Alex drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, his eyes moving across his two brothers, both of them sitting with the same lost, unfocused look on their faces.
Venedikt was better at hiding his turmoil than Andrei was, the difference between them as clear as it had always been. Andrei never tried to hide anything. He never had, not once in all the years Alex had known him.
It was obvious what was tearing at both of them. Neither could decide whether they wanted their father back in their lives, walking into an unknown future alongside them, or whether they wanted to keep things exactly as they were, the life they had carved out for themselves without him.
Alex felt the weight of that choice too, and he had no clean answer for it either. It wasn't simply a question of what their father deserved after everything. It was a question of what their family actually wanted now, after the years and the distance and the grief that had calcified into something resembling peace.
