Rolling onto my back, I spoke. “Vito. Did you know that Caio thinks I’m closer to Alessio’s age than his?” 

“You do look very young, to be fair. Matteo has more facial hair than you do, and you’re eleven years older than him.” Vito laughed. 

“Matteo asked me my age, and I told him I was around Maddox and Alexi’s age. Saying thirty makes me feel old.” I complained. 

“I’m glad Matteo was there for you in my absence.”

“I’m a lot to handle. Without you, I put them through a lot of misery.” 

Vito laid back on the bed, and I rolled closer to him. He wasn’t completely open to me to touching him like this, but he didn’t complain. He let me lay beside him, pressed up against his side. I could hear Matteo on his phone, talking to Caio, on speaker, and that was the reason I brought up Caio’s confusion of my age. 

“They sound happy together.” Vito said. I hummed, Vito’s heat, and the stress of the panic attack putting me to sleep. “Ilya, get up. We can tuck into the bed properly.”

I ignored him, and he got up and stole my heat with him. I opened my eyes and sat up. Annoyed. He pulled back the blankets on my bed. “Come get under the blanket.” 

I got off the bed and walked around, getting back into the bed, and Vito got in behind me. He rarely willingly laid with me. He pulled the covers over us and spoke. 

“Sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s dinner.”

“He was supposed to be my backup that night, but he wasn’t there.” I muttered without really thinking about it. 

Vito grabbed me and spoke. “What?”

“Viktor.” I muttered. Closing my eyes again. 

“Ilya? Are you remembering more information about that night?” Vito asked, and I ignored him, too tired to want to talk about it. 

“No.” I muttered, lying to his face. He didn’t push the issue, and I closed my eyes completely. Welcoming some sleep to get away from here. I drifted in and out of sleep, vaguely aware that Vito had pulled my head into his lap, and was talking to someone. 

I woke up fully when I heard Vito’s voice, the iciness of it chilling me to my very core. 

“No wonder he won’t trust you and wants nothing to do with you.”

“That night is a really enormous source of guilt for me. I should have had Ilya’s back, but I didn’t and there is nothing I can do to change that now.” I heard Viktor say. 

The facts remained the same: Viktor was not responsible for my attack and abduction. Had he been there then, like he was supposed to be, things might be different. But there was no way to be sure of that, and his guilt didn’t help either of us. 

 He had made a promise to be there, and when he wasn’t, it was a reminder of how unreliable he could be. His guilt was his own, and there was nothing I could do about that. 

Rolling over, I looked up at Vito, who was looking down at me. 

“Go back to sleep, Ilya.”

“Hard to do that when you seem to be having a staff meeting about me, without me, loudly.”

“Excuse me, I have—--”

“Wait. Viktor, I want to know something.” I said and watched him stop in his tracts. Turning back around. “What was it that night that was so important that you didn’t pick up your phone, or tell me you wouldn’t have my back?”

His facial expression turned to guilt, and he swallowed. “A mistake. It was a mistake.”

“That doesn’t answer my question—---”

“I have to go. I have paperwork and other things that require my attention.” Viktor said, before leaving the room. I tried to sit up, to go after him, but Vito wouldn’t allow to me. 

“No, Ilya. Give him some space. He is running away. Let him.”

“Why should I? What gives him the right to be able to escape this when I can’t?” I hissed, anger filling me. 

“I’m gone for a single week, and in that time, you seem to have located some of your nasty behaviour.” Vito sighed. 

“Are you trying to provoke me, Vito?” I said, trying to get up again, and he slipped his hand in my hair and firmly held me where I was. I had half a mind to tell him to let me go, but I didn’t. I just exhaled the air in my lungs. 

“Do you intend to go back to your basement when we return to the complex?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“A number of things. You, Alessio, the guards outside the door.”

Vito said nothing. He just massaged my scalp until he got to the part where the stitches had been. And he parted my hair to have a look for himself. He just made a humming noise and went back to massaging my scalp. 

“Vito.”

He hummed at me again and finally spoke after a few minutes. “What do you need, Ilya?”

“Nothing.” I said, relaxing fully into his legs. “I’ll be happy to go back to our normal routine.”

“I know. I’m looking forward to my bed, and the cold.”

Remembering the look of Vito’s wing, I drew in a deep breath. Matteo and I left it a colossal mess. We left drink bottles, and takeout containers from Nonna’s on the countertop and the couch still had his blankets and pillows. As it was, I had worn a good part of his closet, too. 

“You look good in the clothing I got for you, Ilya. Nice to know it was finally usable, though the circumstances could be better.”

