Toly took a deep breath, and limped his way in.
He ran into a wall of smell. The sharp ammonia tang of urine, and the copper notes of blood, the funk of layers of sweat. It left his eyes burning, and he blinked to clear them.
Misha was duct-taped to a cheap metal folding chair, and he was…
Toly took one look, and then found that he couldn’t look anymore. Fixed his gaze firmly on the top of Misha’s head, where he was slumped forward, chin on his chest, and kept it there. Blood didn’t bother him – usually. But this was far from a usual circumstance.
The scuff of his uneven footfalls on the dirt floor drew a twitch out of Misha. And then, with a grunt and a lot of effort, he lifted his head. His neck was wobbly, his head heavy; it looked more like someone was moving him, than him moving himself. His face was a wreck of sweat, and dried snot and tears, and one of his eyes was swollen totally shut.
The good one cleared, though, when he spotted Toly, pupil shrinking back from the light.
“Well,” he said after a long beat of staring, voice hoarse like he’d been screaming. “You win, Anatoly.”
Perhaps he should have, but Toly hadn’t expected the lump that formed in his throat. “No. No, I don’t.”
Even shaky and beat to hell, Misha managed his trademark head tilt, that birdlike angle that said he couldn’t understand what you were possibly thinking.
“I never wanted any of this,” Toly said. “I never wanted you to get hurt. I just wanted…”
“What?”
Years ago, Maverick had asked him the same thing, that sunbathed day in a booth at McDonald’s.What do you want?He’d only stared, then, drawing a blank. He’d wanted not to pass out into a stranger’s arms in a fast-food bathroom; had wanted to stop jerking awake on a wooden pallet at night, wondering if he was hearing a bratva assassin or a rat chewing into the warehouse crates. He’d wanted a hot meal; a chance to catch his breath. Simple human necessities. Superficial, immediate wants that wouldn’t last, could never last.
Now, when asked, he found, to his shock, that his wants unfolded like a trick box at a magic show, and from it spilled bright spools of ribbon, gleaming yards of gold thread, flares of sparklers and fireworks. He wanted to fall asleep every night with his face in Raven’s hair; watch her arch a single, perfect brow when he said something “bloody stupid.” He wanted to take her hand the next time she offered it to him; wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip with her at a counter, cooking in a kitchen that wastheirs, not just hers or the club’s. Inside the box of that want waited the teasing insults of her brothers, and the shy smile of her sister offering chocolates; there were raucous party nights lit by bonfires, and quiet nights in front of a fireplace, wine glasses on a coffee table, and lips on lips; there were little hands reaching up, “Daddy! Daddy!”
He blinked hard, and he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. In an airless, scraped-raw voice, he said, “I want a life. I want to be alive.”
Misha nodded, approving. He said, “Don’t you want to know why? Why I–”
“No. I know why. I know why you did everything.” Blindly, he reached behind him, and someone placed a gun in his hand. He brought it around, and leveled it on Misha’s chest, on his heart.
Misha’s lips curved faintly upward. “I really did always think of you as my little brother. You were my favorite.”
“I know,” Toly said, and pulled the trigger.
~*~
Devin didn’t take him back to the house right away. There was a bench halfway back down the hill, and they pulled over and climbed onto it, overlooking the bare tree trunks, the glimpses of dead brown field grass below. A wisp of smoke curling up from the house chimney, visible as a smudge above the tree tops.
Devin lit two cigarettes and passed one over.
The first drag hit Toly like something harder and more necessary than nicotine. “Thanks,” he croaked out, and didn’t just mean for the smoke.
“’Course. That’s what family’s for, right?”
Toly skated a sideways look at him, trying and failing to imagine a past in which he’d successfully predicted he’d end up somehow related to this man, of all people.
And then Devin said, “I’m proud of you. You did really well back there.”
Toly snorted to cover the traitorous way his heart flipped. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” All innocence.
“Pretend that…I dunno. You care. Like I’m your kid.”
“Well, I figure you almost are. All but in name, right? It’s bound to happen.”
Another snort, this one a little desperate, because it was bad enough when Maverick played dad; he couldn’t do it with his actual potential father-in-law. “You never even tell your own kids you’re proud of them.”
