Page 100 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

As much as seeing Jimmy threw me for a loop, I don’t want to ruminate on it or his reaction right now. When I’m hungry, my brain resembles nothing so much as rancid mashed potatoes, so I frankly can’t trust any conclusions it makes.

Like how, more than anything, Jimmy looked guilty, as if he was about to do something very wrong.

Gavril and I pick up the pace and quickly return to the parking garage. Back inside, I get an idea. “Here.” I pull Gavril further on past his car, up to the staircase. “Follow me.”

Seconds later, the door opens to a waft of fresh air. I inhale, exhale, and smile. “Here we are.” Gavril doesn’t ask me what we’re doing on the top of an abandoned parking garage. He doesn’t even say anything. He seems to understand.

One step after the next, like muscle memory, then crouching, sitting down, my legs dangling over the concrete edge.

“There it is,” I say softly.

Gavril, somehow, is beside me, his legs dangling down over the city too, his arms around me. “There it is indeed.”

Ahead of us, the sun basks the city in a final pink-orange hurrah of light. The buildings look bejeweled. The view is incredible.

We don’t need to say anything more. The rest of it—the best of it—doesn’t need words.

The wind whispering on our cheeks.

The cool concrete beneath us.

The city bathed in a color I’ve never seen and don’t have a name for.

The man I know either a little, a lot, or not at all, sitting beside me contentedly.

Already, I fear losing him. I don’t know what that means and I don’t want to think about it.

Gavril is the first to speak. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this part of the city.”

“You meant it,” I say quietly. “That you were on the streets before.”

Gavril nods, his face somber. “Back then, just my brother and I, we …” His dark eyes are far away, back in that other time and place. “You would think we’d have suffered, how we were back then, and we did. But not how you’d think. We turned it into a sort of game, some of it—stealing food, dodging cops, nasty junkies, other street people. Through it all, I always knew, no matter what, that I’d be okay as long as he was.”

“He was younger?” I ask.

He nods again. “Wilder. More reckless. This was his idea, the branding—to symbolize how the Vaknin brothers stand by each other, no matter what. Always.”

The branding?

There’s something about his face as he says it—grief, definitely, but guilt too? Already, my attention’s distracted, though. He’s rolling back the sleeve of his shirt and is indicating two imperfectly parallel lines on the underside of his wrist.

So that’s what he meant by “branding.” The twin scars are literally gouged into his tan skin. My hand goes instinctively to the spot. “That must’ve hurt.”

Gavril grimaces. “Like hell. Neither of us cried out, though—we were too proud. Didn’t want the other to have something up on us.” A smile rises and falls on his face, like a wave. “Yes, life was easier then. Or, simpler, if not easier.”

The pain in his face … there’s no mistaking it. I want to make it go away. Only I don’t know how.

I get up with a sigh and walk along the edge of the parking garage. I find myself exhilarated—the glorious height of it, how easy it would be to fall. I’d crack my head open, turn my body into a bag of bone fragments. That’s a morbid thought, yeah, but life is morbid for so many people in this city. I still don’t believe that I escaped that side of things. Like there’s a part of me that still thinks all of this—Gavril, the clothes I’m wearing, the car we came in, all of it—is just some big, elaborate dream. Like I’m gonna wake up any minute and be back in my tent in Tent City, fending off the leering eyes looking at me through the tears in the fabric.

In the strangest way, it almost makes me mad. How dare this rich guy come try to shower me with all this stuff? He’ll go away soon—just like every other good thing in my life, it’s not here to stay. It won’t last.

And when he’s gone, I’ll be worse off than I was before.

Gavril’s voice is ice. “Get down from there.”

I turn and face him.

22

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