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Plus, Nastja was smart. If she did want to betray me, she would have done it before we left for Russia.
My chest constricts, and my phone clatters to the ground as I press a palm to my ribs, gasping sharply to ease the pain. My avoidance of my grief has it manifesting as physical pain, and as the world bleeds black when the moon vanishes behind some clouds, I exist in a hollow cavern of pain for a few long seconds.
Not Nastja.
Leveling my breathing, the restricting pain fades, and soon, the moon is clear of clouds. I gather my phone and rise, beginning to pace in front of the window.
A woman. A maid, perhaps?
We had a few, but most, if not all, were killed in the attack. None of them ever got close enough to me or Alena to be able to pass across personal information, however, and none of them were privy to plans about who was where.
There’s only one woman, one person close enough with Alena to provide any sort of information.
My mind refuses to focus on her name, unable to face the very real fact that she may have betrayed me.
I clear my mind and walk over a luxurious carpet that’s seen far too little action to the drinks cabinet.
When I was a child and these were kept under lock and key, I taught myself how to pick the locks because as the man of the house, even from a young age, I wanted to swirl liquid in a glass like the distant memory of my father used to. I rarely drank it, of course. Back then, I hated the taste, but it was the one thing I could do to feel close to him.
It took me months to work out that Alyona had been changing the locks every so often to toy with me, and in the end, I became deft at picking any lock.
Now, as I pour bourbon over spherical ice cubes, I’m reminded of my siblings.
Ivan always drank too fast, downing everything like a shot regardless of the amount of liquid. Nastja preferred to let the ice melt to mellow the taste of the alcohol. I don’t remember if we ever drank in this study. This wing was our parents’ wing, and locking it up was a great way to avoid our pain.
Now I stand here, glass in hand with the ghosts of my siblings on either shoulder, aching for their presence and facing the prospect that someone else close to me is the reason they are gone.
I miss them.
I stare down at the drink and tilt the glass back and forth, watching the icy spheres clink against one another while I mull over everything Alexei said. I dart back and forth between seeking discrepancies in his information and confirming it all for myself.
“Shit.”
My heart can’t fall any further, and yet it weighs like a stone in my chest. I drink deeply, closing my eyes and focusing on the burn of alcohol down my throat. When I finish, I smack my lips together. Waiting for the ice to melt definitely does make it a little smoother.
Although, now, it strikes me why there’s even ice in here. Has there been someone constantly filling these ice buckets over the years? Through habit or passion?
Are August’s people that well trained in setting up a house? Did he know I would wander aimlessly and turn to the bottom of a glass when the pain was too much?
Knowing August, that’s exactly what he did.
I let my mind run over that thought, but in the end, it’s nothing more than a distraction from the truth.
The truth of who betrayed me, who betrayed Alena, is so utterly obscene and wrong that I can barely fathom it, but it’s the only explanation.
Alyona.
Her name sears through my mind, and I grip my glass until the patterned grooves bite into my palm.
She’s been like a mother to me. She never left my side, even as our family was dragged over the hot coals of youth, as I scraped together money to keep us alive and then joined the very family that had caused the death of my parents.
I took care of her and loved her like she was the one who gave me life. I know Ivan and Nastja felt the same.
She’s Family, and she’s been incredibly attentive to Alena. Therein lies the issue. In one breath, she helped raise and protect me and my siblings. In the next, she contacted Aleksander and gave him enough information that led to the attack on the house, the deaths of everyone here, and—if she warned him that I was coming—the deaths of Ivan and Nastja stain her hands too.
It makes sense if I think about it objectively.
But I can’t. I find that with each fact that clicks into place, I’m trying to excuse her, trying to seek out a way for it to be a mistake and explain it away as someone else.
