Man Up Stepbrother (21 page)

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Continue reading for an excerpt of
My Russian Nightmare

I was stolen from my brother’s bedside by bad men with evil intentions. Tall, dark, and terrifying, Dimitri stands out. He shows tenderness and kindness that the other members of the Russian mob seem incapable of.

There’s something familiar and comforting about him. Something that draws me in. I feel safe when he’s near and long to feel his protective arms around me. The more time I spend with him, the more of my heart he steals and the harder it is for me to fight my attraction to him

I want to trust him, to believe he’ll keep me safe, but secrets begin to surface. Secrets with deadly consequences. Dark secrets that have been following us both for years.

Trusting him threatens to break me. Not trusting him threatens to kill me.

No matter what I choose, my life will never be the same.

Chapter 1

My heart hammers against my chest so hard and furious it’s making me lightheaded. Everything in my periphery is growing black.

“Just a little further,” I whisper to myself, moving forward on adrenaline alone. I’m singularly focused on the room at the end of the hall. I just need to get there.

“Please, Sammy, hold on,” I mutter.

My brother is all the family I have left. He’s been my rock, my confidant, my protector since our parents died four years ago. After the fire that killed them, Sammy took on more responsibility than anyone so young should have to shoulder. He could’ve been free and clear to finish college and move on with his life. Instead, he quit school, came home, and took care of me.

For reasons that are so far beyond anything I can comprehend, that included rebuilding the family business. Anyone else would’ve seen the diner as bad luck and walked away; not Sammy. I told him to leave it, that we didn’t need to rebuild for the third time in seven years, but he didn’t listen.

Why didn’t he listen to me?

Every time I think about it, I’m further convinced that nothing good ever came out of that place. In fact, all it’s done is cause me pain. It’s taken everyone I loved, everyone I cared about away from me.
Please let Sammy be okay.

The deep ache in my chest I’ve had since getting the call about my brother is familiar. Too familiar. Only now it’s worse than it was when I found out about my parents, because he’s all I have left, and if I lose him, I’ll have nothing. It’s hard to breathe, and the hall seems like it keeps getting longer. I’m not sure I’m going to make it to Sammy’s room before I pass out. If I do, maybe they could set us up in side-by-side beds.

How did my life get so fucked up? When did it start sucking this bad? It was never “this bad” before because I had Sammy to lean on. Every time I convince myself I’m on the up path, that things have to be turning around, it’s like life gives me a giant raspberry and they get worse instead.

I’m getting buried deeper in the never-ending hole of darkness around me. Each day when I wake, I have to fight harder to get out of bed. It feels like someone came in the middle of the night and threw another shovel of shit on me, making it more difficult to move.

I need a happy place. I search for one in my mind but fall short. The only place I go is back to the diner. Back to the time before my life began crumbling to pieces.

*

A handful of customers are left from the lunch rush as I enter the diner.

“You’re late,” Sammy glares at me. “Mom has been losing her mind behind the counter because the princess hasn’t shown up to the ball.”

“Shut up, jerk.” I say, sick of his passive-aggressive attitude.

I don’t understand why my parents need to know where I am every second of the day, but for some reason they do. I get it, thirteen is too young to be on my own, but still, I’m not a baby. I’ll be in high school next year.

Whatever the reason is, Sammy has no right to be pissed at me for it. I do what I’m supposed to and don’t get into trouble at school. I’m too busy working here after school to have a life or any real friends. So what if I want to speak to someone for five minutes?

“Nice. That’s the thanks I get for making sure all the shit work is done before you got here.”

I look around and notice all the sweeping and cleaning under the tables is done. I just need to wipe some tables down and refill the condiments before the dinner rush. Still, he doesn’t have to be such a jerk about it.

“Thanks.”

He grunts in response. I get that my brother doesn’t like having to clean up after the lunch crowd by himself. Neither do I. It’s crazy busy in the afternoon, and customers are slobs. They act like we’re there to serve them. I guess we are, but still, if something falls on the floor, they could have a little courtesy and pick it up. I swear, half of them drop shit on purpose. At least the kids we go to school with do.

The diner is in a great location near the main strip of the town. We’re close to everything that matters. Stores, City Hall, and we’re within walking distance from the high and middle schools. While that’s good for business, it sucks for Sammy and me. Too many kids that know us come in here just to make fun of us for waiting on them and cleaning the mess they leave behind.

“Mom,” Sammy yells into the kitchen, “the princess is here. Does that mean I can leave? I have a baseball game to get ready for.”

*

“Why aren’t you guys at the diner?” I ask my father the next morning. He’s sitting somber-faced at the kitchen table while my mother rifles through a stack of papers on the counter. “You’re always there by five a.m., and it’s already seven.”

“Yeah, well,” he shakes his head and our eyes meet. It’s the first time in my life I can remember my father looking like he’s about to cry. “There was an incident in the middle of the night. Looks like we’ll be closed a while.”

“Oh no. What happened?”

“We were robbed. Police think it’s gang related. The place was destroyed. Vandalized.”

It takes me a moment to process what he’s saying.

“They got a few hundred dollars from the register, and I guess it wasn’t enough,” Mom chimes in. “They smashed all the windows and tables, slashed the booths, and ever so kindly covered everything else with red and black spray paint.”

