23 Two Brothers

A year and a half ago

Kirill Yartsev:

The door nearly flew off its hinges when I burst into that madhouse my brother was running. Grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and yanking him out from behind the desk, I slammed his back hard against the cabinet standing behind him, fully ready to beat the bastard to death right then and there. And I didn’t give a damn that he was my only brother — and a twin at that — because he had turned out to be a rare kind of psycho.

“Where is she?!” I growled at my stunned relative, itching to work my fists over his arrogant face.

“Who?” Nazar didn’t understand.

“The girl you sent me to meet yesterday! What the hell is going on here?!”

Yesterday I arrived from Kyiv to the city of my childhood and youth — Kremenchuk. There was an unofficial exhibition here of various not-so-well-known substances that possess certain properties when added to medicines for different ailments. Our company, Inkorpmedyar, deals with the development and production of various vaccines, so the search for new components is extremely important for the growth of a successful business.

After attending the event that took place in the morning, I decided to stop by my brother Nazar, who stayed here to live, stubbornly refusing the opportunities in the capital.

We used to be very close. And it’s no surprise — we’re identical twins. Our childhood and wild youth took place in this very city.

To be honest, we were absolute troublemakers. Our parents went through hell because of us — we were completely uncontrollable. Street racing, shady crowds, swarms of girls, and endless parties with rivers of alcohol. Though, in our defense, no matter how crazy we partied, we never got behind the wheel drunk and never touched heavy illegal substances. Well, except for marijuana to lift the mood — but in some countries it’s perfectly legal anyway.

We covered ourselves in tattoos — at least we were smart enough to make them different — we were bold and reckless, fought often, and very few people wanted to end up on our bad side.

For our fiery tempers and explosive personalities, people called us Shademons Nazar was the Shade, since he was the older one, and I was the Demon. Maybe it sounds overly dramatic now, but back then many people knew about us, and some tried pretty seriously to steer clear.

No matter how hard our father tried to reach us, urging us to wise up and start getting involved in the family business, it was useless — we were satisfied with our freedom and the life we were living. Street racing brought us more than enough money. And our father didn’t cut our funding much either, believing that this was just our wild youth, that we would soon come to our senses and straighten out.

However, we would have kept living that way if not for one tragic event — our mother got into a car accident and died. It was a huge shock and a devastating blow for everyone.

Each of us dealt with the shared grief in his own way. For Nazar, it meant constant parties and being surrounded by people. That’s how he distracted himself and tried to forget the pain.

Of course, in the beginning we were losing our minds — drinking ourselves into oblivion and getting into unpleasant incidents. But we had each other, and together it was easier to cope with the loss.

The same couldn’t be said about our father. Not only had he lost his dearly beloved wife, but we were far away and constantly causing problems.

He started drinking. No, we drank too, out of grief, but we gradually managed to cope with the loss — he didn’t.