“For fun, over girls, for any reason. We were teenagers. We would’ve fought if we disagreed about our favorite movie.”
“What was their favorite movie?”
“The one they told people? Pulp Fiction. The real favorite? Austin Powers. They could never stop quoting stupid lines from that movie.”
I give a shocked laugh. I have only seen snippets of Austin Powers, but it’s so… Silly.
“There was something different about them. They were like you.”
That confuses me. I’ve never considered my brothers, who were loud and confident and tall, to be anything like me.
“Like me?” I look up at Leks with a sniffle.
He’s not crying like I am, but the soft smile touching his lips is something distant and special. I glide my hand over his bicep.
“They didn’t judge anyone. They could get along with people from any background. It’s unusual, for someone from a family like yours.”
I make a noncommittal noise. I was so rude to Leks and the others here in the beginning. I didn’t trust them at all. I wish I was as non-judgmental and kind as he’s implying.
Still, I feel a little proud at the comparison to my brothers.
“I miss them.”
“Me too.”
Over the next hour, I make Leks tell me every story that comes into his head. I hang on his every word as he describes them. I realize that they weren’t just colleagues or drinking buddies — they were two of his best friends. He talks about them like they’re right in front of us, and I feel like I know my brothers for the first time since I was eleven.
Eventually, Leks runs out of stories to tell. He stops talking.
The silence feels heavy between us.
The panic is setting back in as I realize that if Leks did kill Fyodor and Pyotr, but he’s also able to talk about them with such warmth, he must be a real psychopath. In the literal sense of the word.
He notices the shift in me and nods firmly, his jaw clenching.
I sit up straight and wipe away my tears, curling myself to rest against the arm of the sofa instead of Leks.
Dasha, as though sensing danger, comes to curl up at my side. I lift her into my lap and kiss her head.
“What happened?” I ask in a whisper.
Leks gives a sigh and leans forward, his hands clasped between his thighs. He speaks slowly and carefully, like he’s practiced how he’s going to say this.
“I was working that night. Your brothers weren’t, but they were around anyway. They boarded a new arrival to inspect a shipment of paintings — one of your father’s shipments. We had special procedures for dealing with those, still do. This shipment, though, blew up about a minute after they stepped on board.”
That doesn’t make any sense.
“All hell broke loose. Your brothers weren’t meant to be in that night. Shipments are not supposed to blow up. There were accusations and name-calling and panic. Someone called your father down to the port.”
I chew my lip.
“I went straight to Yuri’s office. We replayed the security footage for the day. It showed that Maksim was the only person who had been in the area that day. That he’d boarded the ship as soon as it arrived, removed a shipment, then left.”
What?
“You thinkmy fatherplanted the bomb?”
Leks lifts a shoulder. “No one else appeared on the CCTV. And when your father left, the security footage was wiped. No records of him being there.”
