Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

Gen

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Alexei Rozanov & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Alexei Rozanov, Grigori Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Canon Compliant, POV Outsider, Child Abuse

Language:

English

Series:

Part 8 of if we collect all the pieces, maybe we can make a quilt

Stats:

Published: 2025-12-30 Words: 489 Chapters: 1/1

jacob have i loved

Summary

My brother, he always hated me, and I know why, but... it kills me.

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As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (Romans 9:13)

And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. (Malachi 1:3)

Notes

It is not easy, being the son of Grigori Rozanov. He is demanding. Overbearing. He is as close to evil as Alexei has ever seen. He hits his sons, and he is glad to, even as he tells them how difficult it is to have to beat them black and blue.

Look what you are making me do to you, he would say, pausing his assault to stroke a flushed cheek. He was a terrible figure, distorted by tears. Look at what you have done to your father, Alexei.

Alexei is glad when he is distracted by a new target. Alexei’s younger brother, Ilya.

Really, Alexei should thank Ilya. If it weren’t for Ilya coming along when he did, taking the brunt of their father’s attention—the brunt of his ire—then Alexei would be dead like their mother. But Alexei does not thank Ilya for his life. He never will. Because once the terrible weight of their father’s eye is turned from Alexei, he finds himself missing it. He withers away under his father’s apathy. He becomes a policeman. He gets married. His father is not proud. Alexei beats a man and is put on ninety-day suspension. His father is not disappointed. His father does not care. He has a new son to torment.

Alexei turns to drink. To drugs. To beating his wife, because violence is his native tongue. She doesn’t deserve it, but he didn’t deserve it, either, and if he cannot have his father, then he will be his father. He gambles away his life savings, then comes crawling to his younger brother’s feet.

I need five thousand dollars. Ten thousand. Twenty thousand.

And each time, Ilya is angry with him. There is not enough money for you to snort it all away, he says, but he’s lying. There is always enough money. Ilya is the best hockey player in the world; there will always be enough money.

And Alexei hates him for it. 

Grigori is not a terrible man at the end. He deteriorates into something pitiful, someone who clings to Alexei and begs him to stay, to help him understand, to organize the world into something that makes sense. Alexei does. Ilya pays him to care for their father, which is an indignity that Alexei suffers because he needs the money. A better son would refuse the money. A better son would see it, not as a job, but as a duty. Maybe even a kindness. 

Alexei is not a good son. Men like Grigori don’t raise good sons. Men like Grigori forge boys into bad men: into men like them. 

Look what you’ve done to your father, Alexei. 

After Grigori dies, Ilya tells Alexei there will be no more money. There will be a trust for my niece, he says, but nothing for Alexei. 

Alexei had forgotten about her. It is easy to: she is a child, and he is his father.