Chapter 58

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The day of the party, a light rain fell over Boston.

Perhaps the unpredictable weather was inevitable for a coastal city. Yuri stood beneath a dark, weeping sky, letting the drizzle soak him rather than seeking shelter. Buying an umbrella for such a mild mist would have been a nuisance he had no patience for.

Alexei was already ten minutes late. For a man habitually tardy, this was practically punctual; some days he arrived forty minutes behind schedule, usually because he had been distracted helping a stranger in some unfamiliar neighborhood or entangled in a pointless argument. Other times, he had simply forgotten to charge his battery, leaving his car lifeless.

Yuri’s bored gaze settled on the small suitcase he had bought at the airport. It held only two books, his coat, the white shirt of Cherriot’s he had yet to return, and one spare set of clothes. Unfortunately, he had been unable to bring his pistol. It appeared that crossing international borders required a specific, temporary permit for the destination before a firearm could be checked at the counter.

Yuri had tucked the weapon away in a place known only to himself. It would be fortunate if he could eventually invent an excuse to return to the vicinity of Big Fox and retrieve it. He looked away from the suitcase toward the road, a sudden rush of anxiety tightening his brow. Perhaps it was only natural. What was about to happen was far from ordinary.

Everything rested on the success of their plan, though Alexei’s schemes generally produced favorable results one way or another. The previous night, after consulting with Dolly, Benji had finally agreed to Alexei’s proposal. They needed credible evidence before involving the police, and fortunately, the copy Alexei made of the middle boss’s phone revealed the party’s exact date and time, lending legitimacy to his warning. Benji relayed the information to his superior and privately solicited help from colleagues, who would blend in with the hired security to intervene if the situation spiraled.

Dolly, however, insisted that isolating Cherriot alone would be impossible. He would immediately sense that something was amiss. She refused to frighten him unnecessarily, fearing it might disrupt the operation—or worse, alert the mastermind to their movements. They ultimately decided to proceed with the original plan.

The party was set to begin at five in the afternoon. If they departed now, they would arrive shortly before it commenced. At that precise moment, Alexei’s car pulled up to the curb.

“Sorry. I’m late.”

Alexei lowered the window and gestured for him to stow the suitcase in the back. Yuri stepped off the curb and opened the rear door, finding several shopping bags already occupying the seat. He carefully secured the suitcase on the floor so it would not crush them, then climbed into the passenger side.

“What are those?”

At Yuri’s glance toward the back, Alexei wrinkled his nose. “I couldn’t come all the way to Boston without buying souvenirs from the ballet company. Lerusha mentioned he wanted to visit once.”

In the past, Alexei had done little but bring his younger lover to tears. Apparently, he had learned many ways to make Valeri happy. Pleased by this change, Yuri gave a quiet laugh and looked forward. “Let’s go.”

“Gladly. I’m more nervous than I expected. It’s been a while since we handled anything on this scale.”

Alexei pressed the accelerator. Yuri agreed, falling into a brief silence. During the two years he had helped with Alexei’s work, they had encountered dangerous situations often enough, but usually they faced no more than three or four opponents. Even the hitmen who pursued them had worked in pairs and remained manageable. Today, they would likely face many more.

“Remember?” Alexei said, attempting to soften the tension. “I feel like we had another day like this.”

The joke alluded to something far heavier than the current situation, and Yuri smiled faintly. Alexei was likely referring to the day they decided to bring Igor down before escaping Saratov.

“Yes. A previous life,” Yuri whispered alongside him.

“Exactly. Our fucking previous life,” Alexei answered with a curse. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would still be trapped in it.”

Alexei had saved many people. They had originally decided to destroy Igor because Alexei had been caught secretly helping people escape into Canada. Members of the organization who intended to report Igor to the police, or debtors whose executions had been ordered because they could never repay what they owed. Instead of killing them, Alexei had helped them cross the border. He had continued the work his parents, Mikhail and Nina, had once attempted.

