by Amarie Avant
I get up from the seat and grab the plate with the half sandwich and Lays chips. He pulls a Coke from the pocket of his uniform.
That’s another warning sign?
If they’re all here to watch the football game, why is everyone dressed up? Feels like they’re on the clock.
The doorbell rings, it’s followed by banging on the door that’s hard enough to bring it from its hinges.
“Stay here,” Jackson orders.
Stomach lodged in my throat, I stand in the doorframe of my bedroom. My hand goes to my chest. I pray to God that my father follows through with his agreement to me, to Natasha. This would be the worst time for him to show his true colors. I hear bickering coming from the front door. The television is off. All of my father’s soldiers haven’t made a peep as Vassili asks to come inside to talk with me. He has to make this quick. This scenario that my father has to see can’t be viewed by Danushka or Grigor. This is all a means to give my father “closure” and to confirm that he won’t show his hand while Vassili and I are separated.
“Here’s a thousand percent of transparency for you, Mr. Resnov. Zariah’s weakling of a mother and I made a beautiful girl.”
Shit, he gets to play the tired husband who misses his wife, meaning I’m the cold bitch. For the next few minutes, I listen. Tears drip down my chest as Maxwell mentions his replacement.
When the Resnov Way is mentioned, my heart implodes in my chest. I pray harder as Jackson asks about Vassili working for his father.
My husband spits, “No cams? No proof, right? I want to see my wife and my kid, Mr. Washington. Make that happen before I forget how important you are to my Zariah!”
“Don’t,” I speak up, unable to contain myself any longer. My fingers curl around the railing, and I glance down at him. A case of vertigo steels me for a moment. Stomach-churning, heart wrenched free from my chest, I stare at Vassili. Nobody else is here as he says, “Zariah. You got to come home, baby. You are mine. We made vows.”
I’d give anything in this world to leave with him right now. Though, in a detached tone, I snap, “With an Elvis impersonator.”
“Doesn’t matter. We made vows before God.”
As he speaks, my tears begin to fall again. Everyone has a notion of my husband, that he’s bad. He’s a Resnov. My father just called him communist scum. Samuel called him riffraff before they had a single conversation. But my husband is a praying man. Funny, before him, I had my mom and father as models for what love is.
And I sure as hell didn’t believe in such a word. The L word was a fable.
But my husband prays before every single match. He’s a good man. He has faith. We must have all the faith in the world that my father, Danushka, everyone who is against us, sees what they need to see. Which is why I proceed, without my heart in my chest. I disconnect myself from Vassili. I brush off his threats. His arguments with Jackson. Even when he pins my father’s lapdog against the wall, and I can only see guns pointing toward their direction.
I switch off because Vassili required this of me.
“Vassili… Go!” I croak. “You’re not going to sic Anatoly on them because they’re not going to shoot you, asshole. We have kids.” Shit, I hope nobody notices how I mention that I’m pregnant. My body shakes as I continue to fly off the handle with, “Give me a moment to think.”
There’s a muttered conversation between Vassili and Jackson. Then my husband is motioning, “Next step, I snap your fucking neck. After that, the man behind me gets a swift foot to his throat. His neck snaps too. Maybe I’ll take more of you mudaks down. Maybe you all will put enough bullets in me first. Remember, I die, everyone down here is dead. That includes you, Pops.”
My gaze tears toward the floor as I’m still unable to see Jackson and Vassili. I glare at my father. His hand is up. What is Maxwell signaling for? I can’t have that happen.
Voice raw, I remind my husband, “Vassili, your entire body is a weapon. Hands. Feet. So, go. I’ll send you more papers.”
“Nyet. Give me a moment to talk to you. I don’t give a fuck if we have to chat in front of these piz’das!” He comes from beneath the staircase, standing next to a pillar by the front doors. Every part of him calls to me as he says, “Let me talk to you, Zar. Baby, let me talk to you.”
