Chapter 17 #2
"Brother, do not be mad. We were playing tag. I was it. Chloe ran, she slipped on the wet grass, her foot went sideways, and Pyotr helped her sit and he was checking if it was broken. I told him to. So if you have to be mad, be mad at me."
She delivered all of that in one breath. She was very proud of it.
Chloe's eyes were on my face. She knew. I could see her clocking my jaw, the line of my shoulders, the place my hand was. She did not say a word. She just gave me a small, careful smile.
I looked at Pyotr.
"Hands off, and back to your post."
He was already up. "Yes, sir."
He went. Fast. The gravel crunched under his boots and then it did not and then it was just us.
Rhea folded her arms. She tilted her head at me. She narrowed her eyes the way she had seen Alek do.
"Are you jealous, brother?"
"No."
I was. The word in my mouth tasted like the lie it was. My sister knew. My woman knew. The bare trees knew. I was twenty-nine years old, and I had been jealous of a kid named Pyotr for the eight seconds it had taken me to cross the path.
I crouched and looked at her foot. The arch was a little pink. No swelling yet. The ankle was fine. I set it down gently and stood.
"Wait here."
I went back inside. To the kitchen. I wrapped ice in a clean dish towel, came back out, crouched again, and pressed the towel against her arch myself. I held it there. I did not look at my sister while I did it.
"Sorry, Chloe," Rhea said. Small voice now. Real one.
"Why?" Chloe shifted on the bench. "I'm having fun. Don't be sorry. I haven't run around outside like that in months. My lungs feel new."
"Next time be careful," I said.
Chloe leaned forward. She kissed my cheek. Slow. Warm. Right next to the small scar at my temple, on purpose.
"Yes, sir."
She said it light. She said it like a joke. She also said it the way she said it in the dark of our room when she meant it, and she knew exactly what she was doing, and the back of my neck went hot for a completely different reason this time.
I cleared my throat. I adjusted the ice.
Rhea looked between us with the expression of a child who had decided the adults were broken and needed a project.
"Okay. No more running. Brother has the face. We will play a board game. I will get the box. Chloe stays sitting. Brother holds the ice. I am the boss."
"You are the boss," Chloe agreed.
"I am the boss," Rhea confirmed, and ran.
She came back with three boxes stacked higher than her head and dropped them on the bench.
We moved inside to the den off the kitchen, where the fire was already going.
I carried Chloe. She made a fuss about it, then put both arms around my neck and went quiet.
Rhea spread the board on the low table and assigned us pieces with the seriousness of a general assigning regiments.
I had not laughed like that in I do not know how long.
Rhea cheated. She cheated openly. She cheated with the confidence of a woman who has been getting away with it her whole life, which at seven is technically her whole life.
She moved her piece two extra spaces and dared either of us to comment.
Chloe caught her every time. Chloe did not turn her in.
Chloe just raised an eyebrow, let her think she had won, then took the next round so hard Rhea sat back on her heels and said, "Okay. Respect."
I won one round. Then I lost three. Then I stopped trying because watching the two of them argue about whether a card counted as a card if it was face down was funnier than any game I could win.
The ice melted in the towel. I kept holding it to her foot anyway because I had decided I was holding it, and that was that.
She rested her hand on my wrist. Light. Warm.
Her thumb moved across the watch band, found the place underneath where the knuckle scar was, and settled there.
She did not look at me when she did it. She did not have to.
Halfway through a round where Rhea was inventing rules out of pure ambition, my sister stopped. She set her piece down. She looked at us. Just looked. Long enough that Chloe noticed and went still.
"What?" I said.
"I have never seen you smile like that, brother." Rhea's voice was quiet for her. Careful. "She really is your girl."
"Stop talking like you are an adult."
Chloe laughed. The good laugh. The one from her belly she did not give out to many people. She leaned her head against my shoulder.
"He's really my man, Rhea."
Rhea made a face. She made the face. Eyes wide, mouth open, tongue out. She covered her eyes with both hands and then opened her fingers just enough to peek and then closed them again.
"Eww. Eww. Eww. I did not need that. I am a child. Someone call Alek. I have been exposed."
"You are the boss," Chloe reminded her sweetly.
"I am unbossing. I quit. I am going to the kitchen to recover. With cookies. For my trauma."
She marched out with her hand over her eyes, then immediately marched back in to grab the dice because she did not trust either of us with them, then marched back out again.
Chloe was still laughing into my shoulder. I felt it more than I heard it. Her hair smelled like soap and the cold air she had brought in from the garden. The fire popped. The board sat half played between us. The wet spot on my knee from the melted towel was spreading, and I did not care.
I held her closer. I let myself sit in it.
In this room, my woman was warm against my side, my little sister was raiding the kitchen for cookies she had not earned, the fire was doing its job, and the watch on my wrist said it was hours before dark. That was one true thing.
The other true thing was the folder Ivan had closed.
The names inside. The warehouse on the river and the warehouse not on the river.
The cousin, the nephew, the wife. The shipment counts.
The cops on the take. The men who had hurt her.
The men who had tried to take me from her, from this room, from this fire, from the kid who would be back in a minute with crumbs on her chin.
Both were true. They sat side by side in my chest, and they did not cancel out.
I would hold this. And tonight, when Mikhail came for me, I would take the other apart.
Mine. All of it.