Page 128 of Twisted Little Game

“You have been here, all this time?” I ask him.

“Of course. I had to be here.”

“You are too good to me.”

All at once, fragments of memory start to float back into my mind. The thoughts I was having while I was coming out of anesthesia were dreamlike, but they were very vivid.

And in some ways I felt like I had more clarity than ever before.

“Tate, I⁠—”

The hospital door swings open and Maks appears, with a brown bag in one hand and a tray of coffee cups in the other.

He puts both of them down on the table immediately when he sees I’m awake.

“You are up,” he says, coming over to squeeze my shoulder.

I feel the familiar urge to push down what I was about to say.

But I’m not going to let it happen this time.

“Maks, you should hear this, too,” I say. “Listen. Both of you.”

“We’re here,” Tate says.

“I am getting out.”

Maks blinks at me.

Tate looks confused, and beautiful, all at once.

“Vy neser'yozno,” Maks whispers. You’re not serious.

“Yes,” I say. “I am getting out.”

“Out of what?” Tate asks.

“You know what this means, Roman?” Maks says.

“I do know.” I reach to grip Tate’s hand. “I am cutting ties with the Petrov Bratva. Including my father.”

“You would never do this,” Maks says. “When I…”

“When you asked me if I would, two years ago, I said it would never happen,” I tell Maks. “I know.”

It’s something I haven’t spoken about with Maks since it happened.

He came to me, two years ago, saying he wanted to get out.

I told him nothing could ever make me betray my father. My duty. Even when I hated him. Even when I’ve always wished I could have another life.

“It was my destiny, I was so certain,” I tell them. “I had to outlive my father, to finally gain power in the family, to change the way we do things. But I am no longer willing to wait that long. Waiting to live my life. Waiting for independence. I will take it now.”

“And you will never be able to speak to your family again. No dinners, no holidays, no contact,” Maks says.

“It is not an easy choice, but it is the right one. I will miss the cousins more than I can ever explain. But I cannot live this way. I can’t.”

“I am with you,” Maks says.