Page 57 of Cashmere Cruelty

It keepsrevengealive.

“What was he like?”

Yuri’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. I didn’t even hear him approach—that’s how off I am today. “He wasn’t.” I can practically hear my brother’s frown. So, sighing, I elaborate. “Absence was his gift to us. Every night, my mother would wait up for him, the dinner table laid out until the midnight toll. Sometimes, way past that.”

I don’t know what’s made me so talkative. Usually, I wouldn’t answer a question like this. But then, at the back of my mind, I can hear the echo of April’s words:What about your dad?

Family dinner. What a stupid expectation to have of a man like him.Back then, it always turned into a family wake. Waiting, as the night grew colder, for someone who might not return.

Until, one night, he didn’t.

That’s why I keep this,I remind myself, turning over the watch in my hands.Because of every second he took from me.When the sickness came—when we needed him—he was nowhere to be found.

And Mama’s time ran out.

Are you still up for this? Us?

Of fucking course I am. I won’t give up on my revenge. Not for a baby bump in the road. Not for anything.

“Sounds like I didn’t miss much,” Yuri remarks at last, kicking a piece of debris down the alley.

I feel a nasty smirk pulling at the corner of my lips. “You didn’t.”

Yuri.He was so small when I found him. Small and scrawny, one gust of wind away from blowing into the Volga River.

“Do you remember when we first met?”

I don’t need to ask. The answer’s the same every time. “Like it was yesterday,” Yuri whispers.

“You were gathering firewood outside,” I recall, smiling fondly. “Snow up to your waist. You were practically swimming.”

Yuri snorts. “Always calling me short, aren’t you?”

At six foot two, no one in their right mind would say that to him anymore. But back then, I felt like he could fit in the palm of my hand.

My little brother. The only family I had left.

It’s the one good thing that that monster of man did: gave us each other. And he didn’t even do that on purpose.

“You helped,” Yuri murmurs after a while. “With my mom.”

Of course I did. Who else was going to?

Back then, in rural Russia, the most commonplace illnesses were enough to take a life away. Especially if you didn’t have a coin to your name. It’s another thing we have in common—watching the ice take everything from us. Our mothers, our homes, our future.

But I refused to bow to that last part. I picked up my grandfather’s name, chased after the remnants of his Bratva,and made it anew. Made itmine.No one would dare take our futures after that.

“Ready for round three?”

And no one, I think as visions of hazel eyes pass through my mind,will ever take it again.

“Lead the way, brother.”

18

APRIL

I make my way to the Jupiter Hotel Restaurant with a skip in my step. Usually, I’d have no reason to be in such a good mood while still in my gilded cage—but today’s different.

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