“No, it definitely won’t be,” Pyotr remarks, and I shift my gaze to him. Hatred.Somuch hatred shines in his eyes.
“Stop!” Yulian pleads, “You promised! You promised you wouldn’t hurt her!”
“That all depends on my big brother here,” Pyotr replies, moving the gun from the back of Annika’s hand to her temple.
He gives her throat another tight squeeze and I have to stop myself from rushing him as Annika lets out a strangled cry.
I want to move. If anything, so that I can press the small panic button Edik attached to my cuff link that would signal him and our men to come in, but I don’t. I stay statue still so that gun in Pyotr’s doesn’t go off and ends my reason for existing.
“You want me, you have me,” I say calmly. “This is what all of this is for, right? So you can have me?”
Pyotr snickers.
“Don’t make yourself sound like such a prize, brother,” he replies. “I don’t want you. I want your death.”
“Why?” I ask.
I have to keep him talking. Talking will distract him.
“Why?” Pyotr bit out, and shoved the tip of the pistol’s barrel harder into Annika’s temple.
“Are you fucking serious?”
“You hate me, that much is clear,” I reply, “But I want to knowwhyyou hate me, Pyotr. What have I done besides bring you back into our family? Give you money, a house, anything you want.”
“They should have been mine in the first place!” Pyotr snarls. “We were supposed to be brothers, we supposed to be equals! And instead you punished me for going with Mom.”
“I didn’t punish you,” I reply quickly, “You weren’t the same after you came back from her.”
“Younevergave me a chance,” Pyotr growls out, spittle flying from his lips. “Nothing I did was good enough.”
“Everything you did was cruel even by our standards,” I answer, keeping his eyes trained on me. “It was like she drove you crazy too. I was trying to even you out so we could be equals, but Pyotr, you insisted on going the other way.”
Pyotr’s gun leaves Annika’s temple and he points it at my face. His pupils somehow dilate further into black pools of insanity.
“Don’t call Mom crazy,” he snarls. “She did her best!”
“And look what it did to you,” I calmly reply.
I see his finger wrap tighter around the trigger, and I know he’s going to pull it. I don’t look away though. I don’t close my eyes. I keep my gaze on him.
“I’m going to take everything from you,” Pyotr snarls. “Your money. Your position. Yourwife.”
I make my move as the wordwifedraws from his lips, pushing his wrist upward with my left hand as I try to pull Annika away from him with the right. He lets out an animalistic snarl as we begin to fight, but his grip on Annika won’t loosen, so I let her go and cock my fist back. A shot fires up into the ceiling, loud and clear, as I punch him in the nose, snapping his neck backward.
Pyotr finally lets go of Annika and the moment he does, I’m on him. His free hand pushes into my face as I punch him over and over, not stopping even when I feel his warm blood splatter up into my face.
With a roar I pick him up by his collar and slam his head into the marble floor; and I hear a sickeningcrackas the kitchen’s back door bursts open. I stop hitting my brother as Edik, Yana, and several more of my men rush in with their guns drawn.
“Backs against the wall you two,” Edik commands, his gun pointed to Valya and Yulian.
“No, please!” Annika shouts.
“Let them go, Edik,” I command, pushing myself off of my brother’s limp body.
Edik’s lips draw up in a snarl, but he obeys and lowers his gun.
“You were supposed to signal,” he growls at me.
