Page 129 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

“I know.” There’s such bitterness in his voice, it makes me look up again. “You always had to be first.”

“I’m sorry.” The words are out before I can stop them.

“Fuck your sorry! Where was sorry when you cast me out and sent me to fucking Chicago to rot and die? Where was sorry when I needed you, I needed my family, and you, you …”

“You killed an innocent man!”

“And you beat one nearly to death yourself!”

I sigh. He’s right. I’m a fucking hypocrite. I messed up. I was supposed to be my brother’s keeper, and yet I exiled him, and then in his wake, I committed the same crimes as him. There’s only one thing I can conclude.

“Maybe …”

“Maybe what, Gavril?” he snarls.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for this anymore either.”

Silence unspools itself around us.

“Damn,” he says. “She really did a number on your head, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I admit. No point in denying it. I can’t even smile sadly anymore. Seems to take too much energy. My head feels swollen. The alcohol isn’t helping.

Osip downs the rest of his second drink. “Idiot. You know she confessed you caused the slaughter when she thought I was a cop. Admitted the whole thing about your fake marriage. Sang like a fucking canary. And you still love this traitorous whore?”

My hands tighten into fists. “You don’t get it. It’s—”

“—not a choice?” Osip shakes his head, disgusted. It’s still odd staring into this distorted face that I know but I don’t. “Jesus, Gavril, this is fucking pathetic.”

He exhales, pours himself some more. “Anyway, that isn’t why I invited you here, to rub it in, me winning. I just wanted … I was just thinking about when we were kids, is all.”

More classic Osip. When he gets drunk, he gets nostalgic.

“Remember the pizza party in Eglinton Park?” he asks.

I smile, despite the circumstances. “How could I forget? That was the night we both first got laid. I was what, sixteen and you were fifteen, and we somehow got all these older high school girls to eat some stolen pizza with us. You landed the blonde one and I got the one with curly red hair. I remember.”

That’s all it takes to kick him off. “Remember the Nordstrom shopping spree, the bikes …”

And I’m doing it along with him: “That time we stole a cop car and showed up to a bunch of crime scenes and had a smoke with the criminals.”

“That time we tried to climb the CN Tower.”

“That time we tried swimming across Lake Ontario.”

“That time we went to Alo and ordered our first nine-hundred-dollar wine.”

“That time we had statues built of ourselves out of gold, just for the fuck of it.”

Now, Osip’s looking at me with something in his eyes. “Damn, did I miss this. Us.”

There’s a long pause, and for the tiniest moment, it’s just me drinking with my brother again, reminiscing about how far we’ve come.

Then that moment fucking shatters.

Osip shakes his head sadly, lowering his cup. “Too bad you had to ruin it.” Over his shoulder, he yells, “Boys! Get this idiot out of my sight.”

He turns away, as if he can’t bear to see his minions sprint into the room to drag me off to my death.

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