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“Thank you,” she says tenderly.
She grabs a handful of snacks and heads out of the room. Kolya watches her go. Then he turns his eyes on me. For once, I think I can read what’s in them.
And it reads something like the truth.
45
KOLYA
“You heard the tail end of that conversation, didn’t you?”
“You should sit down, June.”
She ignores me. “Your brother wore a ring. I think I mentioned that to you,” she says, her eyes burning darker than the fire next to us. “I think I mentioned it to you today, actually. Two swords clashing. The exact same as what Angela just described to me.”
“And you think her pimp and Adrian are the same person?”
I don’t know why I’m taking this stance. Chalk it up to habit. Even after all this time, I still feel the need to keep my promise and protect him. Despite the fact that he stopped deserving it a long time ago.
“Doyou?” she asks, throwing the question back at me.
I take a deep sigh. And then I just concede the truth. “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself.”
Her eyes go wide. “Wait. So you don’t know for sure?” she asks suspiciously. “But—you know everything.”
I almost smile. If this whole fucking situation wasn’t so cursed and convoluted, maybe I would have. “I’m glad you agree. But my brother’s life was a mystery to me. Part of that was my fault. I chose to keep him at arms’ length when I realized he had a problem.”
“A problem?”
“The drinking, June,” I remind her softly. “It started early.”
She looks confused for a moment. “No—no, that’s not true. When we met, he was fine. I mean, he drank, but it was never, like… excessive.” I can see her mind whirring with effort as she tries to determine if her memories are accurate or just fantasies dreamed up to paper over the hideous face of her reality.
But that fails, of course. When it does, she shivers despite the oppressive heat in the room. “The drinking only got bad after The Accident.”
The Accident.
She’s just given me the opening I need to give her the rest of what she doesn’t know. But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to cross that line. Not now. Not when yet another part of her past is crumbling right before her eyes.
And since I can’t give her that truth, I choose another one. “The drinking started when he was a teenager,” I tell her. “When he was about seventeen. He went through a hard time with our father and alcohol was the only thing that seemed to help him.”
“That was years before he met me.”
I nod. “He had many masks, June. And he wore them well. He was charming and smart enough to pull them all off, make them convincing. He knew what to say and he knew when to say it. The only person he couldn’t bullshit was me. Which was probably why he started to resent me in the end.”
The silence is strained and painful. It’s funny how both of us have handfuls of memories of Adrian’s pain—both the pain he suffered and the pain he caused. Memories that onlywehave. She has hers. I have mine. They differ in content, but it all hurts the same.
“How common can a ring like that be?” she whispers. “A gold ring with two clashing swords? It has to be Adrian. We should talk to Angela some more. Ask her to describe—Maybe—”
“Angela has been through enough,” I say firmly. “I don’t want to inundate her with questions before she’s ready to answer them.”
“She was talking to me.”
“Do you really want to make her feel like she’s only important as a source of information? Do you want to minimize her suffering?”
I’m not a fan of manipulating June the way I’m doing. But I’m doing it to protect her as much as Angela. Angela can only tell her what I already suspect—that my brother had fallen even further into the abyss than I had initially suspected.
But I still have no idea about the extent of his dealings. And until I do, I want to make sure that June is shielded from the worst of his mistakes.
