by A. Zavarelli
She’s made several attempts at small talk already, sensing something is off. After my conversation with Viktor, my mood soured, and for me, the celebrations were over. I drank simply for the sake of drinking, and now I can’t see straight.
I send away the bratok who drove us home and lock up the house.
“You should go to bed, zvezda.”
She moves closer, attempting to lure me back in with her honeyed lips. For one week, we have spent every night together. I have not tended to my Vory duties, forsaking all that is important because of her. And still, it is not enough.
“You aren’t coming with me?”
“No.”
Her shoulders sag, pieces of her hair falling around her face as she lowers her gaze. I think I liked her better when she refused to show her emotion.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“You shouldn’t have been there.” The words unleash from my tongue like a whip, and she flinches in kind. “You can’t control your emotions. They are written all over your face for the world to see. For Viktor to see.”
“I didn’t think—”
“That is exactly the problem,” I sneer. “You don’t think. And I have grown tired of it.”
Her chin quivers, and she clings to my shirt. “Please don’t do this, Nika. I know that you care. This isn’t you talking.”
“You are mistaken, pet. It is exactly me talking. I’m bored of you, so do yourself a favor and get out of my sight.”
She fractures as I knew she would, rushing away from me with broken sobs. Still, it isn’t enough. I want her gone. Out of my sight and my mind. She is complicating my life and making it hell.
But it doesn’t change anything.
Because even when she goes, I am empty.
Over the course of a week, I’ve drunk my way through the liquor cabinet. Presently, I find that I don’t much have a taste for Old Crow whiskey, but it does the job regardless.
Between chain smoking and drinking, I haven’t got much accomplished. The brown file still sits in my drawer, unread, and Viktor calls to check in often, inquiring about my progress. The lies spill from my lips easily when I’m drunk, and if he notices my erratic behavior, he doesn’t say.
Twice this week, I’ve been forced to sit through dinners with Ana. The pakhan has become obsessed with the prospective engagement on the horizon, encouraging every opportunity for us to spend time together. I speak very little during our encounters, asking only questions about her. She is happy to oblige with answers.
Unlike Nakya, she is not guarded. Ana is open and childlike, often choosing to reference celebrity gossip or other frivolous topics. She is girlish and giggly and far too naïve to be with someone like me, but it doesn’t stop her from blushing every time I look her way. The worst part is that she believes she’s in love with me because her father continues to nurture the idea.
My fate is sealed. Viktor will see me marry her, and I need to let go of the things I can’t change. I have been a coward and a liar, and Alexei was right to say I’m undeserving of the stars I bear. I have forsaken my Vory brothers, and it’s time to end this charade.
The house is quiet, and everyone is asleep when I settle into my office. Nakya has returned to the sanctuary of her own room, and I have made it a point not to see her during her waking hours. But every night, I check for her on the camera. I watch her restless sleep from the screen of my phone, and it’s as close to her as I can get.
It’s better this way. And regardless of what this file might hold, my decision has been made. If I’m entitled to my pound of flesh, it will come from Manuel himself. And then Nakya will go back to her life, free to do as she pleases. Free to starve herself or dance herself to death, or to marry Dante if she chooses.
The clock on the wall is the only soundtrack to my manic thoughts as I stare at the thick brown paper. Tick, tick, tick. For a moment, I choose to believe that Mischa was right. If I wanted to, I could let this go without reading the details. What difference does it make now? She is dead, and nothing will bring her back.
But it’s only another lie.
She was my mother.
I drain my glass and smoke a few more cigarettes while pacing the length of my office. It can’t be that bad. Mischa is always overly dramatic, I think. It’s just a few pieces of paper, and I am a grown man. A Vor. And a Vor never backs down from anything.
I sit back down and retrieve the file I have tried to open so many times. It’s just paper. Nothing more.
But upon opening it, I find that I am wrong. It isn’t just paper. There are photographs too. Photographs I thought I would want to see, but I was mistaken. The grainy stills are from a surveillance video. And before I allow my eyes to settle on the main subject, I examine every detail of the room. A basement. A dirty sofa. A bucket. These living conditions aren’t fit for an animal, let alone a woman.
Yet there she is. My mother. Strung out and naked.
I know I shouldn’t, but I look at her face. Vacant eyes and hollow features are all that remain. An empty, sagging sack of skin and bones that a soul has long since abandoned. When I reach out to touch her, I feel her anguish in every cavernous inch of my body. This was the same woman who tucked me in at night and kissed me on the forehead. The mother who sang sweet lullabies and read lively bedtime stories.
These memories are all I have of her, and I loathe myself for being too young to stop this. I want to go back and fix it. I want to go back and murder every man who ever touched her. It’s too late to save her. The only thing I can do for her now is rain down blood and fire on the animals who did this to her.
The report Alexei compiled is more detailed than I could have imagined. Everything is categorized, and the work has already been done for me. Dates, times, and the names of everyone who participated.
But it is the first on the list that leaves a permanent scar on my soul. A confirmation of what I’ve always suspected to be true.
Sergei.
My own father is responsible for this.
