Page 93 of Fractured Ties

Konstantin’s heavy sigh resounded around him. “Well, that escalated quickly, no?”

11.

MAYA COULD faintly hear Kolya and Konstantin discussing what had just happened, but their voices were only background noise in her head. She was still staring at the blue screen of the television, and trying to make sense of what she had just witnessed. Oh, sure, the video had long since cut off, Vadim had had his temper tantrum, and run out … but she swore even as she stared at the television above her head, she could see the video playing out again and again.

A hooded man dying.

An unknown Albanian speaking.

Again and again.

She should be terrified—and oh, she was—but something far more pressing kept poking at the back of Maya’s mind like a hot needle that just wouldn’t stop. Even as the Albanian’s threats whispered in her ears, and that fear slithered around her spine like a cold snake, something else was keeping her from feeling it entirely.

Something else was keeping her quiet.

“Maya.”

It was Kolya’s voice that dragged her back to reality for the moment—all rough, heavy, and dark in that way of his. God, she had come to adore his voice. One could not tell his mood by his tone, unlike most people, but she could.

Right then, she heard anger.

And fear.

Glancing over her shoulder, she found Kolya standing next to his brother. Apparently, the two had moved to stand in the middle of the room together at some point. Probably while she had been stuck staring at the television screen like a foolish girl.

Konstantin quirked an eyebrow high in silent question, but Maya didn’t have the first clue about what he might be trying to ask her. Kolya, on the other hand, folded his large arms over his chest.

“I said let’s go, dushka,” Kolya murmured.

Maya glanced back at the screen. “Would you play it again?”

Konstantin cleared his throat. “Why?”

“No,” Kolya interjected. “There’s no need—let’s go.”

Maya shook her head, saying firmer, “Please, play it again.”

“Maya, it’s unnecessary. You saw what happened.”

“It’s not that … It’s …” Maya stood from the chair, and Sumerki was quick to stumble out from beneath her seat at the same time. Closing her eyes, she faced the screen, and pointed at the spot just below her collarbone. “Right here—he has a jagged scar right here. Except he didn’t there, right? Did you see one, because I didn’t.”

“What is she talking—”

“Who?” Kolya asked, interrupting his brother.

Oh, now he was listening.

Maya spun around, and her eyes flew wide, even as she kept her fingers pointing at the spot where she knew that scar should have been on the man who had been killed in the video. That was, if he was actually her brother.

“Alexei,” Maya said. “He has a jagged scar—maybe two inches long?—right here. He was drunk one night when he came home from a party, and I was maybe fourteen. Got pissed at me for something stupid, and chased me out of the house after he punched me in the face. I threw a beer bottle at him and it cut him right here. Was there a scar?”

Kolya’s gaze darted to Konstantin, and the younger of the two brothers shook his head subtly. She could see it on Kolya’s face before he even confirmed what she already believed. No, she hadn’t been the only one—they’d seen it, too.

Or rather, a lack of it.

There was no scar.

“That wasn’t my brother,” Maya said, her voice fainter than ever.