His handsome frame clouds my gaze as tears flood harder. Seconds later, I say the words he told me would work. The words that would make my father believe we’d separated and keep me and Natasha safe during these times. Fuck, these words will ring in my ear until the end of time. I’ve always said that emotional abuse hurts the most. Physical scars will fade over time. Words cling to the mind, poisoning thoughts. He’ll hate me for this one day. Not now, because he asked this of me. One day, he’ll forget why we’re fighting and only recall these words. I crush my husband’s spirit, with my words. As I say them, they echo in my ears: “Don’t worry. I won’t abandon our children like your mother.”
25
Vassili
Okay, I’ve said the bitch wasn’t there for me and Sasha. My kid sister was passed around like candy in a whore house because our mother went on the run. Anatoly could give a fuck. For Zariah to mention my dead mother’s faults. It was everything I told her to do. Everything that could break me.
I stare up at her. On the inside of her, a dam of tears is at the ready. Shit, she’ll break any second and forget that this is what we have been training her for: the motherfucking TKO, and I’m her opponent.
For a split second, it’s just the two of us again. I need to tell her to stay strong, to play the fucking game. This game doesn’t have one thing to do with us. Jackson’s glower is enough to remind me to stay in line too.
The cop gulps in air as I consider my wife. Khorosho, he doesn’t know that this is all a performance. A fight. A match. Bullshit.
“You want to keep me from my kid?” My Russian accent slides on extra thick. I’m speaking out my worst nightmare. My words thunder out, “My kid, my kid, moi deti? Nyet!”
“Yes.” Zariah stops clinging to the railing to place a hand on her hip. That mouth of hers has always been meant for trouble. That mouth would’ve been the death of her if I’d let her talk the same shit in the Italian gym that she had in Vadim’s while searching for Sergio. Damn, she looks so hot defying me—well in everybody else’s eyes.
“That can’t happen.” Over my shoulder, I shoot out a sure promise, “I’ll see my kid, Zar. You all have a nice day until I make that happen.”
I barrel past Maxwell and to the door. The sun is no longer there. Fuck, I’m welcomed into the cold. My little boy is growing in her belly. My daughter is probably arriving in another state—far away from me. I never thought this would be with my blood being away from my side. I start for my ride, remembering the time I’d caved to Zariah for a fight in Kentucky while she was pregnant. The only other time I’d left her and Natasha for the octagon, with no intention of them coming, was when Juggernaut became a notch on my belt in seconds. Cutie Pie was a newborn, and that had been the reason.
A weight slams against my chest as I slide into my Mercedes truck. I look up at the side of the house and toward Zariah’s balcony. She’s not there.
For a split second, this isn’t a game.
I snatch out my phone, my thumb hovers over my wife’s contact in the blink of an eye.
“Don’t be a mudak,” I mutter to myself. Can’t bitch up now. Can’t call her seconds later. Before I can click out of the contact, the screen lights up.
She’s calling.
Heart squeezing in my chest, I press the away button.
Then I’m dialing Yuri, my brat, though he’s not on that page anymore. As I swoop out of the parallel position, I wait for him to answer. I’m a few blocks away when his happy ass voice chimes in, but of course it’s voicemail. C’mon, Yuri, you’re too good for this shit. I press the button to redial him.
“Dah?” he snaps through the receiver as I head past a Chevron and zip onto the freeway onramp.
“I went to see Zariah,” I growl, fisting the phone in one hand and navigating through traffic. Even speed doesn’t help me.
“I sent over some papers for you to sign,” he takes on a business tone.
“I just mentioned, Zar. Aren’t you supposed to be team Vassili and Za—”
“Smart Water isn’t dropping you and that’s after I managed the fucking situation. Maybe you don’t know about that. The manufacturer for Killer Karo clothing almost breached contract—handled that. Some magazines wanted a soundbite—managed that. All the deals that were about to fall through since you went to Italy after Kong was announced in a coma. Oh, shit, I went to Italy too. Good thing some-fucking-body got me sent home like a fucking dog with its tail between its legs. Maybe I was smacked in the head so hard that I forgot about that shit for a second and managed everything. I managed all these situations!”
His volume increases. I’m tempted to take the damn phone off the speaker. Teeth bared, I annunciate each word, “I’m sorry, brat. You home?”
“Dah, home. Nyet, brat!” The call disconnects in my ear.
