by Nicole Fox
I drive west. The city feels like a hunting ground as I pass through its streets, but depending on how I’m picturing my father, it changes whether I’m the hunter or the hunted.
Parking in front of the mansion, two cars pass by. The traffic is getting heavier as people start heading home. And, under the most complicated and precarious circumstances, this mansion has become my home.
I walk up to the house, bringing Lily to the forefront of my thoughts in order to discard any nerves when it comes to talking to Maksim. He can be as angry as he wants about the fact that I didn’t leave the city yet. He can despise me for printing that article as much as he despises my father. It doesn’t matter. He cares about Lily and he will protect her. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind right now that he will put her first.
As I walk up to the house, the front doors burst open and Katia rushes out. Katia is one of Maksim’s assistants. I’ve only seen her in passing since she’s normally running from one place to another, but she’s always been cordial with me.
When she’s a few inches away from me, she spits on me.
“You have to be one arrogant bitch to come back here,” she seethes. Her dark brown hair is nearly vibrating as her body trembles with rage. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted, but I wasn’t going to question Maksim. And you screwed us all over. For what? For money? For fame? So you could get a little gold star from your newspaper? You’re worthless. Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m not here to fight—”
She takes a step closer to me, our bodies nearly touching. “That decision won’t be up to you.”
“Is Maksim here?” I ask. I look back at the mansion. The door is open and a few more members of Maksim’s house staff are standing in the doorway. They all appear to be fuming like Katia.
“No,” she states. “He’s not. And you better not be here either.”
There’s an erratic rage in her eyes. In my research, I found out that she was close friends with Bogdan—they could have been more, but those were just rumors. And he’s dead.
Bratva business is inescapable and brutal. I thought I could escape the Mafia, and here I am, in the middle of a mess, but staying here could have been worse. I could be like Katia or Maksim, clinging to vengeance because it’s inevitable and it’s all I have left.
And if I don’t get Lily back, it will be all I have, too.
“I was wrong,” I tell her. “I know. But I need to talk to him. It’s important. He will want to know what I need to tell him.”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Why? So, you can print it in your little newspaper?” she snarls. She grabs onto the front of my shirt, shoving me backward. “I’m not telling you shit.”
“You know Maksim and I have been visiting the foster home, right?” I ask hurriedly as she prepares to shove me again. She stares at me for several seconds before letting her arms drop and nodding nearly imperceptibly. “Do you know why we’ve been going there?”
“I don’t need to know why,” she says, but she doesn’t move.
“It’s because we’ve been visiting my daughter,” I say, my hand over my chest. “And Maksim might hate me, but he’s fond of her. He needs to know the truth. He needs to know my father kidnapped her and I need his help to get her back.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “That sounds like your problem. Get the hell off this property before I have Alexander drag you off.”
I glance over at the crowd in the doorway. She must be telling the truth—if Maksim was here, he would have dealt with me personally. No matter how much he doesn’t want to see me, he wouldn’t leave this confrontation to his assistant.
“If he comes by, just tell him to call me,” I say. “Please, Katia.”
I walk away, my mind bouncing to where else I can go. My father wouldn’t return to any location I would know. He’d need a place where he could keep a child without anyone becoming suspicious. He’d need a place devoid of anyone who isn’t a Balducci.
“Cassandra,” Katia calls out as I reach the end of the driveway. I spin around. “Maksim has gone underground. He’s hiding somewhere while he’s strategizing how to save his men. I don’t know exactly where he is, but you’re not going to find him soon enough to help your daughter.”
I nod. “Thank you for the information, Katia.”
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
I turn around, heading to my car again. “Investigate.”
I comb through newspaper articles. I look for anything concerning the Bratva or Maksim.
I click on a video titled “Best Companies to Work for in 2018: Akimov Suites.” I watch Maksim guide a reporter through his hotel. He’s smiling and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but he’s clearly proud of his company. He talks in technical detail about the hotel’s architecture and introduces each of his employees that he runs into, praising them in one distinct way or another—Cathy Boyd, who brushed off all of the cars’ in the parking lot in the winter; Benjamin Jones, who prepared a special wedding cake for a bride and groom after their baker became preoccupied with personal issues; and Michelle Knapp, who managed to talk down two drunk men who were preparing to brawl in the foyer. I’m nearly ready to click away when I see Michelle—who is so vibrant and full of life in the video—but I stop as Maksim reaches the hotel’s restaurant and he introduces a beautiful woman. She is the epitome of femininity—her sleek blonde hair, her delicate wrists, and her perfect makeup turning her into a male fantasy.
“This is my wife.” He kisses her in the video. It stings, knowing someone laid claim to him so dominantly before me, but as he looks at her, there’s no love in his movements, even as he loops his arm around her waist. He looks at her in the same way he looks at the hotel bar and the marble foyer.
He didn’t look at me that way. He wasn’t proud of me like I was an acquisition—at least, not after the shooting in the nightclub. He looked at me with something that was the polar opposite of possessiveness. Something warm. Authentic.
I glance away from him to stop being sucked into his orbit. In the background, a man is sitting at a table, continuously glancing at Maksim. He isn’t as well-dressed as the other patrons and his body is racked by tension. I’ve seen him in another video.
I bring up one that focuses on Maksim’s purchase of the Igor Evlakhova House, preserving it as a historic monument. In the background again, the man stands a few feet behind Maksim. He’s focusing on Maksim, but not in the same way as other people—intrigued, disgusted, lustful. It looks like he’s ready to take a bullet for Maksim.
It must be one of his longstanding lieutenants. Possibly his right-hand man. I’ve never seen him before, but if he’s hiding, it would make sense for Maksim to join him.
