Page 44 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
I let it go on for a count and then I said, gently, "Excuse me. I am sorry. I do not know any of you."
The arms came off me in one movement.
The three faces in front of me did not change in the same way. The brunette's mouth opened a little and stayed open. The small dark woman did not move at all. The third kept her handon my upper arm a second longer than the others and then let it fall.
"He has amnesia," Alek said behind me on the steps.
The three women exchanged a look that was not for me. It was a fast look. The kind of look women trade in a kitchen when one of them has just burned her hand and none of them want her to know they noticed. Then they did what good women did in a moment like this, which was to be useful.
The brunette went to one knee on the cold stone in front of Rhea. She held her hand out. She did not reach. She held it out and waited.
"Hello," she said. "I am Lily. I am Alek's wife. May I show you the kitchen? We have warm food."
The small dark woman said, "I am Jade. I am married to your other brother, Ivan."
"Sienna," said the third. "I am married to Mikhail. There is hot tea."
Rhea looked up at me. I nodded once.
She took Sienna's hand. She did not drop mine.
A man came across the front hall toward us through the open door.
He was not as tall as Alek. The shape of his shoulders was different. The eyes were the same, though. The same gray-green, set the same way under the same brow.
The same eyes our mother gave us.
The thought arrived without my permission and did not give me a face for the woman attached to it. I stood inside the thought for a beat and let it pass.
The man was crying without seeming to know he was crying. He crossed the hall in three long steps and pulled me into a hug that was rougher than the three women's. He held on. I let him.
"Damn you for forgetting me, brother," he said into my shoulder.
"I am sorry," I said. "I really am."
He pulled back. His hands stayed at my shoulders. He looked at my face the way a man looks at a face he has not seen in a long time and is checking to see if anything is broken in it.
"Mikhail," he said. "Your third brother. I am the favorite. Do not argue with me about it."
I made a small sound that was almost a laugh. It came up out of my chest before I told it to. It surprised me a little.
Mikhail's eyes wet over again at the sound. He did not say anything about it. He let me have it.
A third man was standing inside the door of the hall. He had not moved since we came in.
He was built like a refrigerator. Heavy through the shoulders, heavy through the chest. His hands hung at his sides and they were not loose. They were not tight either. They were the hands of a man who had decided a long time ago what he was going to do with them and had not been surprised by the decision since.
I looked at him over Mikhail's shoulder.
"And you?" I said.
"Ivan," he said. "The one you forgot too."
Mikhail leaned in toward my ear. "He is a grumpy man on a good day," he said, low. "But yes. Your brother. The middle of us."
Ivan did not smile. He nodded once at me. He looked at me a beat longer than the moment asked for. Whatever he saw on my face, he did not say. He turned and walked into the front room.
"Come," Alek said.
