64

Nikolai.

-

Eleven years ago.

-

"I want out."

Three words as simple as they were, yet their significance to the man before me was like fueling a fire that cannot be tamed. A fire so blazing and ferrous that I was the one to burn to ashes with it.

I knew what I was doing and I knew what I wanted and nothing would deter me from asking for it. It was too much. This life was consuming me. I wanted a normal one.

Not this.

"Что ты только что сказал мне, мальчик?"

(What did you just say to me, boy?)

My sperm donor took a puff of his Cuban cigar, the smoky scent invading my nostrils and forming a halo of sin around his head as he puffed it out. A beacon of all that was bad and ugly was the correct way to describe it because he was the fucking worst.

From my peripheral my brothers shifted in their places, uncomfortable, their heads bowed slightly, their hands behind their back monotonous and unmoving. Like statues. Or like the obedient soldiers that he made of them.

Dimitri and the other high-