Chapter 24 #2
“I’m sure Dominik had his reasons,” I say, forcing my voice to steady even as resentment curls hot and tight under my ribs.
“One of which is that he would kill your brother on my orders in a second, and then do whatever it takes to ensure you never found out so he can keep fucking you,” he says with the amount of confidence I know I’ll never possess.
I don’t clarify that we haven’t crossed that line yet, mostly because then I would have to admit that I wouldn’t ever if Dominik killed Archer.
Would Dominik actually do what his brother claims? Yes, possibly, to spare my grief. Still, I’m furious at him for keeping crucial information from me. Without trust between us, how can there ever be anything else?
“So, you would keep Archer alive and not torture him?” I ask Gavriil. Would he really take the burden off Dominik so I can keep looking at him the way I have been?
“Cross my heart,” he replies and even makes the gesture with his finger over where his heart would be if he had one. “Archer would have to prove his loyalty to us, but not a hair on his head would be harmed unless he sold us out again.”
“And Dominik?” I breathe. His name tastes dangerous in front of this man, like saying it costs something too expensive to pay. “What happens to him if I agree to your…terms?” I ask this before I even question what future awaits me if I accept his offer.
“I do not remove him as my right hand,” he says.
“I do not shame him in front of our people. I do not cut away the parts of his power that require him to stand still and obey me like a child. He keeps his position as underboss. He keeps his blood.” The pause is deliberate.
“I would prefer my brother not bleed out in Jersey because he’s trying to prove something to me or trying to protect you. ”
It’s manipulation as neat as origami. Gavriil folds my love for my brother and my fear for Dominik into a paper plane and asks if I trust it to actually fly for more than a blink of his eyes.
My heart does a trick where it speeds up and slows all at once.
I imagine walking out the door with Gavriil. I imagine how Dominik would react…
No, I can’t.
Not even for Archer.
Dominik and I don’t deserve to be punished for my brother’s mistakes. Archer made the decisions he thought were in his best interest. Now, I have to make mine.
“I won’t go with you,” I say, and I don’t recognize my own voice. “Not like that.”
Something in Gavriil’s expression changes, not anger exactly. It’s disappointment’s colder cousin. He inhales as if patience is the one strength he doesn’t possess. “Pride,” he says. “You will be surprised at how expensive it can be.”
“That’s not what this is, and I feel sorry for you if you can’t understand that.”
He laughs, a brief, dry sound that’s unpleasant. “If you think this ends with a happily ever after, then I feel sorry for you. How do you think you could ever love the man who will be forever stained by your brother’s blood, Alina?”
“He wouldn’t do that. Dominik wouldn’t kill Archer and keep it from me, not even for you.”
“I can see why Dominik likes you,” he says simply.
“You have him thinking that there’s still a speck of a good man in him.
But that part doesn’t truly exist. He’s not the knight in shining armor in this fairy tale.
He’s nothing but what the king orders him to be.
And today, that’s the king’s executioner. ”
I hate that my skin warms under that thought. “You can’t manipulate me.”
“No,” he says gravely, “but I can manipulate him. That is your problem.”
“He’s your brother. Your own flesh and blood,” I grit out. “And you’re willing to destroy him like this?”
“Given your brother’s latest track record, I don’t think you have room to talk when it comes to sibling dynamics,” Gavriil replies evenly before leaning a degree closer. “I’d never sell my brother out like yours has done to you. That’s the difference between us.”
His words echo in my head, the weight of them pressing down on my chest more and more.
What’s messed up is that he might be right. He’s a manipulative ass to Dominik, but I don’t see him stabbing his brother in the back the way Archer has done to me. Gavriil might torture his brother, but I don’t think he’d ever trade him away.
He doesn’t say anything else, just stands too close to me, close enough that I can feel his breath along my cheek, like he’s trying to intimidate me.
But I’m not scared of him. The fear clawing up my throat isn’t about Gavriil.
My body’s response terrifies me more than his threats. I don’t know what scares me worse—the man in front of me, or the part of me that doesn’t recoil from him fast enough.
The door suddenly flies open without a knock. The room warms a few degrees when Dominik enters it. I didn’t even hear the elevator arrive because I was so consumed by Gavriil.
He takes in the room fast—me, his brother, the small distance between us—and something in him goes very still.
He looks at me for one breath, and I feel it in my body like his hands on me: Are you all right?