“You’re making it sound as though I did everything alone,” Alexei said. “I could never have done it without you.”

“I would never have thought as you did. Helping people escape. Saving them. Only you could have done that.”

Alexei increased their speed. The car left the city and followed a coastal road, with the gray sea stretching along their left. Raindrops mingled with the warm wind entering through the open window.

When the moisture struck Yuri’s cheek, he slowly raised the glass, though he did not close it entirely. The air against his skin felt pleasant. He understood now why Cherriot always wanted the windows open.

It makes me feel alive.

“You said something the last time we spoke,” Alexei continued. “That you were rotten. That I had lived without shame but you hadn’t. That kind of bullshit.”

His voice hardened. “Yuri, you and I are fundamentally the same. We were both imprisoned because of our parents’ debts, and both of us were forced through horrors we never wanted.”

“Alyosha… I don’t want to discuss this now.”

His conversation with Benji returned to him. Yuri felt an imaginary ache from the scar across the center of his back—the brutal cross Igor had carved with repeated machete blows. That day had been the beginning of what made Yuri and Alexei fundamentally different. Yuri did not raise his voice, but Alexei heard the pain within it. His expression tightened, and he went silent.

The rain grew heavier around them.

“I know what you did for me,” Alexei said after a while. “I’ve always been grateful.”

“I didn’t do much for you, Alyosha.”

Alexei shot him a glare, as though suppressing everything he truly wanted to say, then shook his head. “It’s true that Valeri has always been the center of my life. I lived for him. But without you, I would’ve died from disease or starved to death years ago.”

“That was nothing.”

“When I think back on it… I’m sorry.”

At the apology, Yuri slowly turned toward him. Alexei’s profile, fixed on the road ahead, now truly belonged to a man in his thirties. Their reckless twenties, when they had committed whatever acts survival demanded, were buried in memory.

“I should have paid more attention to you,” Alexei said. “I shouldn’t have let you end up alone with thoughts like these.”

“Has the rain made you sentimental, Alyosha?”

“Since we came to Vancouver, we’ve hardly had a chance to be alone together. That’s why I’m only saying it now.”

Alexei tightened his hands around the steering wheel. Blue veins stood out beneath his pale skin. Yuri silently studied the scars across those hands.

As Alexei said, they had nearly been the same.

Their appearances.

Their circumstances.

“I always felt guilty that I became happy first.”

The rain almost swallowed the words, but Yuri heard them. He looked at Alexei without understanding. What had he possibly done wrong that required an apology?

“I don’t understand.”

“That attitude is exactly why I’m telling you.” Alexei glanced toward Yuri’s left side. “After we made the plan yesterday, that woman Dolly spoke to me separately.

She said you’d been wounded in the side. But you act as though being injured means nothing. The only people who truly don’t care about pain are those who want to die.”

“I have no intention of dying.”

“But you behave as though you do.”

Apparently frustrated, Alexei reached for the cigarettes in the center console. Yuri took the pack first and offered him one. When he held it toward Alexei’s lips as though telling him to take it and keep his eyes on the road, Alexei caught the cigarette between his teeth. He gave an incredulous laugh at Yuri’s coaxing manner but looked forward, and Yuri lit it for him. Alexei inhaled deeply.

The long exhale carried a sigh. “You’re allowed to show when you’re in pain. That’s how people notice and take care of you.”

“This hardly hurts.”

“And you’re allowed to be happy.”

Alexei was behaving unusually sentimentally today. Yuri wondered whether he had been drinking and glanced at his reflection in the window. His face looked no different from usual: pale skin, dry lips, and blue eyes beneath black brows. A stark face lacking vitality.

“Our charges were officially erased,” Alexei said. “That was our legitimate bargaining right in exchange for helping bring down Igor Volkov. The agreement was that no one would prosecute us for what happened before. So there’s no problem.”

They were pleasant words. But Yuri’s sins were not the kind that could be forgiven through the affectionate reassurance of a friend.

“Enough.”

