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I look up at him. “Kirill, please. I want to help. Let me… I’ll stay and help. Please.”
“Go!” he roars. His voice echoes off the cold tile floors.
Deep in the back of my mind, I have a stupid thought:He’s being so loud; he’ll wake Ilya.But there is no waking Ilya anymore. Not ever again.
It’s the nail in the coffin of my acceptance. Sobs choke me, and I run out of the room before I lose the ability to stand.
As I push open the front door and start sprinting foggily towards the bus stop, another piece of furniture crashes into the hallway in a heap of splintered wood and broken glass.
He’ll burn the entire house down if no one stops him. Given what happened here tonight, I’m not sure it’s the worst idea.
Maybe I’ll just throw myself on the flames.
39
KIRILL
German lets me destroy half of the living room before he steps into the doorway.
“We need to think about next steps, Kirill.”
Blood is running down my hands from shattering glass. I’m fairly certain I have splinters under my nails and embedded in my palms. I wouldn’t really know, though. I can’t feel a thing.
A glass paperweight on the coffee table somehow missed my notice earlier. I have no idea where it came from, who brought it here, but it fits nicely in my palm. When I hurl it against the nearest wall, it cracks into three large pieces and thuds to the floor.
“Ilya must have been onto something with the wallpaper,” German muses distantly. “Is all of this destruction helping?”
His name reverberates through me like a shot. I feel the merciless slice of it straight through my chest.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see my brother’s feet sticking out from behind the sofa. He’s barefoot. Maybe he left his room that way, padded down to the water line with no shoes on. Maybe his shoes were whisked away in the current.
I’ll never know.
Because I wasn’t there.
I squeeze my eyes closed and turn away. Destroying the house is easier than slowing down, than facing what has happened and what has to come next.
It’s easier than facing what I’ve done.
“I should have been with him,” I whisper.
“This isn’t your fault, Kirill. Who could have guessed he’d decide to leave his apartment for the first time and—”
“Not tonight. I mean… I should have been there tonight, too. But when he was a kid. When our father…” I grit my teeth, pure rage rolling through me. It overwhelms every nerve ending, and I start to think destroying the entire house might be a great idea, after all.
“His accident?” German has probably picked up the gist of what happened that day. I’ve dropped small hints here or there. Little bits of the truth have slipped out.
But I’ve never talked about it. Not in its entirety. Not even to him.
“Father was pissed that I was spending so much time with Daria. She wasn’t part of our world, and he didn’t think it would last. Being eighteen, I was so sure I knew absolutely everything. I was positive he was wrong, that Daria was the love of my life.” I chuckle at the innocence of the term. “Since I wouldn’t listen, Father was trying to prove that I could be replaced. He started shoving my duties onto Ilya. The fact that Ilya was twelve didn’t matter to him.Go get the cash from the dealers,he said.Don’t fuck it up,he said.”
German shakes his head. “Fuck. Even by my standards, asking a twelve-year-old to do that is fucked-up.”
I’m lost in my memories, though. German’s presence here barely registers. “Ilya was probably autistic, you know. We never took him to the doctor, so it’s hard to know. But relating to other people was hard for him. Throwing him into a stressful situation like that would have been a disaster. So I promised him I’d do it.”
I’ll collect everything on my way home from Daria’s,I told Ilya before I left.Just stay out of Father’s way until then. I’ll be back.
I can still feel the way Ilya wrapped his arms around my middle. The way his soft hair felt against my palm as I patted his head.
