Chapter 60 Bastian #2
Now, I understand it was just the first cage he built for me. He decided who I got to be. What I got to know. Which parts of the family legacy I was allowed to touch and which parts he’d handle alone, noble fucking martyr that he is.
My palm presses harder against the steel until my knuckles ache.
I’m not a boy anymore.
I’m no longer scared.
And I’m done letting Aleksei Izotov decide my fate.
I tear myself away from the freezer and finish my work.
The final canister of paint thinner glugs out across the chef’s station, pooling across the stainless steel, dripping down onto the floor where it mingles with acetone and propane residue.
The fumes burn my sinuses. That’s a good thing.
It means the mixture is volatile enough to catch fast.
I fish a matchbook from a drawer and try to strike one, but my broken fingers fumble with the cardboard. I drop it, curse, bend to pick it up again. “Light, you stupid motherfu—”
The front door crashes open.
The sound booms through the building. Heavy footsteps. And then a voice I’d know anywhere, even in hell:
“SEMYON!”
That’s Aleksei’s roar. He found the bodies. He knows what I chose.
I don’t bother hiding. I walk out of the kitchen and into the main dining room, where moonlight streams in to make this all look like it’s been dipped in confectioner’s sugar. The match sits ready in my damaged hand. The smell of gasoline chokes the air.
I stand in the doorway and wait for my brother to find me.
Aleksei rounds the corner, flanked by two men with guns already drawn. But I barely notice the guards. I see only my brother. He’s unhinged. I can see it in the wild whites of his eyes, the way his chest heaves beneath his tailored coat. For the first time in my life, Aleksei Izotov looks afraid.
He stops short when he sees the mountain of wooden fuel I’ve piled up for my fire. “You’re making a mistake,” Aleksei warns. “Put that down. We can still fix this.”
I cough up blood as I shake my head. “There’s nothing left to fix, Al. You made sure of that.”
His guards shift uneasily, guns trained on me, but they don’t fire. They’re waiting for orders. And Aleksei hasn’t given them yet because he knows—he knows—that the second a bullet enters my body, this match is hitting the floor.
“I gave you a way out,” Aleksei says, taking a careful step forward. His hands are raised, palms out, like he’s approaching a spooked animal. “Why couldn’t you just take it?”
“Because I finally understand something.” I adjust my weight, match still poised to strike. “You don’t get to decide who I am anymore. You don’t get to lock me in freezers and call it protection. You don’t get to threaten the people I love and call it family.”
The first guard makes the mistake of rushing me.
But even nine-tenths broken like I am, I’m still better than him.
My good hand snatches the chef’s knife from the prep station I’d been leaning against and hurls it.
The throw is sloppy, telegraphed, fucked by pain and exhaustion.
But he’s too close and too eager, and the blade buries itself in the soft hollow of his throat.
He goes down, hands clawing at the handle.
The second guard swings his gun toward me. I duck behind the stainless-steel counter and snatch up a cast-iron pan. I wait, and when he rounds the corner in pursuit, I swing. It connects with his temple with a haunting crack. Something caves in. He crumbles to the floor.
And then it’s just us.
Brothers.
Enemies.
Whatever the fuck we are now.
Aleksei stares at me across the wreckage of his men, and for one strange moment, I see the boy he used to be.
Then I blink and it disappears.
That boy died a long time ago.
Maybe he never existed at all.
“You were supposed to leave.” His hands are still raised, but I see him checking the angles and waiting for the right moment to pull the gun off his hip. “We had a deal, Semyon. I gave you your freedom.”
But I’m done bantering with him. We’ve had all the conversations we’re ever going to have. The time to talk is over. The time to act is now.
So I strike the match.
The flame catches, small but hungry, dancing between my ruined fingers. Aleksei’s eyes go wide.
“Put it down,” he says. “Semyon, I’m warning you—”
I drop it on the puddle of gasoline at my feet.
At the same time, Aleksei lunges for me. His hand closes around my collar just as the match hits the floor—and the world ignites.
Heat roils outward in a ravenous wave. Aleksei’s momentum carries us both backward, crashing through a prep table. Pans crash. A knife block topples. An edge of hard metal clips my shoulder as we roll across the floor, locked together, brothers in the truest and most terrible sense.