It was not that Yuri had never thought the same thing. Yuri Kiselyov was far from a saint. Whenever he faced the despairing conviction that he must remain alive and repent for his crimes, he sometimes felt the urge to forgive himself.

“I was speaking with the catering company this morning when I suddenly thought about it,” Alexei said. “Bastards willing to kill their own family are living perfectly well, so why should you be this miserable? Doesn’t that seem wrong?”

Yuri listened in silence. Alexei had clearly decided that he would say something—anything—that might comfort Yuri today. Once Alexei became stubborn, he could not be stopped.

Rather than interrupt, Yuri considered what he had said. Yuri was not fundamentally so different from the garbage Alexei described. Even so, the thought that men like that lived freely struck something within him today.

“I wasn’t sure how far I wanted to take this job either,” Alexei continued. “I was looking for an opportunity to leave. I even considered going home with you if you returned.”

He finished the cigarette with startling speed and dropped it into the car’s ashtray. Then he looked at Yuri with fiercely bright blue eyes. “But if I didn’t help Goodnight…”

His gaze sharpened. “I thought you would charge in alone and die.”

Yuri parted his lips to deny it. To say Alexei was exaggerating again. But facing the eyes of someone who knew him too well, he could no longer offer meaningless denial. Alexei was half right and half wrong. The time Yuri spent watching Cherriot—even from a distance—had become precious enough that he did not intend to throw his life away easily.

But for years, when alone, Yuri had often thought that dying would bring peace. Whenever he woke in his bare bedroom and stared at the empty ceiling, he quietly considered whether there was any reason to preserve his miserable life for one more day. He attempted to distract himself, but nothing in his world held enough meaning to pull his mind elsewhere. Out of obligation, he endured the day.

Before sleep, he forced himself to erase the negative thoughts. But when morning returned, the temptation of life’s end rose again like thorns and waited in the same place. No matter how often he cut them away, they returned.

Just when Yuri had begun to wonder how he could possibly continue—he met Cherriot. The absurd intruder who should have left no mark on Yuri’s life had crossed the distance between them and stood beside him. Now Yuri could breathe merely by remaining near Cherriot. It did not matter if he was not special to him.

Perhaps people like Benji and Dolly would never understand. Perhaps even Alexei would not. Yuri himself still found it strange to feel such powerful emotion for a man he had known only briefly. He could not know how long this tender joy would last.

Yet beside Cherriot, Yuri began looking forward to tomorrow.

Expectation had been one of the rarest words in his life. But when he listened to Cherriot speak, the somedays he mentioned made Yuri’s chest tremble with anticipation. Cherriot alone had done that to him.

Is someone like me allowed to have even one thing he wants?

As Yuri continued listening to Alexei, a small desire took root inside him. If he had to remain alive anyway, was he permitted one modest happiness? He was not asking for an extravagant joy beyond his worth. Only what he had already resolved upon: permission to remain somewhere near Cherriot, even at a distance.

Yuri did not dare dream of the beautiful moments they had shared at the cottage. But if he could see Cherriot occasionally—even once every few months—remain his friend and watch that fresh, lovely smile spread across his face, perhaps that alone would be enough to keep Yuri anticipating tomorrow.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Alexei muttered, “but don’t try to die for love.”

He leaned abruptly across the car, took the cigarette pack from Yuri, removed another one, and lit it himself. Crushing the filter between his canines, he finally said what Yuri had truly wanted to hear. “I don’t want to lose you. We haven’t even had half a lifetime to enjoy being alive. Five years, maybe? Yes. Only five fucking years.” Smoke drifted from his mouth. “So instead, be greedy for that Cherry or Berry or whatever his name is. Don’t give a damn what anyone around you says. Do what you want.”

“Cherriot,” Yuri finally spoke after listening quietly.

At the correction, Alexei curved his blue eyes and burst into laughter. “I know. Cherriot Goodnight. The man my one and only friend has fallen hopelessly for. And an Alpha, at that. Of all people, I never expected you to fall for an Alpha.”