Ten minutes later and my wife has called me a thousand times. I’m parked in front of Malich’s home. I can hardly stare at the front lawn where Anna lost it in front of the cops. All of this was the Bratva’s fault and I’m working for the Bratva. With a hard sigh, I call him again. “Yuri, come outside, brat.”
All the cuss words in our native tongue come barreling out of his mouth, staggering on top of each other. I hear a few grunts and then see a flash in front of the upstairs window that belongs to my cousin’s bedroom. The phone hangs up again, but I have the feeling that beneath the attitude, my fat ass, softy of a cousin is still . . .
“Shit,” I mouth, stepping out of my Mercedes truck.
Where is my fat ass, softy cousin?
Did I ever say that Yuri and I look alike?
Lights from the front of the house skip on due to his movement, putting the bastard in the spotlight. Yuri isn’t what Zariah’s bitch of a friend, Taryn, once called a teddy bear. He’s a beast. He’s a beast like me. Two months did this to him.
In a wife-beater and basketball shorts, Yuri flexes deltoids that he never had before. He slams his hand across his chest. “Dah, all those hours on the phone chatting up people, handling the situation, I went hungry.”
“You didn’t just go hungry, Yuri.” I hold out my arm to hug him. How the situation has reversed. I was never a hugger. But he’s no longer that bitch’s cuddly bear.
His voice grows hard, “I worked out so that I could—”
I sidestep a hook made for my jaw.
“Heh, cute, kuzen.” I let out a laugh when half of me wants to make things right. And all of me is stuck on my wife. “You spent what? Six weeks juicing, eating lean meats, and a few pushups later—”
“Nyet, it was a little longer than six weeks!” Again, he comes for me with a punch that obliterates the air.
Shit, if air could hurt, then it’d be in pain. I pat the side of my face. I laugh, “C’mon, kuzen, I don’t feel a thing. I suggest you take on Simeon. You can pretend you won because the bitch is ugly anyway.”
“Oh funny, eh? What’s funny to me is that you and Sim look like twins!” Yuri squares his shoulders, elbows tight. He does all the things that Vadim taught—everybody else but me at the gym. Shit, I knew the stance while walking in there. This time when my cousin tosses a punch, I grab his arm and spin him around.
I press him to me, locking him down. Most of his bodyweight is mine to control. “Listen, brat, and I do mean brat. You said you were my brother before I even claimed you a couple of times when I came out here.” I mention when we were children. My memory is spotty. I have that bitch of a mother of mine to thank for that. Who would want to remember all the times she let Anatoly and his men slap her around . . . all the times I failed her too? But I can remember half my siblings hating me for being the oldest. The other half not so much. And then there was Yuri. The brat. My brat because he said so. “You said I was your brat, Kuzen. You said that shit so many times before I even acknowledged you.”
Teeth gritted, Yuri seethes, “Then don’t acknowledge me. Take your ass back to Russia.”
I stop myself from squeezing his arms back behind him more; it would dislocate his shoulders. I do him one better. I pop him on top of his head. “You are my brat, Yuri.”
He argues, “You’re like one of those jocks in those high school movies. Everybody loves you, well, I hate you.”
“Hate, kuzen? Your mother said don’t say that word years ago.”
“Don’t mention my dearly departed—”
I pop the top of his head again; he struggles against me. Yuri starts to throw his head back in an attempt to bash my nose. I move quickly enough for the takedown. I grapple around on the grass and have him in an anaconda choke. There’s lots of muffled breathing as he struggles.
“You’re my brat, Yuri,” I growl, waiting for him to tire himself out.
The lights bleep back on along the lengthy house as Malich approaches us. His arms are folded. He brings death with him; all the mourning that I don’t have a second to consider is wrapped around him. I almost don’t look him into the eye. The night Igor died, we were in front of the hospital. My uncle—the man I would’ve gladly called father—forgot I was blood. Malich Resnov didn’t want me around anymore, but I’m his big brother’s son. He can’t toss me out on my ear.
“Stop, son,” Malich stresses.