“I would have worn sweatpants and a sweater, both yours, since all my clothing was in my closet where I was not. But Alessio wasn’t having it.” I muttered. 

“I figured. Anything else you should warn me about before we return tomorrow?”

“I asked Matteo to drive my car back.” 

“He’s unlicensed, Ilya.”

“Ok and? He said he could drive.”

“So can I. I have all my IDs.”

“You got them back?”

“Yeah, Viktor found them on one of the gang members.”

“Lucky.” I muttered. 

I reached up and ruffled Vito’s hair, not thinking twice about it. 

“Matteo, what was he doing?” I asked. 

“He was talking to Caio on the phone, but has since gone for a nap himself.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes, he came to check on you. He was worried about you.” 

I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to. The bond Matteo and I had forged was well known. The full extent, maybe not. 

Looking around the room, I frowned. There was so much here that before I would have never dreamed I could have let go and moved past. Now, it was a distant memory. The grand piano in the corner, one of those such memories. 

“Did you play once, Ilya?” 

“I think so.” I couldn’t see myself owning it if I didn’t know how to play. But I also couldn’t remember if I did. 

“I looked around after the first night I stayed here, so many things in here, I would have never thought you would like.” Vito said.

“Hm. This all feels like a lifetime ago. Almost three years with you, and however long they held me captive. I lost count.” I muttered. 

“Based on what Viktor told me, they had you for well over a year, Ilya.” Vito said, his tone gentle. A rare tone, hardly used with me, from him.

A firm knock on the door, and Viktor’s voice telling us dinner was done, ruined the moment that it seemed Vito and I were having. 

Walking back to the dining room, I paused by one window and looked outside. The pool, clean and the nicest blue colour, brought back memories. Childhood memories of Viktor and I. 

“Ilya, from this day forward, Viktor is staying with us. You’ll have a big brother. So, treat him well.” 

My father, in the memory, said, holding Viktor’s hand by the side of the pool. He was just a boy, ten or twelve then. 

Vito shook me lightly a moment later, and spoke. 

“I called for you several times. Where were you?” 

“When. Not where.” I said. Touching the glass of the window. Before dropping my hand. A level of discomfort settling in my chest. “I can’t wait to be home.” 

Taking places in the dining room, food was served, and I ate silently as everyone else talked amongst each other. Being in this place was like being in my nightmares, and I didn’t want to be here longer than I needed to be. 

“Ilya?” Matteo called my name, and I looked up. 

“Yes?” 

“Viktor was trying to get your attention. He was offering you a change of clothing.” 

“Oh.” I set down my fork and stood up, following Viktor out of the dining room. He paused outside of his office. Checking the time on his watch. 

“Do you have other things to do?” I asked. 

“Yes, but they can wait.” He said, turning around to look at me. “Follow me.”

I nodded and followed behind him down the hall. He opened the door to his bedroom and let me inside first before closing the door. I felt confined in the large room, and I glanced at him. Trying to figure out his motives. 

“Your parents got rid of the clothing that had been in your closet, eight or nine months after you went missing. They were only just building up the courage to declare you dead when Alessio alerted us you were found and alive.” He pointed to the closet and spoke again. “Find something to fit you, and something for Matteo, too.”

I hesitated, and he moved from behind me. I kept watching him as I looked for clothing for Matteo and I. 

“Now that Vito isn’t around. Tell me why you weren’t there that night, and why you never answered me. The truth, Viktor. I deserve that much.” I said.

“You’re right, you do. That night, I was at my parents’ grave, and not because I was going to see them, but because I was going to end—---”

“Stop. I got it. You don’t have to say the rest.” I said, stopping everything I was doing and looking at him. 

“No. I’m fine to say the truth, Ilya. I abandoned you that night because I couldn’t handle my suffering anymore. But it was a mistake, and one I will regret for a very long time. I should have been there for you. When I came back here the next morning, and no one had heard or seen anything about you, I confessed to your parents about my failures.” Viktor said, not really looking at me. 

The news that Viktor had been planning to take his own life that night, and was only at his parents’ gravesite in order to do it, was heavy, even for me. He had not responded to me because he had become so overwhelmed with his own pain and grief that he could not focus on anything else. I knew that feeling. I had lived in that feeling for months.  

It was like as the brothers my parents had raised us to be; we had let each other down.

Grabbing two sets of random sweatpants and shirts, I left the room, leaving Viktor alone. I had nothing else to say to him. Sympathy was not my strong suit. My trip to my personal hell had made sure of that.