My legs shake as I stare at the gruesome scene in front of me.
I never expected there would be a day when Yuri—no, Anton—would be torturing Maksim.
He’s his best friend.
Or, more accurately, was his best friend.
If I’m piecing things together correctly, then maybe everything with his friendship with Maksim was also a façade.
Like the whole Yuri persona Anton was immersed in for years.
My brother spins around, his muscles tensing beneath his shirt. A harsh look turns his eyes to a green that resembles a haunted mountain. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I should be the one to ask you that.” I storm toward them, hiding my gun in the process.
Maksim’s good eye widens as I approach them, even as he struggles to hold his body up by grabbing the chains. “Sasha…?”
His murmured question stabs me in the chest. I expected him to be shocked at my gender switch, especially since he was against my leaving the Morozov family. However, I didn’t think it’d hit him to this extent.
He looks so betrayed, so…distraught.
Anton slides his attention between him and me before he zeroes in on who could safely be considered his ex-friend. His jaw clenches, and his eyes blaze in a way I haven’t witnessed before.
No.
I actually have, when he inexplicably got angry whenever Maksim was acting familiar with me or others. But those were mere hints of his bottled feelings—this, however, is pure rage.
“You’re a girl?” Maksim asks in a faint, uncharacteristic tone.
He was always the loud, untamed one, but now, he looks like a kicked puppy with wounds all over his body. Literally and figuratively.
“She is.” My brother gets in his face. “She was a woman all along, but you believed she was a man like a fucking fool. Intelligence was never your strongest skill.”
“You shut the fuck up!” Maksim lunges against his bindings. “This is none of your business—”
His words are cut off when Anton backhands him hard and fast. The slap of flesh against flesh echoes in the silent air worse than a whip. It’s not a punch, but it feels so much worse, judging from the way Maksim freezes up.
“Anton!” I grab onto his arm. “What’s wrong with you? Let him go!”
“Let him go?” he repeats slowly, menacingly even. “He led the men who attacked our family not too long ago.”
“I’m sure there’s more to it. Besides, he didn’t know they were our family.”
“This is why you never could’ve won against Kirill.” He gets in my face. “You’re naïve and always try to see the situation from an angle that doesn’t exist.”
My throat fills with nausea, and my limbs tremble, but I still stare at my brother in his damn unfeeling eyes. “The man you’re torturing to within an inch of his life is my friend. He was also your best friend for years unless you have a split personality that made you forget everything that happened when you were Yuri.”
“He’s Kirill’s guard.”
“He’s Maks.” I extend my palm. “Give me the keys.”
“You know, this is exactly why Papa sheltered you. He knew that you would let your emotions lead you in everything.”
“I’d rather have those emotions than live like an empty shell. So unless you’re going to chain me up to the ceiling, too, give me the damn keys.”
We glare at each other for what seems like ages, neither of us willing to back down. Finally, Anton reaches into his pocket and produces the keys, but he doesn’t hand them over. Instead, he jerkily undoes Maksim’s bindings himself.
The moment my friend’s feet touch the ground, he loses balance. My brother could catch him, but he moves out of the way, letting him fall.
Dickhead.
I rush to Maksim’s side and try to help him. He pushes me away and agonizingly adjusts himself into a sitting position so that his back is against the wall.
Maksim might be easygoing, but he has a deep sense of pride. For instance, he’s never liked imposing on people or being weak. He’s always prided himself on managing to come out unscathed from all the operations we’ve had.
His combat skills are only rivaled by Kirill’s and Viktor’s, and he rubs it in everyone’s faces—especially Yuri’s/Anton’s—all the time. So to find himself in this position must be humiliating.
My brother stands to the side, directly between Maksim and the door. If my friend attempts to escape, I’m sure this will end badly.
“Are you okay?” I ask slowly, maybe redundantly, because he looks like shit. His lips are dry and bloody. One of his eyes is swollen shut, and his chest is a map of Anton’s destruction.
“Who is he to you?” Maksim asks instead of answering my question and juts his chin to the side.
