Heart of My Monster (Monster Trilogy, #3)(19)

My brother releases a sound from the back of his throat but says nothing as he cuts his eggs and eats in silence. It’s weird to even look him in the face.

Apparently, Anton killed the real Yuri. One of Uncle Albert’s close acquaintances in the KGB who’s a plastic surgeon and a master of disguise gave my brother a nose job and altered his jaw’s structure so it’d imitate the real Yuri’s features. He also supplied him with some sort of pill to alter his voice. My brother cut and dyed his hair, bulked up, and wore brown contact lenses.

The result wasn’t the perfect Yuri, but that was okay since Anton made everyone think Yuri had been in an accident and needed reparative surgery. Hence, his look was enough to resemble Yuri, but not identical. The reason he targeted Yuri out of all of Kirill’s men was due to a couple of circumstances. Unfortunately, they shared the same body type, height, and eye shape. Two, he was a loner, an orphan, and didn’t speak to anyone aside from Maksim.

It's like watching a psychopath in action. Anton didn’t hesitate to end the life of what was the weakest link in Kirill’s circle. He adapted some of his mannerisms and made sure to fit in within Kirill’s elite men.

He’d served in the Spetsnaz and had high-speed driving training, but he managed to hide his superior combat skills effectively.

Hell, he managed to fool me, and I’m his own damn sister. When I asked him why he did that, he said he had to do it to avoid suspicion. Besides, we all had to make sacrifices for revenge and the family.

Now that I know it was all a fa?ade, I can see some of my brother’s old features in his face, but they’re subtle. It helps that he removed the lenses and allowed his hair to grow back to its original color. No wonder I always felt a sense of closeness and familiarity with Yuri. Maybe a part of me already recognized him as my brother.

He’s an older, more frightening version, though. While he was always silent and grumpy, now, he’s like a wall.

His dark hair is messed up at the top, his jaw is set, and his movements are nearly robotic. There was never much light in my brother’s eyes, but now, it’s completely gone.

It makes me wonder if the laughs and smiles he sometimes offered back in the military or in New York were genuine or just another fa?ade.

He surely hasn’t smiled since we got back to Russia.

Not even once.

He stands up, and I snatch a piece of toast, then hastily drink my coffee, managing to burn my tongue. “Are we going on a run? Give me five.”

My runs with him in the morning and the combat training that he’s never stopped giving me since Kirill was shot are the only things that keep me sane. I’ve been channeling all my rage and feelings of betrayal and directing it at shooting targets and imagining Kirill’s face on them.

He slips on his coat without paying me attention. “Not today.”

“Why not?”

“I have an errand to run.”

“Oh, okay.”

He stares at me.

I shift beneath his gaze. “What?”

“Don’t go out like that.”

He means like a woman. I refuse to dress as a man again. I don’t care if I have to die for it.

“I’m not doing that anymore. You stopped being Yuri, and I stopped being Aleksander. If we’re going to do something, we’ll do it while being ourselves.”

He shakes his head but says nothing.

“Bring me candy, Antosha!” Mike asks. No, more like he demands.

My brother offers him a warm look and nods. “Okay.”

“And cake!”

“What type?” Anton actually indulges our cousin.

It’s weird to see him this patient with a kid, especially since he’s stoic to a fault.

“Strawberry, chocolate.” Mike counts on his fingers, his brows drawn with concentration. “Cheesecake and…and…all the cake!”

“I’ll see what I can find.” Anton pats his head and leaves.

Mike grins with triumph, goes to the adjoining room, and turns on the TV. Soon after, the sounds of cartoons fill the house. It’s so tiny that you can hear everything from anywhere.

My uncle pats my shoulder. “Never mind Anton, Sasha. You know how close-minded he can get.”

“There’s something I still don’t understand.” I toy with the jam jar, even though I have no actual appetite. “He spent over six years in Kirill’s company. How come he never took action? He could’ve easily killed him.”

“It was only five. He spent the first year recovering from his injury and devising this plan.”

Right. My brother was hurt badly in the shoot-out that I thought killed him. Anton has a gash on his back that’s covered by some tattoos. Everyone back in New York believes it’s from the accident he supposedly suffered. But it is, in fact, a souvenir from the massacre, after which Anton slipped into a coma for a few weeks, and Uncle hid it from us because he didn’t want to give us false hope.

After he woke up, Anton told Uncle to keep his survival a secret and went on to infiltrate Kirill’s men's ranks.

“At first,” Uncle continues, “we had no concrete evidence that Kirill was the one who informed his father of the plan to annihilate our family. We only knew that Roman had something to do with the massacre.”

“Are you going to tell me what he was talking about that day?”