His gun is out now. I see the black muzzle swing toward my face, see his finger tighten on the trigger—
But I’m already inside his guard.
My broken fingers find his wrist and twist, grinding bone against bone with a strength born of pure desperation. Aleksei screams—a sound I’ve never heard him make, not once in all our years of blood and violence. The gun skitters away into the spreading flames.
We scramble across the floor, punching, clawing, biting. The freezer door looms behind us, that black steel mouth waiting to guzzle one or both of us.
We grapple like two dogs in a pit. I sink my teeth into his forearm when he tries to choke me.
I drive my elbow into his ribs, his gut, his fucking kidneys.
When his fist connects with my jaw and sends stars exploding across my vision, I don’t go down.
I headbutt him instead, feeling his nose crunch beneath my forehead.
The pain in my scalp is nothing compared to the satisfaction of his blood spraying across my face.
He’s stronger. Fresher. Less broken.
But I’m meaner.
I’m a wounded animal backed into the last corner of the last room of the last house on earth, and I will chew through my own leg before I let him win.
We crash against the freezer door. The impact reverberates through my spine. Aleksei’s hands find my throat, but I jam my thumbs into his eye sockets until he releases me with a howl. I slam his head against the steel once, twice, three times, until his legs buckle.
“You should have let me go,” I intone, pinning him there with my body weight. “You should have let us all go.”
A meat cleaver glints on the floor, knocked loose during our chaos. I snatch it up with my good hand.
Aleksei’s eyes go wide. “Semyon, wait—”
I bring it down on his dominant hand.
The blade severs through bone and tendon. Aleksei’s scream tears through the smoke-choked air. His severed hand lies on the concrete, fingers still curled like they’re grasping for something that’s already gone.
I hook my arms under his and drag him backward. He’s heavy, heavier than I remember, dead weight now that shock has stolen the battle from his limbs. Blood trails behind us in a dark smear across the floor.
The freezer door groans when I wrench it open. Cold air billows out, a mercy after the growing inferno at our backs. I haul him inside and dump him against the far wall, watching him sag pitifully beneath the shelves.
Then I step back out and seal the door.
The poetic justice isn’t lost on me. Aleksei, trapped in the same cold dark he once condemned me to. Bleeding and alone while the world burns outside.
His good hand pounds against the steel. “You can’t do this!” The scream is muffled but desperate. “I’m your brother!”
I press my palm flat against the cold metal. It vibrates with each futile impact. “No,” I say. “You’re not.”
I let my hand fall and turn to survey the damage.
It’s spreading fast. Fire licks up the walls, crawling across the ceiling beams, devouring everything I built.
The heat and smoke claw at my lungs, but I take both like penance as I stand there in the sweltering kitchen, watching Project Olympus begin its transformation from monument to pyre.
Behind me, muffled by steel and the growing din, Aleksei keeps screaming.
“I’m leaving you now, bratishka,” I tell him softly. I don’t know if he can hear me or if he cares, but I keep talking anyway. “Whoever finds you first—the cops or the flames or the devil himself—I hope they have more mercy on you than you ever had for anyone else in this life. Goodbye, Aleksei.”
I turn away and walk toward the exit. The building groans around me. Smoke billows thick and black, stinging my eyes, filling my mouth with ash.
But through it all, I see her face. Eliana’s face. The curve of her smile.
I see my daughter’s hands cupping a tiny green frog.
I see a family waiting for me.
I stumble out through a side door just as the roof begins to buckle. The cold air hits my face like a kiss from God. Behind me, Project Olympus roars its death song—timber cracking, glass exploding, the whole beautiful structure collapsing into itself with a sound like the world ending.
I make it maybe twenty feet before my legs give out.
The dirt comes up to meet me. I land hard on my back, staring up at a sky that’s turned orange from the flames. Smoke billows in thick black columns and blots out the stars. From not too far away, sirens begin their approach. It’s too late to save the building. Maybe just in time to save me.
Or maybe not.
I don’t know if I care anymore.
So many things are broken inside me. But there’s also something else happening beneath the agony. A loosening. Like a fist I’ve been clenching for thirty-five years finally uncurling.
Darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision. I don’t fight it.
Whatever comes next, I’m finally free.