“Nyet,” Yuri strains, his tone stressed by the exertion of his body. “Dad, you said—”
“I said what you needed to hear,” Malich snaps. “Let him go, Son.”
“We . . .”
Malich groans, “We’re all on the same team.”
Yuri laughs for a second, seemingly unaware of the tension. His father repeats himself.
My cousin continues to laugh hysterically as his father tells him a few times the same words over and over. My muscles begin to exert from holding him in the anaconda chokehold this entire time. He’s got to have lost his mind, to have the energy to laugh with his lungs crushing.
Finally, Yuri says between laughter, “That’s why Mikhail didn’t help me fight you in Italy?”
“Dah, he knew.”
“Dad.” Yuri raises an eyebrow at his father, grass lines pressed against his face. “You all knew? All of you, but me?”
“Now, you do!” Malich barks.
But Yuri is seized by more laughter. This time, it’s not psychotic; this time, he’s at peace. There’s the fat fuck I know with a jolly face. My cousin can forget that someone cursed his mother when he feels like he’s been let in on a secret. His smile falls. His voice is a low rasp, “Zariah hates you right about now?”
I realize that I should let him up. My cousin is stupid enough to take the pain when he’s curious and worried about something. Somehow, he’s invested in my marriage. I start off him. “She’s acting like it.”
From below, Yuri has lost the elated shock and starts to strain against me. I tighten my hold as the anger begins to rise in him. He snaps, “Acting like it? Why do you think? Dad, this mudak called Zariah . . .”
“Yuri, stop,” Malich says.
All the resistance flees, and I jump to my feet. A skinnier, more muscular Yuri, breathes heavily as he lifts off one knee and then the other. He rubs the stalks of grass from his cheeks.
Malich orders, “Yuri, if you are to be king then . . .”
You need to grow the fuck up, I mentally finish my uncle’s statement. Yuri has too much heart and emotion. So, I do just like my uncle, and fold my arms, glaring at him.
My cousin’s gaze squares against me then at Malich. “Dad . . . I didn’t . . . We haven’t told Vassili this.”
“He knows, son.” Malich comes to my side and places a hand over my shoulder. “Vassili doesn’t give two shits if you take over the Bratva once Danny is put down.
“This, this . . .” Yuri starts breathing
heavily. “This is all a game?”
26
Vassili
My cousin has asthma. Igor had diabetes, but Yuri Resnov had asthma. Also, the fat fuck is a little too nice to be king. He grew up with a good father and not the devil, for example. Yuri, Mikhail, and I sit around the table in the kitchen. Food wafts through the air. Tonight, Malich is at the stove, bringing yet another dish before he settles down next to his oldest son.
“I pulled a double in ER today,” Mikhail sighs. He holds up a spoon of borsch. “Now, I plan to eat until I fall face first in this bowl.”
His father claps his back, pleased at his eating. When we come up with the plan, it brings Malich back to life.
“You’ve wanted to tell me for a long time, brat.” I nod to Yuri. “Malich will make you king.”
My cousin shifts in his seat. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that you knew?”
“Why?” I cock a brow. “Because you would know that I’m not fucking playing the game for Danny or Anatoly, Yuri. You’d be best buddies, and we didn’t have time for that.”
“Okay.” Yuri smiles, and I have to get used to him doing so with a slimmer face.
Malich smiles at his son. “Yuri, you will be the peacekeeper of the seven, one day. You manage Vassili in and out of the cage. Once we get rid of all the parasites and the Bratva is back in Resnov hands, then you will sit on the throne.”
Mikhail nods, giving a Biblical perspective. “My brother will be like King David and King Solomon.”
Not interested in the Bratva, I ask the million-dollar question. “Yuri, do you want this?”
Malich stares at him. “Son, you tell me. I always wanted out—from day one. Albeit, I’ve been thinking.” My uncle stops talking to look at both his sons. “Igor is gone. Nothing in this world will return him to us. Before any of you were born,” he pauses again. This time, including me into the fold. “Your grandpa ran the Bratva. He was fair. He went into politics, started to sow seeds. Anatoly Senior weighed his options and considered what was good. Yuri, you are good. So, is this for you?”