Series: Series by Ker Dukey
Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Rodion flinches and my muscles coil tight.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Z accuses him.
“No.” Rodion shakes his head, his jaw ticking. “Not then.”
A ragged exhale blows from Z’s lips. “Not then? So, when?”
Silence.
“When, Ro?” Z snaps.
Brushing a hand through his hair, Rodion bites his lip and then says, “I had memories of that time. My mom was so broken, ranting about what happened to her, the scars left on her body. She changed before my young eyes and then I started having these nightmares in my teens about her.”
“I remember them,” Z says in a whisper, turmoil flashing across his eyes. Moving closer to Rodion, his palms frantically clench around Ro’s face. “I remember them. You were fifteen. They kept us both up, and I’d talk to you for hours to soothe you.”
Ro’s eyes trace every pained line on Z’s face. “I told my father about the dreams, and he told me what happened.” Rodion’s voice cracks.
“Zahkar,” Andru says his name but it’s useless.
Z is wholly focused on his brother, his best friend, his soulmate. “Since we were fifteen you fucking knew?”
“I’m sorry. What good can come from knowing that?” Rodion looks desperate for Z to understand his reasoning.
“That’s my right to know. It’s my fucking history,” Z roars, his spittle spraying Rodion’s face.
Andru moves and stops me when I attempt to intervene, he gently coaxes me out of the way and grasps Z’s arm.
“Zahkar,” Andru warns.
Flinching back, Z shoves at Andru’s chest and storms from the room. My heart plummets when the front door slams shut.
He’s left us.
Rodion takes off running after him and I attempt to follow but Andru grasps my upper arm halting me.
“What do you know about Daniel?” he demands, searching my face for the answers.
I pull free from his grip and sneer. “I know you kept him in Yuri’s basement, tortured, and barely alive. Does Rodion know about him?”
Please say no, please say no, please say no.
Surprise flashes over his face but he masks it quickly. “No. And Daniel deserves every fucking minute of it,” he says with conviction.
“Does Zahkar deserve it, though?” I say the words thickening with my emotions. “How can you love him so much and still keep Daniel like that?” My lips twist in disgust.
“Zahkar is my son, my fucking boy,” he bites out stabbing a finger to his chest, “who I raised and loved despite the pain it sometimes caused me to look at him. Daniel is an evil plague on the earth that I hold no regret about.”
“Was,” I correct him.
“What?” He blinks in confusion.
I lean in closer to make sure he hears me. “Was evil. He’s dead now. It’s been long enough. Z suffered enough without knowing the details or time in which Daniel died.”
His head rears back. “You killed him?” There’s that shock and disbelief again.
“It was probably another heart attack. A lot of that is going around at the moment.” I raise a brow and turn on my heel. There was no way I was leaving the man who shared Z’s eyes like that. Even after learning what he did, I don’t regret ending his suffering. An air bubble injected into his drip line was easy enough. He’s the devil’s problem now, and Z never has to know. Some secrets are worth keeping.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Zahkar
There are no bad people, just bad things people do.
My biological father’s words ring in my mind until they form a chorus of alarms that become too overwhelming to bear. A roar erupts from my lungs, tightening every muscle, straining my vocal cords, and piercing the night air, causing birds to take flight from the surrounding trees. Daniel was every bit a bad person and he did bad things because of it. He deserved what happened to him, but I still can’t believe that of my mother. Did she really know what he was? And if she did, did she deserve the same punishment?
How the hell has Rodion been able to look at me after finding out it was my blood brother who hurt his mother that way and made her end her own life just to escape the memory of it? My real family destroyed his. I hate that Rodion knew, he fucking knew, and kept it from me.
“Z?” Rodion’s footfalls sound behind me until they hit grass. “I’m sorry.”
I feel his aura like it’s a physical part of him grazing over me.
Inhaling through my nose, I hold an arm out behind me. “Don't come near me.” I need a minute to sort through everything.
“Don’t let what Daniel did come between us,” he pleads.
“It’s not what he did. It’s what you did.” My muscles stretch over bones, my heart hammering deep in my veins, making my skin pulse with untapped rage. It is what Daniel did, but it’s also what Rodion kept from me. He knew the man I called Dad was the one who ordered the kill on my parents, was the man who cold-cocked me with a fucking gun when I was ten years old.