I nod before I decide to nod. He doesn’t smile or look relieved.
He doesn’t seem to know what he wants to do.
“Little brother,” Gavriil says, and he makes the words sound like a lesson, a degradation. “You’ve been busy. Too busy to take my calls.”
“Say what you came to say,” Dominik returns, stepping between us as naturally as breathing. He smells like steel and a hint of the garage that still clings to him no matter how many floors he rides. His back brushes my chest, and my pulse drops and spikes. I take a step back.
And it hits me, nauseating and electric — that I didn’t step back from Gavriil until Dominik walked in.
Gavriil considers his brother. The resemblance between them isn’t just in their faces; it’s in the way they command a room. “I came to collect progress,” he says. “You sent me a messenger instead of answers.”
“I sent you what you wanted,” Dominik says evenly. “Half of the money.”
“Not quite,” Gavriil grits out.
“Close enough.”
“Where are the rest of my guns?” Gavriil asks.
Dominik doesn’t blink. “On their way home.”
“And Archer?”
“On a short leash,” Dominik says. The subtle throb of the wound beneath his shirt must hurt when he lifts his chin like that. He doesn’t let it show. “Twenty-four hours.”
“Not your twenty-four,” Gavriil says, and the civility leaves the room.
“Mine.” He takes a small step forward, and the space between them flees in fear.
“You don’t get another week. You don’t get another excuse.
You will bring me Archer, the rest of the money, and all inventory.
In one day.” He lets the words fall like coins stacked until they topple.
“Or you will bring me her.” His eyes cut to me so cleanly I feel it like cold air on an open wound.
“If you bring neither, you will be removed as my second, and I will give the position to a man who knows what to do with it.”
My mouth opens and closes, and nothing dignified comes out. “You can’t—” I start, because even now some small part of me still believes in rules.
“I can,” Gavriil says, not to me, but to the world at large. He returns his gaze to Dominik. “Tomorrow. Noon.”
The sound that comes out of Dominik isn’t a sound. It’s a pressure change. “No.”
“You can keep only one thing if you fail: your pride,” Gavriil says, softer. He’s telling a prophecy and a fact at once. “Choose carefully, little brother.”
“I’ve already made my choice,” Dominik says, and stops himself. The danger in the sentence is of the kind that leads to funerals. He swallows it. When he speaks again, his voice is more measured. “You’re done in my house.”
For a second, I think Gavriil might enjoy that remark. He smooths his jacket as if anyone but him could have wrinkled it. “Don’t make me teach you the price of disobedience that neither of you will enjoy.” His gaze clips mine one last time. “Think about my offer, Alina.”
I don’t want to know which offer he means—the selfish one, where I walk out and save a pair of men I don’t know how to choose between, or the cruel one, where he takes me because he can. I give him nothing. He smiles and accepts it as if it is a gift to him anyway and finally leaves.
At some point, my hand had found the back of Dominik’s jacket and has been clenching it in my fist hard enough to ache. I let go. The ache stays.
“You shouldn’t have—” I start and don’t know how to end the sentence. Stood up to him. Said no. Put yourself between us like you could hold back a hurricane with a promise.
“Look at me,” Dominik turns around and says, voice low. It isn’t a command so much as a request that knows it’ll be answered. I look. There’s anger in his gray eyes. Underneath it is something else, worse. Something that looks like fear turned into resolve.
“He’ll take everything from you,” I whisper. “He’ll take your position. He’ll take me. He’ll take—”
“He won’t,” he says, with a certainty that should comfort but terrifies me instead. He steps closer, and closer again, until the heat of him changes the air between us. “Because I won’t allow it.”
His hand lifts, hovers a fraction from my cheek—one heartbeat of permission—and then his fingertips slide along my jaw, slow, deliberate, like he’s memorizing every inch.
I should step back. I should say a hundred sensible things like I don’t want to start a war between him and his brother.
My skin answers him before my mouth can.
Heat spreads across my chest then down my stomach.
His lips meet mine, soft at first before turning possessive, demanding entry. I open for him, and shiver at the brush of his tongue along mine, promising things it shouldn’t.
“Dom…” I breathe out, wishing that I could collapse into him and leave everything else behind.
Dominik presses me up against the nearest wall, one hand resting near my head to cage me in. He kisses me harder like he has something to prove.