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“Call me an optimist,” Yasha snarks.
It’s a quick flash of Yasha’s humor. A reminder of the brother I used to know. And all at once, as fucked-up and irrational as it is, I know I don’t want to kill him.
I don’t need to spill his blood. I don’t need to see the life drain out of him.
I just need to not see him.
I just want him gone.
I lower the gun. “You’re going to disappear.”
Veronika has been silent for a while now. But she looks up at me, disbelieving. Mascara-soaked tears pour down her cheeks.
“You and your family need to disappear,” I tell him. “I don’t want to see you again for as long as I live. I want you to be as good as dead to me.”
“I have to leave the city?”
“The fucking country,” I growl. “The hemisphere. If you can get off the planet, do it. You need to run away and pray I forget the chaos you’ve caused. And if you ever come back, I’ll kill you myself.”
There’s silence. Tension crackles between us. For a second, I think Yasha is going to refuse.
But then he takes a deep breath and nods. “Okay. Okay, yeah. That’s fair.”
His easy acceptance tells me I’ve let him off too easy. It makes me want to take it all back and kill him, anyway.
But only for a second.
Then a bone-deep weariness settles in me. I want this to be over, and I want to go home. Back to my wife and daughter and the baby that will soon join us.
“No, it’s not ‘fair,’” I hiss. “What I’m doing is merciful. A mercy you don’t deserve. Don’t expect it a second time.”
“None of this is fair,” Veronika rasps. “Our life… my life… it’s all ruined. You lied to me.”
“V, I’m sorry. I—”
“You lied to me!” she screams, rounding on Yasha. I see spit flying. “You cheated on me. You lied to me. And now, I have to leave my home and run away and have a child… with you. You’ve ruined my entire life.”
Yasha moves towards her, but Veronika backs up again. Now, she is just a foot in front of me on my side of the coffee table, facing off against her husband.
“Don’t touch me,” she warns. “You will never touch me again.”
Yasha opens his mouth to say something, but before he can form the words, Veronika spins around and snatches the gun from my grasp.
The next few seconds happen both fast and slow.
Veronika lifts the gun and points it at Yasha. Shock and awe and fear flash across his face in quick succession.
He starts to lunge towards her, arm outstretched to yank the weapon away.
But Veronika pulls the trigger.
My brother jerks back. Blood spreads across his chest. My ears are still ringing from the blast when he drops to his knees and falls back on the couch.
Veronika twists away from me, her face wild.
I hold up my hands. “Emery is pregnant. And Isabella… They need me.”
“My problem isn’t with you. He did this,” she seethes with wild, tear-stained anger, looking over to where her husband is gasping on the floor. “But so did I. I chose him. I believed him. I made this bed… now, it’s time to lie in it.”
I’m not sure what she means. And then she presses the gun to her temple.
“Veronika, no—!”
The shot rings out and she crumples to the floor.
I stand in silent horror for a moment. I look around the room, expecting someone else to be standing there. Maybe for people to come out of hiding to announce this was some kind of fucked-up joke.
I’ve been around death in my life. Plenty of it. But I’ve never been this stunned before.
I don’t need to go over and check Veronika’s pulse. She’s dead. She made sure of that.
But Yasha is still wheezing behind the coffee table.
I round the small table and drop down next to him. His blood soaks into my pants. I press my palms to his chest, but there is no stopping the flow. It’s gushing out of him, pulsing weaker and weaker along with his heart.
“Fuck. You’re—I can’t stop it.”
“Karma,” he coughs, blood dribbling out of his mouth.
“I didn’t want this,” I admit. He’ll be gone in a minute, anyway. Might as well be honest. “I never wanted to kill you.”
“But you were going to, because I deserved it,” he wheezes. “That’s why you’re cut out to be don. You make the hard calls. I’ve always been too selfish.”
Emotion burns in my chest and clogs my throat. I’ve spent so much of my life looking after Yasha. Countless hours taking care of him, worrying about him, trying to make sure he grew into a good man.
And this is how it all ends. With him bloody and gasping for breath on the ground.
“I’m sorry.” I shake my head.
He makes a choking sound and it takes me a second to realize he’s laughing. Blood splatters across his chin. “Am I dead already, or did Adrik Tasarov just apologize?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snort. “You’ll never hear it again.”
I’ve apologized to him once before—the day I learned what Pietro had done. This makes twice. There won’t be a third.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. His lips are blue and sluggish now. “I know.”
Yasha doesn’t say anything else. And when I look back down, I understand why.
His eyes stare past me into the middle distance… into nothing.
My little brother is dead.