His ego has always been the most cowardly thing about him. And as the story goes, when he suspected my mother had betrayed him with one of his own men, he offered her as a gift to Manuel Valentini. But she was not a gift. She was a human sacrifice. A bonus to sweeten a gun deal between Manuel and my father.
He gave her away like she was a piece of garbage. Knowing the fate he delivered her to, he allowed her to be beaten and used by Manuel and his men for years. Yet every night, he would come to my room to watch me cry over her loss, insisting she had abandoned me.
I pour another drink and close my eyes. The images haunt me, and I know they’ll never go away. I have been a fool. Allowing my dick to lead me, ignoring the cause I believed in the most. For months, their hearts have continued to beat. They have continued to breathe the air of this earth, when they should have been rotting in the ground already.
It isn’t even the worst of it. That part is still yet to be read. And Alexei has not spared a single gruesome detail.
My mother left this world fighting. Fighting to escape. She slashed Manuel Valentini’s dick with a shard of broken mirror.
And then he dissolved her in an acid bath.
Crash.
My body jerks upright. Sleep blurs my vision, and I blink rapidly as I look around the room. My skin is clammy, and my heart is racing. Something isn’t right, and my first instinct is to hide.
I scramble from the bed, but crippling pain shoots through my calf and paralyzes my leg. Hostage to the cramp, I have little choice but to wait it out.
Explosive noises reverberate down the hall. Glass shattering. Wood splintering. More animal than man, the grunting could only be coming from Nikolai.
A new fear blossoms inside me. Someone is here. Someone is attacking him.
He needs me.
I stumble down the hall, my leg dragging half useless behind me. I’m in nothing more than a nightdress, and I don’t know how to save him, but I know I have to try.
>
Howls of agony erupt from the open doorway. In the short distance, my mind conjures up so many different scenarios. But when I reach the threshold, nothing could prepare me for the reality.
He is shirtless. Bloody. Chest heaving as he sifts through an open storage container. A cigarette still hangs from his mouth, and there’s an empty bottle of whiskey beside him. One by one, he removes glass framed photos, only to smash them to bits a moment later.
Murmured words rumble from his chest as he identifies the faces in the frames. Affection one minute, and hatred the next. And I think that an intruder would have been easier to handle.
There is no manual for a situation like this. He’s hurting, and I want to help him, but I just don’t know how. Knowing better than to approach a wounded animal, I call out to him from the door.
“Nika.”
He freezes, and a chill moves over me. His head turns so slowly in my direction that it’s like watching a horror movie.
“You,” he sneers.
Frigid blue eyes carve into my face, anesthetizing my heart.
So much hate. I have never witnessed so much hate. And every fragment is directed at me. I have known Nikolai to be many things, but never this. Never this monster who looks so much like my own father right now.
I already know it’s too late, but I run anyway.
The footfalls behind me are steady and thunderous, and before I can put any real distance between us, he has me by the hair. He yanks me back and pins me to the wall, and I cower before him, crumpling into myself. If any love for me ever existed in him, it’s gone now.
“Please, Nika—”
Like a snake, his hand lashes out to wrap around my throat. “You don’t deserve to live.”
He’s drunk. I can smell the whiskey on his breath, and I can see it in his bloodshot eyes. But it doesn’t lessen the blow of his words. It doesn’t make me feel any less dead inside. He made me fall in love with him, only to destroy me.
I don’t feel sorry for him anymore. I want him out of my sight. Out of my life.
“Get off me!” I scream. “You are a savage. I hate you!”
He cuts off my air supply, and I claw at his hands. When that doesn’t work, I scratch at his face. My nails tear into any flesh I can reach, and it only makes him more volatile. He releases his hold on my throat, only to reach for the cigarette in his mouth.
I watch in horror as he drags it a hair’s breadth from my throat. Smoke wisps between us, and heat rolls off the flame red cylinder as I struggle to stay stock-still. He can’t do this. He wouldn’t scar me like my father scarred my mother.
I want so desperately to believe that there is good in him. I haven’t fallen for a sadist. Emotion leaks from my eyes, forging rivers down my cheeks and betraying my weakness.
That weakness is also my salvation. My tears are the only thing to break him from his spell. His grasp on me falls away, but his lips relay his disgust with one final parting blow.
“It would be the least of what you deserve.”
“What do you think?”
Talia hands me a catalog, gesturing to a photo of a crib inside.
I offer her a gentle smile. “It looks like it would match the theme.”
She nods and closes the catalog with a sigh. “I don’t know what I’m doing, honestly. There are so many decisions to make, and just so much stuff. I don’t know what’s necessary and what’s not, and I have no idea if any of it’s safe. I think I’m going to be a terrible mother.”
“You aren’t going to be a terrible mother. You’ll learn as you go. That’s what mothers do.”
She shrugs. “I guess so.”
“You’re excited, aren’t you?”
She taps her fingers on the sofa next to her. “I never thought I wanted to be a mother. I’m anxious, and I don’t know if that makes me an awful person.”
“It doesn’t.”
