“How had you survived before then?”
Sevastyan rubbed a tattoo on his finger. I remembered that one signified thievery. “I stole. But as I got older, it became more difficult—I was getting taller and couldn’t slip away in a crowd as easily. There were times I was caught.” His voice broke lower. “If you crossed the wrong protection gangs and couldn’t fight your way free, things were . . . done.”
He’d been attacked by street thugs?
“Your father told you about how he first found me. But what I never confessed to him was that I didn’t always win on those streets. And when I didn’t”—he stared down at his fists—“I lost . . . much.”
Oh, God, no, no, no. I’d read about preyed-upon runaways in the States, read things that made my skin crawl; what had those men done to Sevastyan as a boy?
He glanced up. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Shame is more painful . . . ?
But he had nothing to be ashamed of ! Did he not understand that? Tonight, I might not be able to overturn twenty years of thinking, but so help me, ultimately I’d convince him.
His eyes went hazy once more. Was he reliving those agonies as well? I didn’t want him to, only wanted to comfort him.
In a hollow tone, he repeated, “I lost much.”
“Will you tell me?”
He closed his eyes. “I will. Just not today. Don’t ask that of me today.” His eyes shot open. “But you don’t leave.”
My heart was shattering, shards all around me. “I won’t,” I assured him. How easy it’d been for me to demand equal disclosure about our pasts when I had nothing shocking—or even noteworthy—to disclose. I’d wanted us to be equal, yet I hadn’t realized that our histories weren’t. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to your brothers?”
Clearly relieved to move past that topic, Sevastyan said, “We had no relatives, so they remained at the manor, with conservators brought in to arrange for their upbringing. I stayed away, fearing prosecution, but also because I look so much like my father, more with every year. I wanted to spare them the sight of me. I didn’t know until years later that Maksim had convinced the authorities that he and Dmitri had witnessed our drunken father’s fall, and that their older brother was missing because I’d become crazed with grief. Even then, Maksim could spin a tale like no other.”
Fondness for his brother had crept into Sevastyan’s tone, at odds with the chilliness between them earlier.
“I thought I had saved my brothers from an abusive tyrant, that they’d be free. At least I could wear that badge.” He clasped his forehead. “Yet just this week, Maksim admitted to me that the caretakers who came in to raise him and Dmitri were . . . worse than our father.”
“How?” I asked, but I could guess. His brothers had been abused, just as Sevastyan had—as if that was always going to be their fate, no matter what they did or how much they fought it.
“I won’t speak more about it, because that’s not my secret to tell.”
I recalled that day of the museum when he’d returned to the town house. He’d said nothing to me, just wrapped his arms around me as if I were the only thing keeping him afloat. Had he just learned of this from Maksim?
“I understand, Sevastyan. But you can’t take the blame for that. You were just twelve—you couldn’t have known.”
“I abandoned them. That’s how they see it, and they hate me for it. Maksim less than Dmitri, because he remembers me more. But deep down, they both want me to suffer for their fates. Why would I ever want to reveal my family to you, when I know they despise me?”
“I don’t care how anyone else feels about you.”
“Would you not? I didn’t want anything to affect your opinion of me. Sometimes you look at me as if I’m some sort of hero. I can’t explain . . . there’s no explaining what that feels like to me.” The look of longing on his face gave me an idea. “What would happen if you found out that most of my life has been everything unheroic? What if you discovered that I’m hated—and that I hate myself for every time I lost?”
He moved closer to me, shaving off the distance, and I wanted him to.
“Then, after finally managing to win—in work, in life—I was losing you.”
Not trusting myself to speak, I offered him my hand.
He stared at it in disbelief, then all but lunged for it. He absently took my other hand and began warming them between his own. Because they were cold.
At length, I said, “Thank you for trusting me with this.”
“You aren’t disgusted with me?”
“Of course not.” I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but I thought this moment was too tenuous. “With your father, you acted in self-defense. I think things got mixed up for you because you were so young.” Over time, his mind must have confused his memories, guilt overwhelming the reality of that night: if he hadn’t protected himself, he would have died. “You didn’t have a choice.”
“Every day, I look in the mirror—and my father stares back.”