Page 101 of Koroleva

To be fair, it was normal for Nikita not to believe me; all the references she received about me or my family were negative. What could she expect?

We barely knew each other; we had done nothing but work, and I hadn't given her the chance to see beyond my facade of a neighborhood thug. I hadn’t even answered her question about the night of the shooting, the only one that could shed some light on all that darkness.

I wasn’t being fair; if I wanted to bridge gaps, she needed to know that part of the story.

I waited for the song to finish to ask her to come with me.

"Where are we going?"

"We need to talk."

"That doesn't sound very good..."

"We can't continue like this; I want to clarify some things with you that are necessary."

"If it's about your cousin, Arasagasti, or..."

"It's none of that, come with me, please." She didn’t refuse.

We went to the adjoining lounge; the same place she had left minutes earlier.

A starry dome presided over the center, while the floor was dotted with sofas and tables of various sizes and dimensions.

We settled into one of them, and I pondered how to begin. I felt the pressure of her gaze on my face.

"So? Did you really bring me here to tell me something or to prevent me from doing anything inappropriate?"

If I wanted to bring up her brother, I had to be honest.

"Yuri and I were very good friends," I started. She immediately fell silent. "And we never stopped being friends, even though we made our families believe otherwise."

"That's not possible..."

"It is, of course it is. Damn, your brother was my best friend, I never knew anyone with whom I got along so well, who understood me to the extent that it made me doubt whether my soulmate was a guy." She widened her eyes in shock. "Don't be scared, I realized that right away."

"It can't be, my brother would have told me," she reiterated.

"I guess it's hard to believe that someone could keep such a secret for years. It wasn't easy for either of us, but we managed to keep our friendship separate from the enmity our families professed." I knew Nikita was pondering and trying to connect the dots. "It's not a rumor. I can show you hundreds of messages, photos, and videos that I kept, despite him repeatedly asking me to delete them for our safety. I refused to do it and now I'm thankful to heaven that I did."

"Do you have that material?"

"Yes, at home, kept in a box with his name on it. I'm not making this up, I'm telling you that I can show it to you anytime you want, even tonight after the party." She nodded. "If I'm telling you this, it's because I want to explain what happened the night of his death. I was there, with him."

"Wait, this is a confession. Did you kill him?"

"No! Damn it, Nikita! You're obsessed with the idea that I wanted to harm you, and that's impossible. I'm telling you I would have given my life for his, Yuri was the brother I never had. I would have been incapable of laying a finger on him or doing something that harmed you. It was that fucking Cheng who ambushed us. And then he went back to his country for a long time."

"Cheng?"

"Yes!"

"And why didn't you say anything? Why haven't you killed him?"

"It's not that easy. If I had spoken up, it would have revealed my friendship with your brother, and Yuri didn't want that to be known. Cheng is very well protected, hides like a damn eel, doesn't spend too much time in the same place, and his army of men is getting bigger. Your brother and I wanted to join forces against him to kick him out, but we weren’t allowed and decided to do it behind everyone's back."

"Go on."

"That night, we met with him. Initially, it was supposed to be peaceful, we wanted to talk and reach an agreement. We were naive and sensed that things couldn't be that easy. It was a fucking ambush. They shot us full of bullets." I took off my jacket, tie, and shirt to show her the mark I received that night. "They didn't just shoot Yuri."

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