I know this isn’t easy for her. This culture is entirely new to her. But even for a veteran like me, it never gets any easier.
“Are you okay?” Talia asks.
I blink at her and nod automatically. I wasn’t prepared for the question. We’ve been spending time together over the past two weeks, but we aren’t at the stage that I’d consider divulging all my secrets. I’ve never had a friend before, and I hardly know what’s appropriate.
“You seem different.” Her voice is quiet, and I can tell this is foreign territory for her too. She’s spent the past year of her life fighting for survival, and I’m sure it hasn’t been an easy transition into her new life.
“I think I’m tired,” I say.
In truth, it isn’t just exhaustion. I’m one foot in the grave already. When I look in the mirror, I see a haunting reflection so reminiscent of my mother that it terrifies me. It’s been two weeks since Nikolai’s outburst, and if I were holding my breath waiting for an apology, I’d have starved of oxygen by now. As far as I can tell, he’s only been home in the late hours, and he’s made it a point to avoid me.
He might be fine, but I’m not. Inside, I’m withering. A slow death is torture, and I can feel it happening. Every night, I replay his words. I can’t forget them. And I can’t go on living like this.
I won’t become my mother.
Mischa was right, and I should have listened to him long ago. If I don’t get out now, I’m doomed to repeat history.
What Talia doesn’t know is that these visits with her will be the only thing that saves my life. Today will be the last time I see her, and it isn’t fair. I don’t want to abandon her to this world without a friend, but I have no choice.
The truth aches to spill from my lips. She deserves that much. But I’m not naïve enough to believe that our every move isn’t being recorded. Talia was quick to point it out on our first visit. I think the cameras bother her, but I also think she was trying to warn me not to speak out of turn. Our friendship can only be as deep as the words we’re able to admit out loud.
“Solnyshko.” Alexei enters the room, hand delivering some tea to his wife. “Magda sent this for you.”
“Thank you.” She smiles at him, and her love for him is not false. She does care for him. She sees him as her savior. And as happy as I am for her, it hurts me too.
“How is Nika treating you?” Alexei turns to me, his blue eyes roaming over my face with obvious concern.
Part of me feels like I could be honest with him. I could tell him the truth, and he would not hold it against me or betray me. But it would be a betrayal to Nikolai, considering how strained relations already are with his brother. As awful as he was to me, I can’t bring myself to do that to him.
So, I smile and provide a default answer. “He’s keeping busy. Honestly, I’ve barely seen him in weeks. But all is well.”
Alexei does not look as if he believes me, but Talia saves me from further inquiries by interrupting.
“Tanaka is very tired. Would you mind getting the car?”
“Of course.” He nods. “I’ll walk her out.”
We all rise, and Talia and I exchange hugs. She doesn’t like them, but I think somehow she senses the dark clouds looming over us. When I hug her for a second longer than necessary, she doesn’t let go either. I thank her for the visit, and she urges me to return next week if I’m able.
“The car is ready,” Alexei informs me as he pockets his phone.
He follows me from the room and walks me downstairs as promised. When we reach the front door, he pauses.
“I know that Nikolai can be difficult. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. You are my wife’s friend now, and there is always a safe place for you here.”
My throat burns as I thank him. It’s a nice offer, but the truth is, there is no safe place for me in this world.
Franco is waiting outside as promised, but I falter when I see Mischa standing there. I haven’t seen him since the Christmas party, and he isn’t supposed to be here now.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
; He opens the door and gestures for me to get inside. I look at Franco. He is the one who drives me home, but today, he simply nods and walks back into the house.
“Just get in,” Mischa says.
I hesitate for only a second before I read the urgency in his eyes. He isn’t supposed to be here, but whatever’s happening, I trust him. I get into the car and put my seat belt on while he walks around to the driver’s side. He starts the ignition, and the car rolls down the winding drive of Alexei’s private estate.
I’m waiting for him to tell me what’s going on, but he doesn’t. His knuckles are white against the steering wheel, and his entire body is rigid.
“Mischa?”
He glances at me across the car, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think he hates me a little right now.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he says.
“Why did you pick me up?”
“Nikolai doesn’t know I’m here,” he admits. “If he finds out, he’ll kill me. You’ve got one chance, Nakya. Just this one. If you don’t get out today, then you’ve signed your own death certificate. Do you understand?”
It almost seems too easy, considering the painstaking amount of time I’ve invested in planning my own escape. Franco was supposed to drive me today. I would have asked him to stop at the gas station, insisting I had to use the bathroom. Franco has always accommodated my requests, and I knew this time would be no different. But I wasn’t going to use the bathroom. I was going to run.
That was the extent of my plan. There wasn’t really any follow-through because I had none. I only knew I had to get out. But now Mischa is offering me an escape on a silver platter, and I’m still trying to discern if he’s really as trustworthy as I thought.
“You have no choice,” he says, reading my mind. “I’m the only option you’ve got.”
“Why are you doing it?”
“Because it will destroy Nikolai if anything happens to you because of him.”
I don’t believe that, but there’s no point in arguing. My focus is on the future. My focus is on escaping.