skin.
His nostrils were flared, his breathing visible, his whole body coiled tight like something about to spring.
He looked like an animal.
Absolute rage lived in his face when he looked at Ilya’s bruises.
Ilya swallowed. He ripped his hand free from Dimitri’s grip. “Mind your fucking business, Dimitri,” he snapped. “I got into a fight. No big deal, alright?”
The lie was so transparent.
The marks on Ilya’s arm weren’t the result of a single confrontation. They were the result of sustained, ongoing harm, and I’m pretty sure it was one-sided.
Then he was rushing out and I knew it wasn’t a good idea for either of us to follow him right now.
Dimitri and I stood there, side by side. “Do you think it’s his father?”
Dimitri was still staring at the door Ilya had disappeared through, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His face had gone through several expressions in the past thirty seconds.
“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.” He paused. “And I’ll fucking end them.”
I called Ilya but he didn’t answer. I should probably look more into it.
I was usually the person who handled things but I couldn’t because right now, the only thing I could think about was the door Marco had walked through and the minutes that had passed since and the way my chest tightened every second he wasn’t in my line of sight.
Ilya’s bruises would have to wait.
When the party was over, I drove Marco to my apartment.
He was quiet in the car. He was looking out the window, his curls falling into his face, his green ribbon slightly askew, his hand resting on his thigh in that familiar position that meant his chest was hurting and he didn’t want me to know.
When we got to the apartment, I parked and we went inside.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me. He reached for my collar, pulled me down, and he dragged my lips to his.
I widened my eyes.
He never initiated something this passionate.
My hand came up to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his curls as I deepened the kiss. My other hand found his waist, then his hip, then the small of his back, pulling him closer, eliminating the distance between our bodies until there was nothing left.
I put both hands under his thighs, lifting him off the ground, his legs wrapping around my waist, his arms locking around my neck. I carried him across the entryway toward the nearest wall and slammed him against it.
Not with the same roughness I normally would.
That was the thing I had to be careful of now. My tongue was tracing the seam of his lips until he opened for me, until the inside of his mouth was mine and his breath was mine.
His fingers tightened in my hair and his hips shifted against mine.
“Fuck me,” he whispered. “Please.”
I nearly growled. “You beg so pretty, Malyshka,” I said against his mouth. “Say it again.”
“Please,” he whispered.
“Again.”
“Please. Please. Please—”
His voice cracked on the last one. It felt like he was asking me to take him apart and put him back together, and I wasn’t sure I had the skill for the second part, but I was willing to destroy myself trying.
“You want me to fuck you.”
He nodded. “Yes. Please.”
“Here?” I asked. “Against this wall?”
A shiver ran through him. Full-body. It started at his shoulders and traveled down through his chest, ending somewhere at the place where his legs were wrapped around my waist. “Yes,” he breathed.
“Or in the bed?”
“Anywhere. I don’t care. Just—please.”
The desperation in his voice was making it very difficult for me to think.