Page 133 of Beautiful Obsessions
Bass said, “Look at me.”
I didn’t.
“Archie.”
Something in his tone cut through my madness.
Grief.
I turned my head enough to see him.
His face looked older than I remembered.Tired in a way only men who have endured too much can look tired.
“He wanted this,” Bass said quietly.“The aftermath.Your collapse.The fracture of the family.The blood feud that follows.He built this for your destruction.”
I tightened my grip on the gun.
Bass took another step.
“You want to honor Rasputin?”he asked.“Then live long enough to do more than die an angry man.”
Rasputin.
The footage flashed behind my eyes.
My brother, who had spent half his life stepping between me and the worst of the world, had been shot in cold blood.
Something inside me tore.
Because Bass was right about one thing.
A quick death would have been mercy.
And mercy was the one thing Viktor Popovich did not deserve.
I lowered the gun.Not because my father deserved to live.But because I suddenly understood that if I killed him then, I would not stop with him.
I would tear through the whole house.Every loyalist.Every man who knew.Every coward who had looked away.I would split the empire open and call the ruin justice while bodies piled around my ankles.
Perhaps some would deserve it.Though not all.
Bass saw the understanding land.
“Go,” he said.
I stared at him.“What?”
“There’s a car outside.Wait for me.”
My father spat blood onto the carpet and snarled, “You think if you exile him, I won’t find him?He is nothing—nothing—without me.”
I pointed the gun at him again and he shut his mouth.
Bass did not flinch.“If you stay,” he said to me, “you will die tonight.Or worse—you will live long enough to become exactly what he wants you to become.”
Exactly what he wants you to become.
I looked at Viktor then.At the architect of every wound in our house.