“He’s…my brother.”
“Brother,” he repeats as if making sure he heard it right. “Does this mean you infiltrated the organization together?”
“No. I only found out he was my brother recently. I thought he was dead and…well, he looked different.”
“He killed Yuri.”
“And I’d do it all over again if I got a redo,” Anton announces coolly, with enough apathy to piss me off.
Maksim snarls up at him although he’s nearly collapsing.
I hastily grasp the container Anton placed on the table and settle back beside Maksim, then open it and give him a bottle of water. “You look dehydrated. You need to eat and drink.”
Still glaring at my brother, Maksim snatches the bottle and drinks it all in one go. My chest aches at the view of the bruises and cuts the cuffs left on his wrists.
He must’ve been hanging from the ceiling for a long time.
I should’ve really followed Anton sooner.
Maksim snatches the container from my hands and pauses when he sees the medium-cooked steak and the vegetables—no carrots since he doesn’t like them. His jaw clenches, but he empties the container in record time.
Once he’s finished, he stares at me. “Are you in on this, too?”
“This?”
“Torturing me.”
“No. Of course not. I just found out today, and only because I followed him.”
“Does that mean you’ll let me go?”
“In your dreams,” Anton says. “You’re not stepping a foot outside until you tell me what Kirill sent you to do. And even then, you won’t leave my sight.”
“Kill me, you motherfucker. If you don’t, I’ll be the one who kills you.”
Anton reaches over, probably to slap or punch him again, but I jump up and stand between them. “Stop it, both of you, just stop. You were the best of friends. Can’t you think of that?”
“He attacked our family!”
“He killed my real friend!” Maksim says at the same time.
I release a breath and sit between them. “This is going nowhere.”
“Leave,” my brother orders. “I’ll deal with him in my own way.”
“And let you torture, then possibly kill him? No.” I face my friend. “I don’t want to believe you attacked unarmed people, Maks. Those people are the only survivors of a family massacre, and they happen to be my elderly grandmother, my uncle, and my six-year-old cousin. But I recognized your face on the security footage. Unless you tell me what actually happened, Anton’s version is logical.”
“I wasn’t here to attack anyone. I was on a mission to locate the last members of the Belsky Organization and try to start a line of communication with Kirill.”
“Liar,” Anton snarls. “If it were that simple, you would’ve told me that instead of withstanding torture.”
“I prefer being tortured than talking to your ugly fucking face.”
Anton’s fist clenches, and I clear my throat before he moves into action. “Are you sure Kirill didn’t want you to kill the last members of the Belsky Organization?”
“If he did, he would’ve sent an army and Viktor. I came with only four other men and they were killed by your side who opened fire first.”
My heart that’s been bleeding nonstop perks up at that. Isn’t it sad that a mere sliver of hope—as minimal and speculative as it is—happens to be enough to revive my stupid heart?
I internally shake my head. “Do you know why he’s attempting to start communications?”
Maksim shakes his head. “He’s not the type who shows his hand.”
Isn’t that the damn truth?
He always kept his plans so close to his chest that even Viktor and I weren’t privy to them until the final stages. That’s how I was blindsided by his engagement, his marriage, and his damn betrayal.
Note to self: shoot more targets later.
“What are you going to do to me, Sasha?” Maksim speaks with obvious strain. “Fake asshole over there will be happy to put a bullet in my head like he did to Yuri, but I doubt that’s your stance.”
“I guess if I asked you to switch sides, you wouldn’t, right?”
“Why ask something you already know the answer to?”
I get it. Kirill and his family are Maksim’s benefactors. They gave him purpose and a privileged upbringing he wouldn’t have dreamt of having anywhere else.
Not to mention that he genuinely respects Kirill and even Viktor. The latter personally trained him from a young age and was the reason he developed superior combat skills.
It was foolishly hopeful of me to wish he’d be on the side of two people who lied to him. One of them tortured him for damn weeks and killed his real friend.
