Page 97 of Beautiful Obsessions
“You’ll never get me to want it,” I said.
His expression changed then, not softening, but shifting into something more thoughtful.Colder.
“You are leaving tomorrow.”
The change in direction was so abrupt it took a moment to settle.
“For what?”
“Business in Novosibirsk.A dispute over shipping routes.”He lifted his own drink and sipped it as though the dispute had not just happened.“You will handle it.”
“I have no intention of?—”
“You will go.”
There were ways to disobey my father and ways to survive doing it.That was not one of them.Not then.
I left before the walls could press any closer and went looking for Rasputin.
I found him in the old gym.
He was working the heavy bag like he meant to break it—each strike landing hard enough to drag a protest from the chain above.His shirt clung to him, dark with sweat, wraps tight around his hands, shoulders coiled with a tension that never really left him.
He stopped when he saw my face.
“Finally decided you belong in the ring with me?”he said, a crooked grin cutting through the tension.
“Not likely.”
The grin faded.
He watched me for a second too long, reading what I wasn’t saying.Then he exhaled, slow, like he’d already reached the conclusion.
“What did he do now?”
Our father didn’t need to be named.He lived in every fracture.
A laugh broke out of me—short, sharp, wrong.
Then I told him.
About the dinner.The slap.The crown hanging over my head like something that was decided instead of discussed.And the part that enraged me most of all was that once again, our father had spoken as if the throne belonged anywhere… but to his firstborn.
Rasputin listened without interruption, chest rising and falling slowly as he cooled.
When I was done, he stepped back from the bag and leaned against the wall.
“I’ve told him over and over it should be you.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know that too.”
“I don’t want it.”
His expression flickered, something between pity and resignation.