“Motherfuckers,” my father adds.

Mom rests her hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

My father shakes his head. He looks dejected. Beaten. “No. No, it’s not.”

“Did the police catch the guy that did this?” I ask, looking to either of them to answer.

“They think it was a group of guys,” Mom explains. “Too much damage was done in the seven minutes it took the police to respond to the call for it to be just one or two people.”

“Seven minutes? What took them so long? The police station is only two minutes away.”

My parents exchange a dark look and send me to my room.

*

“Almost there,” I remind myself, trying to keep my mind focused on being strong for my brother. I wonder — if my parents were here, would I feel this weight? This burden? No. Because then I wouldn’t know what losing them feels like. My worst loss would still be when I was nine and my best friend moved away. I’d give a kidney right now to have my parents back and for that to be my worst memory.

*

A long, grueling six months passes with Sammy and I working right alongside my parents. First we had to sort through the mess to see if anything was salvageable, then we had to work on cleaning. Now, with all the new booths and tables in place, along with some modernizations my parents made, we’re ready to re-open.

“This is ridiculous. I’ve sacrificed all my friends, all the girls I could’ve gone out with, and for what?” I hear Sammy and Dad in the kitchen. “I’m supposed to be out getting laid, not doing this bullshit,” Sammy complains a week before the ‘grand re-opening.’”

“You’ll have plenty of time for girls when you’re away at college. Right now we need your help.”

“You always need my help. But the truth is, you don’t need me at all. You need a fucking babysitter for the princess. Why don’t you hire a nanny and leave me the hell alone?” Sammy yells before storming back into the dining section and filling the salt and pepper shakers.

I catch him glaring at me out of the corner of my eye. I wish I had a clue why my brother hates me so much.

*

Stupid memory. Sammy never hated me. Not then. Not now. Actions speak louder than words. If he truly hated me, he would’ve tossed me into foster care and went on with his life. I don’t care what he said when we last spoke. He doesn’t hate me. I refuse to believe it.

*

Everything in town is shut down. Two days had passed since the hurricane and the town is still in the dark.

Little more than a year after we re-opened, things are finally back to normal, all the customers we lost after the burglary are back, and life is good. Or at least it was until the storm hit land two days ago. The weathermen and reporters say it was the most severe hurricane we’ve seen in over a century.

The diner is one of hundreds of businesses destroyed in its wake up and down the East Coast. Even if the river water didn’t destroy the diner and it had been unscathed, it still spelled disaster for our business.

The town and everyone in it is devastated. The air outside smells like death. Only one person physically died here as a result of the storm, but hundreds of others watched their hopes and dreams suffocate and drown as the filthy water continued to rise and wash away everything they owned.

Our quiet little community now
looks
like a Third World country. It’s been ravaged by fire, there are busted windows everywhere, and the ground is littered with debris and sinkholes. Even if my parents could go in and whip up food for the town, they wouldn’t charge anyone. No one could afford the luxury of eating out when they have to replace all of their personal belongings.

As it is, Mom and Dad donated all the bottled water and canned goods that had been stashed away in the refrigerator. If any of the other food were salvageable, they’d be giving it away too.   

I lay in bed at night, listening to them weigh their options
.

“We need to walk away,” my mother said.

“We can’t. We don’t have a choice. We have to get back to work so we can pay them,” my father answered.

“We’ll use the insurance money.”

“It’s not enough. And we’ll be left with nothing and no way to support ourselves. Even if we go work for someone else, we won’t make enough to pay the mortgage on our house, let alone the balance of what we owe.”

“They’ll understand,” my mother tried to convince him. “Or we could move and get lost in the mid-West somewhere.”

“The only way to do that is with money, and we don’t have enough. They’ll track us down, and then what? We should’ve handed everything over to them in the beginning.”

I don’t know who my parents are talking about. I think about asking Sammy but decide against it. He’ll probably just tell me it’s none of my damn business the way he does when I ask about anything else.

A little more than two years later, Sammy’s home for winter break, and we’re up late watching a movie together, talking, laughing about a prank he pulled on his roommates at school. I don’t realize how late it is until the doorbell rings.

My heart drops when I check the time. It’s two in the morning. No one should be ringing the bell this late. And why aren’t Mom and Dad home? They said they had to go over the books, but they’re never at the diner this late. Ever.

Locked in the grip of fear, I look at my brother for reassurance. I don’t find any in the leery expression on his face. He holds his fingers to his lips, signaling me to keep quiet while he peeks out the window to see who could be ringing our bell at this time of night.

Still keeping me at bay, Sammy opens the door. I’ve seen it in too many movies, read about it in too many books. As soon as I see the officers standing at our door, the tears stream from my eyes. The tears are soon replaced by screams as the word “fire” comes to life in my brain. My brother’s arms wrap around me and hold me as I sink to the floor, calling out, crying for my mother.

*

Our parents were the only ones in the building. I never understood how the fire spread so quickly that it trapped them inside. At first the authorities suspected arson but eventually ruled it out.

Mom and Dad left enough money behind for us to live comfortably until Sammy graduated college. That had been the plan, until one day when it wasn’t. Sammy came home from meeting with the insurance company, looking pissed off. He pulled out my father’s cognac and drank until he passed out. The next day the plan changed, and he’s never been the same.