“If you go back to Kirill…” My voice catches, as is the case every time I speak or think of him. “We’ll meet again as enemies.”
“Aren’t we already?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Maks. You’re the first friend I made after losing my family. You helped me integrate into the military and mafia life seamlessly. You always had my back and cheered me up whenever I was down without asking for anything in return. You easily became my best friend without even trying. I’ll never forget those moments.”
He gives Anton the side-eye. “That makes one of you.”
“The fuck did you just say?” my brother snaps in a frightening tone.
“I said, one of you isn’t an ungrateful motherfucker. Want to hear that again, dick?”
“You must be tired of living.” Anton starts to grab him, but I push his hand away.
“Stop it, damn it. What’s with all the testosterone between you two? It’s exhausting to watch.”
Maksim snarls, and Anton glares at him as if he wants to snap his neck. If I hadn’t been here, I’m sure that’s exactly what he would’ve done.
“But we can’t be friends anymore,” I say in a choked voice. “You’re the guard of the man whose demise I’m planning. The man to whom I was loyal to, but he chose to betray me. We’re on opposite sides of the board, Maks. If we meet as enemies, we might kill each other.”
“We could’ve easily bypassed this if you’d been truthful about who you were from the beginning.”
“If I had been, I wouldn’t have been able to exact revenge.”
“Both of you keep saying that. Look at your fucking faces! You’re grown-up adults living in the past. So what if you get revenge? You think you’ll be happier? Freer? Better? Well, here’s a news flash for you—you’ll just feel empty as fuck.”
“We’ll at least get closure,” I say, deadpan.
“By killing the people who were once your comrades and protected you back? This isn’t only about Boss. It’s about all the other men’s lives. Were they responsible for your family’s death? No. But you’ll kill them anyway because they’ll be defending Boss with their lives. How are you any different from terrorists?”
“I swear to fuck, Maksim. If you don’t shut your fucking mouth, I’m going to send you to your dear boss in a casket.”
“Do it, damn it!” Maksim staggers to his feet using the wall for balance and clutches Anton by the collar of his shirt. “Kill me. Death is better than seeing your true fucking face.”
My chest aches at the reminder of the feelings that ripped my chest open when I discovered Kirill’s betrayal. Maksim must be experiencing feelings similar to that.
He genuinely liked Yuri, but he found out that it was Anton all along.
And while Yuri and Anton share the same silent personality, they’re entirely different in everything else.
My brother was always the heir to the Ivanov empire, and that turned him into an emotionless person at a young age.
The massacre made his negative traits worse.
Even now, he looks at Maksim with cold eyes, as if he can’t feel any of the rage that’s targeted toward him. But he grabs Maksim by the hair, his fingers pulling back until it looks painful.
I stand up and carefully but firmly break them apart. Maksim sags against the wall, and my brother briefly closes his eyes and breathes deeply before opening them again.
“I think we could all use a break,” I say softly.
“Are you going to let me go?” Maksim asks in a nonnegotiable tone.
“I told you, I don’t want to fight you, Maks.” I pat his shoulder. “I think it’s better you stay here. At least for now.”
“So the sadistic asshole can torture me some more?”
“I’m going to knock your fucking teeth out,” Anton growls, slowly but surely losing his patience.
“There will be no torture,” I announce.
“And how will you make sure of that? The moment you turn your back, your dear fucking brother will go back to his favorite hobby of marking my skin.”
“I will stay here.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Anton says.
“Maks is right. I also can’t trust you not to torture him just because you can.”
“You’re not staying alone with him,” Anton enunciates each word.
Maksim grins with an edge. “What? Afraid Sasha likes me more than she likes you?”
“You fucking—”
“You can stay, too, Anton. But if we leave, we do it together. That way, neither of us is with him on our own at any given time.”
I can tell Anton doesn’t like this plan; however, he has no choice but to accept it. One, I’m not leaving. Two, he’s also not leaving.
This is a complication I never considered, but for some reason, I’m happy for any event that manages to distract me from the bloody mess in my chest.
Even if temporarily.
