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Translation: I was a loser who had to get help from his younger brother.
“I guess he’s paying you well to make sure your income is better than your grandparents,” Vera said. “That’s a lot of faking for one custody battle.”
“Yeah.” It was definitely the pizza. I was never getting this cauliflower crap again.
“What’s the reality?” she asked.
The reality was that I pulled my head out of my ass too late. The reality was that I should’ve been there for both Damian and Glen instead of running. The reality was that I was the oldest of the three, but here I was, getting help from my younger billionaire brother, who should hate me for abandoning him.
“I lost my job a few months ago when Mom died. They didn't want to give me time off to go to the funeral, so after the funeral, I just came to New York with Damian and Glen because that’s the best chance I had of getting custody.”
“You know you’re terrible at this whole faking thing, right?” Vera nodded at the camera. “You just helped me create a kompromat.”
Damn it. I had forgotten about the camera. “We can erase all of that, right?”
“What kind of KGB agent would I be if I did that? I have to at least blackmail you with it.” A corner of her mouth lifted ever so slightly, and all the ugly thoughts vanished, replaced with the need to make her smile again. Bonus points if I could get her to laugh.
“Fine, you can keep it. At least there’ll be video evidence of you smiling.”
“I’ll burn the tape.” She frowned at the camera. “Or the SD card. Come to think of it, technology is funny these days. You never know where and how it’ll store information, so I’ll just burn the whole camera.”
“That’s the spirit.” I chuckled, loving how fun Vera could be, despite her prickly exterior.
We made it through two slices each before deciding to get packing. Vera moved the camera to her bedroom and set it on the empty dresser, then handed me a stack of boxes and pointed at the bookcase.
“Nice, you’re a reader.” I started with the bottom row, where medical books competed for space with history. “You’re a history buff?”
“It has a lot to teach about human nature.”
My kind of a girl. Although, her books were mostly about World War Two, which was too recent for my taste. I wanted to know what it was like before guns when killing had been even harder than it was now. Spraying bullets in the general direction of your enemy, not knowing if you hit anyone or if it was the guy next to you, wasn’t the same as a sword fight.
I took a deep breath, pushing away the memories. I should’ve found a regular job and gotten my brothers out instead of signing up to kill whoever my country pointed a finger at, but I had been desperate and angry. Angry enough to crave death.
With the bottom shelf packed, I moved on to the next. More medical books, but this time they leaned more into psychiatric medicine.
“So, what kind of nurse are you?” I asked. “I mean, what unit?”
“Oncology.”
“You have a lot of psych books. Why not go into that if you enjoy the subject?”
“Because I don’t like being thrown into walls.” She stopped and looked over the remainder of the books. “Maybe I should pack those. You can take care of all the nick-knacks.”
“Nah, I like going through your books. We’re supposed to get to know each other, remember?”
She grumbled something about a curious cat, but didn’t protest.
“I thought psych wards were good at controlling violent behaviors. Why would you get thrown into a wall?” I asked as I closed the box and set the next one up.
“It only takes one mistake for it to happen, and the resulting injury can mess you up for life. There’s a reason all the furniture is soft in there and no one is allowed to keep a pencil.” She wrapped a figurine of a bear and two cubs in newspaper and put it into her box, then went on to the next. Another bear. More cubs. “When I started nursing school, I thought psych was the way to go for me, but doing the psych rotation convinced me otherwise. Most days, it was great, but then we got a patient who stayed in our unit for only a few hours before being transferred to a higher security one. His behavior got all the other patients riled up. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Gotcha.”
I moved to the next shelf. More psych books, but these leaned into coping with trauma.
As I pulled one out, my nail beds turned white from squeezing it too hard. It's Not Your Fault: Dealing with Abuse. Whoever lay a finger on Vera better be dead or in jail.
Taking a steadying breath, I forced my hands to relax. My dark side needed to chill. I wasn't killing anyone anytime soon.
