Archie looked toward the desk.Our father’s desk.
The throne of a cruel little demon who had mistaken fear for loyalty until fear finally turned around and bit him.
“He deserved worse,” Archie said.
His gaze came back to me, but there was no satisfaction in his face.
Only exhaustion.
“You should have told me.I would have come.”
“I know.”
“I would have crawled across Europe if I had to.”
My chest tightened.
“I know that, too.”
“Then why?Why did you decide for me?”
I had answered this in my head a thousand ways.All of them sounded like lies now.
“Because I was afraid.”
Archie’s face shifted.Rasputin Popovich did not confess fear.Ever.But there it was.Bleeding on the floor between us.
“I was afraid Viktor would use you to finish what he started.I was afraid if word reached you, it would reach him.I was afraid you would come for me before I could stand, and I would watch our father put you in the ground beside me.”
My voice lowered.
“And I was afraid that if you saw what I had become in those first months, you would stop living and start trying to carry me.”
Archie’s anger faltered again.
I hated myself for every flicker of hurt in him.
He looked away.His throat worked.
“Do you know what it did to me?”
I nodded.
“No, you don’t,” he said.“You don’t.You were alive.You had pain.You had Marushka.You had Bass.You had something to fight toward.I had a fucking ghost.”
His words struck me.
“I had a brother who existed only in memory.I had questions no one answered.I had nightmares of this room.Of you falling.Of them carrying you away.I had a mother hidden from me.A life I didn’t choose.A country I couldn’t return to.And every time something good happened, every time I laughed, every time I breathed without choking on it, I remembered you were dead and felt guilty for surviving.”
I stood very still.
He stepped closer.
“You didn’t just stay dead, Rasputin.You made me live with it.”
There it was.The wound beneath the rage.I would have taken a knife easier.
“I am sorry,” I said.