Chapter 54 Bastian
BASTIAN
cur·dling: /?k?rdliNG/: verb
I’ve been staring at Harold’s spit on the floor for fuck knows how long. It gleams like gold in the dying light.
My thoughts are everywhere, but they’re headed in the same direction, circling around and around the same fetid, stinking drain. And that direction is this:
There’s only one person who could orchestrate something like this. Only one person with the reach, the connections, the sheer fucking audacity to dismantle three billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure in a matter of days.
That same man is the only person who can fix it.
I pull out my phone with shaking hands and dial a number I swore I’d never call again. He answers on the first ring.
“Bratishka,” Aleksei purrs through the speaker. “I was wondering when you’d reach out.”
“We need to talk.”
“I imagine we do.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Come to The Caged Bird. I’ll be waiting.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there for another moment, bow tie hanging loose around my neck.
My gaze shifts from Harold’s saliva to the spot on the sawdust-covered floor where Eliana and I made love four nights ago.
It was there, right fucking there. The world was so perfect then.
It was ours. She was mine. We’d made it, both of us.
But maybe I was an idiot for ever thinking that I’d get to keep something so nice and pure. You can run and run and run, but you can’t escape what’s in your veins. Some sins can’t be forgiven. Some roots cannot be hacked away.
So I clench my jaw and flex my fists. Then I turn my back on that spot and walk toward the stairs. Each step takes me further and further from the man I’ve spent sixteen years trying to be…
… and closer and closer to the one I’ve always feared I’d become.
At this hour, The Caged Bird is empty.
Except for the man I’ve come to see.
Aleksei sits center stage in the middle of the main room, legs dangling over the edge. He’s got a fresh bottle of vodka and two glasses arranged beside him. “Semyon.” He pats the space beside him. “Sit.”
I don’t move from the doorway. “I’m not staying long.”
“If you say so.” He uncorks the bottle and pours vodka into both glasses. “But at least have a drink with your brother. For old times’ sake.”
I walk over, but I don’t sit beside him. Instead, I stand at the edge of the stage, close enough to take the glass he offers but far enough to maintain the illusion that I’m still in control of this situation.
We both know I’m not.
“You did this,” I begin.
Aleksei’s lips twist into something that might be a smile if it ever reached his eyes. Since it doesn’t, it looks more like a hyena’s smirk. He takes a sip of his vodka and smacks his lips before answering. “Did what, bratishka?”
“Don’t fuck with me. The building. Project Olympus. You gutted it.”
He shrugs. “I told you I needed your restaurants. You said no. So I created a situation where you might reconsider.”
“By destroying three billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure?”
“By showing you what happens when you refuse family.” He sets his glass down on the stage. “I didn’t destroy anything permanently, Semyon. I just… rearranged some things. Made them disappear for a little while.”
“Harold pulled his funding, you know. All of it.”
“Did he?” Aleksei’s eyebrows lift with mock surprise. “How unfortunate.”
The vodka glass trembles in my hand. I want to throw it at his face, watch it shatter against that arrogant nose. But violence is his language, not mine. I resist the urge. For now.
I throw back the shot and drop to a seat next to him. “So this is about punishing me for not toeing the line?”
“Punishing you?” he exclaims. “Oh, God, no, Semyon. No, no, it’s not that at all. You’re my brother. I love you. I’ve said what I wanted from the very start: for all of us to be together again. Side by side, the way it should be.”
“I didn’t spend two decades working my ass off so you could launder blood money through my kitchens, Al.”
“You keep harping on the message. I’m talking about the medium here, brother. The means, not the end. Who gives a fuck about the money? I don’t! I just want my brothers with me.”
“I don’t think you know what that word mean, ‘brothers.’”
“Wrong,” he tuts. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. ‘Brother’ is a bond for life. It’s not something you can turn on and off.”
I flick a hand to shut him up. “Enough with the philosophical bullshit. What do you actually want, Aleksei? Spit it out.”
