23. Artem
Artem
The city is going grey by the time I get back.
It’s just before sunrise, and everything looks washed out and still. The streets are empty. I’ve been up for twenty hours, and I feel none of it.
I take the elevator up and know my brother is still awake because Misha has never gone to bed before the sun came up if there was vodka available.
There is always vodka available in my apartment, and he helps himself to it the way he helps himself to everything I have.
I find him on the couch in his boxers with a glass in one hand and his phone in the other. Gold chain catching one of the lamps, gold watch on his wrist, gold ring on his right hand.
He looks up when I walk in, enough vodka in him to smooth out any rough edges the night has left behind.
“You’re back early,” he says cheerfully and gets to his feet. “Good night?”
I cross the room in four steps and hit him.
Not a warning shot or a controlled measure.
I pull my fist back and then put it square into his face with everything I have behind it.
Misha sprawls sideways back onto the couch, the glass leaving his hand, spilling vodka across my floor.
His gold ring catches the light when he pulls his fingers from his face and looks at the blood on them, stunned.
“What the fuck—“
“Get up.”
He slowly pulls himself back onto the couch and looks at me with disbelief that settles into recognition.
He touches his nose carefully, assessing the damage, and has the sense not to say anything.
I stand in the middle of the living room and look at my brother.
The entitlement.
The gold jewelry.
The boxers.
The split at the bridge of his nose that’s already swelling.
He looks like what he is: a man who has spent his life inside the walls someone else built. He’s never once concerned himself with consequences.
“Where’s the woman?” I saw her on my security camera earlier.
Misha blinks. “She’s—“
“Get her out,” I growl, and he opens his mouth. “Now, Misha. I’m not going to say it again.”
Something in my voice gets through in a way the fist apparently didn’t, because he gets up without another word and disappears down the hall.
I hear a door open, a brief muffled exchange, and then the sound of the elevator being called.
A few minutes later, it’s just us.
I sit in the chair across from him. He settles back onto the couch, blood on his upper lip, waiting to see which version of me is in front of him.
The one who fixes things or the one who ends them.
Tonight, he’s going to meet both.
“You hit her,” I say evenly, and he doesn’t deny it.
“You pulled a gun on her,” I continue. “In her home. You brought another woman into her space, and you put your hands on her. You hit her hard enough that she’s going to have a black eye by morning. And then you left.”
“Artem—“
“I’m not asking you to explain it,” I ground out. “I’m telling you what you did, so we’re both clear on what we’re talking about.”
Misha looks at the floor.
The gold chain hangs against his chest, and I look at it for a moment and think about when I bought it for him.
Three years ago, for his birthday, because he’d seen it in a window and mentioned it once, and I remembered.
That’s how it’s always worked between us. He mentions things once, and I remember them and make them happen, and he just accepts it.
I’ve been cleaning up after Misha since I was a child.
This is the last time.
“You need to leave,” I say.
He looks up, startled. “What?”
“The city. Tonight. By ten at the latest.”
He stares at me. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m going to have papers made up. New name, new plates, and a car waiting. I’ll put enough money in an account to start somewhere. That’s everything I can do for you.”
“Artem.” His voice has changed as the vodka confidence drains from it. “You can’t be serious. Because of one night—“
“Cady Gallagher’s brothers will see her face in the morning.
” I let that sit for a second. “And when they do, Killian Gallagher will make a decision that has nothing to do with strategy or alliance or anything Benedikt wants. It’ll be personal.
And Rian will let him. I’m not going to war with the Gallagher family because you can’t keep your hands to yourself. ”
“Then protect me,” His voice is younger and more stripped down than I’ve heard in a long time. “You’ve always protected me. That’s what you do.”
“Not this time.”
“Benedikt—“
“I’m not going to bring Benedikt into this, and you won’t, either.
What do you think he’ll do when he finds out you’re three million dollars in debt to Lucas Manifold?
You think he’ll look at that and decide you’re worth the trouble?
” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “I’ve kept that from him. That’s the last thing I’m keeping.”
Misha sits on my couch in his boxers, looking every bit like a man with nowhere left to go.
That’s because he doesn’t have anywhere left to go.
He never built anything. Every room he’s stood in comfortably has been mine or Benedikt’s. Every connection has been borrowed, every safety net woven by someone else’s hands. He’s thirty-one years old, and if I pulled every thread I’ve stitched into his life, there would be nothing left.
I let it continue because he’s my brother, and because it was easier than the alternative. Each time I thought about cutting the cord, I’d remember something from when we were kids, and I’d give it one more month, and one more month after that.
No more months.
“Don’t bring that girl with you,” I tell him. “She’s a liability, and she’s not your problem to take with you. She goes back to whatever she was doing before tonight, and she doesn’t hear from you again.”
He nods once, small and automatic.
“Pack light. One bag. The less you take, the faster you can move, and the better your chances.” I stand. “Everything you need will be on the counter within an hour. Don’t use your phone after you walk out the door. Don’t contact anyone you know here.”
“Artem—“
“Anyone, Misha. This is your only chance for survival.”
“You’re really not going to cover for me.” The reality of the situation is hitting him hard.
“No.”
“What is this about?” He looks at me, suspiciously, and he has every right to. We’ve never fought or come to these kinds of terms over a woman.
“What do you mean, what is this about?” I push back with annoyance. “You hit—”
“She means something to you.”
My eyes narrow. “That’s what you want to focus on? Not the fact that you’ll be a dead man if you don’t get out of town?”
He grunts. “Will I be able to come back?”
I stand there, thinking about the apartment he’s lived in for two years and the thousand small things I’ve done so quietly he never had to notice them being done.
I think about his split nose, a bruise blooming across a face that didn’t deserve it, the three million dollars in debt, a gun underneath Cady Gallagher’s chin and everything that came after.
I think about how much I’m going to miss my brother.
Then I think about how he could possibly grow up from this.
“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the truth. “I’ll contact you when you can.”
“How?”
“Easy. Just don’t get yourself killed.”
And then I walk out of my place, knowing it’s the last time I will see my brother.