“I’m so sorry, Archie.That I couldn’t protect him…”
“No!”
The word fractured on the way out.
Then my father entered.
I turned toward him with murder already moving in my blood.
“What happened?”
He wore grief well.That was one of the many things I learned to despise about him.He knew how to assemble the face required for public loss.Knew where to set his mouth, how much solemnity to place in his eyes, how to make tragedy look dignified enough to survive scrutiny.
He had likely practiced it for years.
“Your brother is dead,” he said.
The sentence cleaved me in two.
“How?”
He paused, reluctant to respond.It was tiny, barely there.But I noticed.
“He took his own life.”
Everything in me rejected the words at once.
“No.”
“It appears?—”
“No.”
“He was found near the forest boundary after?—”
“You’re lying.”
My father’s expression cooled, but only slightly.“Mind yourself.”
A laugh tore out of me.Horrible.Sharp.“You expect me to believe Rasputin killed himself?”
My mother made a broken sound behind me.
Viktor looked at me the way one might regard a difficult subordinate rather than a son coming apart in front of him.“Men break,” he reminded me.
“Not Rasputin.”
“You would be surprised what pressure can do.”
“Not him.”
I was shouting now.I did not care.Let the whole damned house hear.Let every servant and guard and sycophant know exactly what I thought of the lie being laid at my feet.
Rasputin.My invisible brother.Because that’s how our father treated him - as though he wasn’t even there.
My brother who endured everything in silence.My brother who stood in doorways and took blows and made choices built entirely around the survival of others.My brother who would sooner have put a knife through his own heart than leave me alone in that house.
No.