He rests back on his palms, utterly at ease. “For starters, I want you to stop pretending you’re something you’re not.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m a chef. A businessman. That’s who I am.”
“You’re an Izotov,” he corrects. “You can wear all the Tom Ford suits you want, build all the fancy restaurants, fuck all the pretty girls with their college degrees and their clean hands. But at the end of the day, you’re still the kid who watched me gut a man in the Tolstoy’s kitchen.
That’s in your blood, Semyon. Same as it’s in mine. ”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m not that kid anymore.”
“No?” Aleksei pours himself another shot. “Then why are you here? If you’re really so different, why did you call me?”
I say nothing. He watches me and knows exactly what that means, this fact that I cannot or will not answer. I know what it means, too.
He picks up the bottle and arches a brow. With a sigh, I hold out my glass. He refills it to the top. “I’m not trying to screw you over, you know. Truly, I’m not. It just hurts me to see you deny parts of yourself. It’s not healthy.”
Aleksei reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of his beloved cigarettes. He taps one out into his hand, then, just like with the vodka, offers it to me.
I take it with a grimace.
He lights his cigarette, then raises the flame to mine. The taste of menthol floods my mouth, wiping out the wintergreen gum I always chew.
“Family,” he says as he exhales a long column of smoke, “is everything. We were born into hell, you and me and Sage. You’ve tried your way to pull yourselves out of it, and I’ve tried mine. But it doesn’t have to be so hard. It doesn’t, Semyon. It just doesn’t.”
I take a drag from the cigarette and let the smoke curl out slowly. “I’ll ask one more time, Al: What do you actually want from me?”
He takes his time answering. Another puff on his cigarette, another sip of his drink. “I can have everything put back together by tonight. Every wire, every pipe, every piece of equipment. Like it never happened. If…”
My heart lurches. “If?”
Aleksei reaches into his pocket again. This time, he pulls out a folded piece of paper and extends it toward me. I take it from his fingers.
When I unfold it, I see that it’s a photograph. The man staring back at me is fifty or so, weathered and scowling, with a thick neck and dead eyes. I don’t recognize him, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what Aleksei’s asking me to do.
“You want me to kill him.”
“I want you to prove you’re still my brother.
” Aleksei taps ash from his cigarette into his shot glass.
“This man means nothing to me. He’s a loose end, a nuisance.
I could handle him myself in five minutes.
But I want you to do it. To show me that all this—” He sweeps a hand at my tuxedo, as if that encompasses everything there is to know about the life I’ve chosen.
“—hasn’t made you soft. Prove you’re still the Semyon I pulled out of that freezer. The one I protected.”
“And if I do this,” I say slowly, “you’ll fix Project Olympus? Everything back the way it was?”
“Down to the very last bolt and screw. By tonight. Before your gala even starts.” He smiles. “You’ll have your empire, Semyon. And I’ll have my brother back. What do you say?”
I look out into the gloom of the club as I inhale the cigarette down to the butt. The menthol burns harsh and cold in my throat, familiar in a way I wish it wasn’t.
Aleksei watches me and waits. Patient in the way spiders are patient.
I look down at the photograph again. Dead eyes stare back at me. Some stranger whose life Aleksei wants me to end, just to prove a point.
The old Bastian—Semyon—would’ve done it without hesitation. The price of survival was never too steep to pay. But that’s not who I am anymore. Semyon is dead.
Is he, though? Is he?
I think about Eliana waiting for me right now. In less than two hours, we’re supposed to step into a grand room of our own design and show everyone who’s watching that she is the accomplishment I am most proud of.
I think about everything I’ve built, everything I’ve become.
I think about everything I stand to lose.
I drain the vodka in one swallow and stub out the cigarette on the wooden planks of the stage. Then I fold the photograph and tuck it into my pocket.
“I’ll be in touch.”
Aleksei’s smile spreads. “I knew you’d see reason, bratishka.”
I turn and walk toward the exit. Behind me, I hear my brother pouring himself another drink and the rasp of his lighter as he sparks up another cigarette.
I don’t look back.