Page 69 of Claimed By My Ex’s Brother

I’m the anomaly here.

My gut clenches with something close to fear, and I touch the pendant to push the unease back down. Lev gave this to me. I didn’t sneak my way onto this boat, and I have as much right to stand here as anyone, mafia nepo baby or not.

Lev nods toward the stairs. “Follow me up,” he says, and leads me toward the central staircase. The upper flybridge holds a cluster of older men smelling of garlic and car leather and cigarettes.

At the center of them sits a man in a wheelchair, and even seated he fills the space with an aura that has its own gravitational pull and reminds me of Lev’s own. No one dares step too close to the group gathered around him, as if he’s put countless bodies in that water and would do it again.

The man in the wheelchair lifts his chin at Lev in greeting, and Lev nods stiffly in return. Then he lets go of my hand.

My palm goes empty all at once, and my gaze flits after the pull of his attention and finds Yelena coming down the stairs. She is in a white bikini, her narrow chest pushed out and her hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, and she crosses the rocking deck without a single wobble and surveys the space with a cool, proprietary eye.

This yacht is her territory, and out here she is on home turf. She doesn’t have to watch where she puts her feet the way I do.

“Lev,” she breathes out, and he walks straight over to her. She hooks her arm through his, and his hard expression softens into something close to worship in a way mine has never once managed to make it. The two of them head up to the flybridge together. I tear myself away from the sight.

It feels like someone has poured arctic water over my head. I had thought, stupidly, that it would be just the two of us today, that the swimsuit and the necklace and the hand around mine all meant something. I had even practiced how I would answer if anyone asked what I was to him. I had a whole sentence ready, careful and dignified. I will not be needing it now, and the hopelessness of that seeps into me.

No one is going to ask me anything. Why would they, when his date is already waiting for him at the top of the stairs, when she fits against his side like she was cut to go there. I’m only the assistant, brought along to observe how these things are done, and nothing more than that. The pendant feels heavier around my neck now, and I make myself stop touching it mindlessly.

A group of young women out on the stern swim platform wave me over. They have long beautiful legs and bright, untainted eyes, and one of them says something to me in Russian that I don’t understand at all, except for the laughing blyat at the end.

I sit down with them at the edge of the platform and shake my head sheepishly when they gesture at the open water. I cannot swim. The sea is a chasm to me. I’ve never been able to swim a single stroke in my whole life, because swimming lessons cost money, and money always went to rent and to Milo and to the endless hospital bills before that. So, I keep my feet on the boards and my eyes off the drop, and I smile as though the sea and I are old friends.

I ask a passing server for something without alcohol in it. Sharp smells have been turning my stomach for a couple of weeks now, and the champagne makes me nauseous just to smell it; my nose scrunches at the first whiff. He swaps my glass for a pale green drink, and I send him away with a silent gesture of thanks.

I try to keep up with their laughter and their easy chatter, and the muscles in my face ache from how long I have been forcing a smile that doesn’t fit. They talk about places I’ll never see and people I will never meet, and I nod along and understand almost none of it, which feels weird and lonely all at once. I feel like a chubby little child who wandered into an adult’s party by mistake and has to pretend she belongs there, terrified that at any moment someone will notice and send her home.

Up on the flybridge, Lev sits among the older men with Yelena nestled against his side, her hip pressed to his. The sight of it works at me like a splinter under the skin, and a storm of feeling rises in my chest.

I sip my lemon-mint drink, and my lips purse; I cannot keep the sourness off my face. Little by little, my gaze drags itself back to them, torturing me on purpose.

Yelena leans close to his ear, and then her lips graze his cheek in something like a kiss, and my stomach lurches hard and sudden, my whole body wracked with it.

You are losing it, I tell myself. I set down my drink and stand, gesturing to the woman beside me that I’m stepping away. She sits up on her elbows and gives me a small nod. Instead of the crowded main cabin, I look for somewhere quiet along the side passage.

The sun’s sinking, timeless and indifferent, turning the water a deep orange-red, and the wind picks up and whips my hair across my face. Everything about the evening has shifted around me.

I reach the empty forward deck and grip the railing with both hands. The metal is cool and slick under my palms. My chest is still too tight to breathe properly against the quickening pace of my heart, and the endless sea stretches out around me on every side like a room with no door out of it. Out here there is no one to perform for. I let my shoulders drop for the first time all afternoon and just breathe. It is a small salvation.

I think about how ridiculous my hopes were. What the hell have I gotten myself into? I honestly believed today might change something between us, that the swimsuit and the necklace and the way he looked at me added up to a beginning. I got my answer in the end, just not the one I was hoping for, and I have been such an ass for waiting on it. He’s up there with Yelena on his arm and her family settling terms around them, and I’m down here alone, gripping a rail so I don’t fall down.

That is my answer. That is where I stand.

“It’s quieter out here.”

Yelena’s voice comes from behind me, and my shoulders tense before I can stop them. I don’t know how she found me all the way out here.

“It’s quieter here,” I say evenly, without turning around.

“Which is exactly how you know you don’t belong up there with the rest of us,” she says, and smiles, slow and oily. “You can feel it, can you not. Everyone here can feel it too.”

I keep my voice level. “I’ve never been anywhere like this before, no,” I say quietly.

“It shows.”

“Maybe it does.” My life is not lesser than hers. It is only less luxurious. I have paid my own rent since I was nineteen. I raise a little boy on a salary and a prayer. I know how to keep myself and Milo fed and housed and safe, and there is nothing small about any of it. “You would not last a week in my life,” I add, and the words come out sour, bitter. “So spare me the tour of yours.”

“I’m the one who told Lev to bring you here,” Yelena says, in a voice that could almost be a recording.