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I nodded, relief washing over me.
I ate my meal in silence, but Aleksei had something else to say. He gave me approximately five minutes of peace before his questions began, and the topic didn’t come as a surprise.
“Father wants you home for Christmas. Do you plan on going?”
“No.”
“Is it because of Mom?”
I stopped eating completely and took a sip of water with narrowed eyes; the stupidity of his question had thrown me off guard. “Why would it be because of her?”
He blinked. “Come on. You haven’t been home since she died.”
“So?”
Aleksei laughed. It was dry and humorless. He shook his head slightly and sighed, “Of course you wouldn’t be interested.”
The conversation died out after that. It was evident that Aleksei still viewed me as a child who was incapable of making decisions for herself. And he was wrong—I didn’t want to go back home because I’d practically run away from an arranged marriage that my father had set up for me. The moment I stepped into Sheremetyevo International Airport, I would be dragged towards the nearest church by my hair.
Father wasn’t mad at me for escaping, not fully at least—he was more enraged that I hadn’t found the man he’d chosen for me to be fitting. But though I’d never wanted to be married, it wasn’t having the man chosen for me that pushed me over the edge; it was the fact that the creep was in his late forties. I was barely seventeen.
Aleksei had been furious that I’d fled—and that Dominik had helped me escape—because it had all been done behind his back, and I’d been left with no guards to keep me safe. Another reason for appreciating my other brother more. In the end, Dominik had been forced to return to Russia, and I’d been stuck with Aleksei.
It had taken a long time for him to get over himself, and to realize that I was no longer a child, despite still being treated like one.
The fact that Aleksei had called for me twice within a few days was only because he intended to leave soon and wanted to try to change my mind about staying behind.
“Aleksei.” I grabbed his attention. “You know Mom isn’t the reason I refuse to go back. And if I do go back, it will happen again.”
He clenched his jaw. “It won’t. Father no longer has a say in it.”
“I’m still worried. He still has a lot of influence.”
“Don’t worry. I promise you—not a single man will lay his eyes on you unless they want them gouged out.”
I was fishing for something. Two out of three of my siblings no longer catered to our father’s needs; aside from my twin brother, who was a spitting image of our father, no one cared about his opinion, especially not once Aleksei had taken the throne.
“How can you guarantee that?” I asked.
Aleksei’s eyebrows narrowed, and something shifted in the atmosphere around us. I had a lot of plans for my future, and the first one began right now. I stared at my older brother as he studied me. He couldn’t tell what was going through my head and he despised it.
“Fine. Prove it.”
It took him a minute to break.
He sighed. “What do you want, Kaya?”
And the nickname was back.
The only valuable thing my father ever taught me was that you only needed to knock down one domino—if it was the right one, the rest would fall.
I drank my whiskey, allowing an unbearable silence to fall upon us. I never broke eye contact with him; I simply tilted my head to the side, preparing to offer him the biggest decision he was yet to make.
“I’ll go home. Hell, I’ll stay there, but I want something in return.”
“What?”
“I want you to kill our father.”
