He sighs and shakes his head yet again, every bit the older brother who is bitterly disappointed that his younger sibling simply does not get it. “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. I’m offering you a partnership. A real one. We work together. We protect each other. We build something that lasts. That’s what brothers do.”
“No, Aleksei. Don’t ask again. I won’t change my mind.”
I wonder for a moment how far he’s willing to go here. There’s a trickle of something in his eyes, a black cloud. He never lost his temper, not even as a child, but I remember from early on that he somehow always got his way in the end. Obstacles simply disappeared, things shifted, until the road he wanted to walk was cleared.
But this road isn’t clearing. He won’t taint what I’ve built. He won
