Page 124 of Sapphire Tears

“Did he touch you?” I ask. “Did he hurt you?”

“He tried to. B-but… I fought back,” she stammers. “I didn’t think. I was just… trying to survive.”

I lean in, cup her face with my hands, and look her in the eye. “June, look at me.” Her pupils focus on mine. “Listen to my voice. It’s me, Kolya.”

“I know,” she says simply.

“I have to get you out of here.”

She puts her hands on my arms. “Get me out of this house.”

I pull her up to her feet. Blood stains the front of the negligee they dressed her in. I’m about to rip my own shirt off my back to give it to her.

But then I feel him behind us.

I tackle June out of the way. It’s not a moment too soon, because a bullet bearing death slices through the space we were just standing, close enough to make the hair on my forearms ripple with its momentum.

“You always were a lousy fucking shot,” I snarl at Adrian where he stands in the doorway. Then I unleash a trio of my own bullets.

Two miss, burying themselves in the wood of the door frame with a dry thunk. The third catches him in the bicep and spins him around like a top. The gun goes clattering out of his hand and he slides down to his ass.

I leave June on the floor and walk to stand over my brother. I could kill him like this, slaughtered on his ass like an animal.

But even now, even after everything he’s done, I won’t do that to him.

I’ll kill him eye to eye like a man.

I grab him by the collar of his shirt and force him up to his feet. “It’s over,sobrat,” I say, my voice heavy. “It’s fucking over.” I shake him like a ragdoll. “Any last words?”

I’d given my father the same privilege. So why not Adrian?

“June…” he whispers.

I shake him again, hard enough that his head clacks against the wall and his eyes go hazy. “Don’t you dare say her fucking name.”

“June, please,” Adrian continues, as if I hadn’t spoken. “That’s my child in your belly. Our daughter. For her sake… for her sake…”

“For her sake what, Adrian?” June asks tiredly, from just behind my shoulder.

“Spare me. If you love me, spare me.”

I want to cut his tongue out where he stands. But I will not do anything until I know June is ready.

“I don’t think you understand or recognize what love is, Adrian,” she says sadly. “If you did, you’d have recognized that Kolya was never your enemy.”

Adrian’s eyes flicker to me for a moment, and then back to June. “Remember the beginning, June,” he begs. “You’ve always been my strength. My rock. My lucky Junepenny.”

June takes a step forward to join us, her eyes filled with tears as she looks at the man she once thought she loved.

“I was your lucky penny, Adrian,” she whispers. “And then you sold me off to the highest bidder. I think your luck went into the bargain.”

Then she turns her back on him. And he has nothing left.

Nothing but me.

“Brother,” he whimpers. “Brother…”

My hand starts shaking. The gun suddenly feels so heavy. I try to focus on the bearded man in front of me. The man with blood on his hands, skeletons in his closet, nightmares in his head.

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