I continue the video about Maksim buying Igor Evlakhova House. At one point, Maksim turns toward the man, but instead of talking to him, he refers to the woman standing beside him.
“Miss Lynna Kudrin is the one who convinced me to buy this house, so all credit must go to her for saving this historic landmark,” Maksim says.
I jot down the name. Lynna Kudrin. I’ve found my bait. Now, I just need to get Maksim to bite.
Lynna Kudrin lives on Watts Street. I park on the other side of her street and cross it. The house is two stories high, pale blue with white trimming. There’s a white picket fence around it. It’s the very picture of the American Dream, which makes it stranger that it became so deeply involved with the Bratva.
I open the gate and step through. As I knock on the door, I can’t shake the feeling that the air around here is heavier. Maybe there’s more moisture in this area. Maybe we’re at a higher altitude and I didn’t notice the change as I drove.
When the woman opens the door, I know it’s not meteorology that’s affecting the atmosphere. It’s this woman. And she hates me with every fiber in her body.
The woman’s dirty blonde hair is gleaming with grease, but that’s barely no
ticeable as she stares at me and her face turns a deep shade of red. Her hands curl up into fists as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here, Balducci,” she snarls. “But you better turn your ass around and throw yourself in front of a car.”
I don’t know why this woman hates me, but it seems to run deeper than her husband being close to Maksim. “I was just wondering if I could talk to your husband,” I say. She stares at me, her eyes narrowed.
“Is that some kind of sick joke?” she asks.
“I don’t mean it to be,” I say lamely.
“Neither do I.” She turns around, heading back inside. “Get the fuck off my property, Balducci.”
A little boy toddles straight into Lynna’s legs, pressing his face in between her knees. He peers at me, curiosity sparking in his eyes.
“Hi.” I give him a small wave. He shyly smiles, nuzzling his face against his mother’s leg. Lynna grabs him by the shoulders, turning him around.
“Go to your room, Tommy,” she orders.
“No …” he whines, clinging tighter to his mother’s leg. I wonder if Lily was that clingy as a toddler.
“Go, Tommy,” she commands. Tommy gives me one more look before ambling back down the hall.
“Mrs. Kudrin,” I say. “I understand that you’re angry about the article, but—”
She laughs, the sound harsh enough that it sounds more like she’s choking. She spins around to face me again. “You really have no idea, do you? How fucking stupid are you?”
I shrug, my tongue rolling over my teeth. “That’s debatable right now, but I don’t have time for this. I need—”
“It’s not just some goddamn squabble,” she spits out. “Your father—”
“My daughter,” I cut in, angry now at her refusal to listen to me. “She’s—”
“—Killed my husband.”
“—Been kidnapped,” I finish as her words sink in. We stare at each other. I bow my head. “I didn’t know that. I … I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“How could you not know?” she asks. “It was less than three months ago.”
“My father doesn’t tell me anything. We don’t talk,” I say.
“Maksim could have told you.”
“If you know Maksim at all, you’d know he wouldn’t.”
She shakes her head. She doesn’t say anything. I consider walking away, but this is the only lead I’ve found in all my research. If I lose this, I lose Lily.
“Come inside,” she mutters. “This isn’t a conversation for everyone to hear.”
I follow her in, closing the door behind me. As we navigate through her house, we walk by a wall decorated with various framed photographs. The photos are all in different locations and different times—some of them in the summer and some of them in the winter—but they all show Lynna and her husband. It looks like the photos span several years. In the center of all of them, there’s a wedding photo. I know I can’t assume anything from eleven photographs, but their love for each other is all over their faces in the photos. They adored each other in a way that’s nearly impossible to find and even more difficult to not be terrified of.
As Lynna sits down with me in her living room, I realize that the wedding photo seems familiar because it was taken in Maksim’s backyard. It’s hard to see him being part of a legitimate marriage, but he was married once and cared enough about this couple to let them use his property to celebrate their lifetime commitment. Some part of him believes in the institution of marriage, but we’ll never reach that sincere point after all our baggage.
“Tell me what happened to your daughter,” she says.
I take a deep breath. “My father took her. She was living in a foster home. He … he took her when she was born. Maksim tracked her down a few months ago. I’d started getting to know her. My father just took her again. He wants to use her to get to Maksim because he knows Maksim cares about her. It’s insane, I know, but I also think Maksim will protect her.”
The summary tumbles out of me more easily than I thought it would. Looking at everything that happened from a factual perspective is a lot easier than living out the details and it’s significantly easier when the stakes are so high.
“Why do you care what happens to Maksim?” she asks. “It seems clear from your article that you intended to destroy him. I doubt your father would hurt his own grandchild. You can get everything you wanted.”
“I’m not as confident in my father’s love,” I admit. “And … I care about Maksim. I thought it was the right thing to publish that article. I’m not so sure now. And I can’t keep hurting Maksim. I thought getting back at him would make me feel better, but I just feel like shit.”
She nods. She sinks her fingers into her greasy hair, deep in thought.
“I get it,” she says, looking at me with the faintest smile. “More than you know. Ravil—my husband … when I found out his involvement with the Bratva, I was furious. I thought he’d lured me into a relationship—made me fall in love with him—under false pretenses. I was so angry that I refused to speak to him for two months. It was Maksim who intervened for Ravil. He told me that he’d told Ravil to hide the truth from me. I’m still not sure if that’s true, but he told me to meet Ravil at his hotel’s restaurant. I didn’t think it was smart to refuse to go along with a Bratva boss, so I did. I thought I’d be terrified the whole time, thinking about how the Bratva was going to kill me, but … Ravil was still Ravil. The same man I fell in love with. I wanted to stay angry at him too, but all it did was make me miserable. So, I took the jump. And we had an amazing time until …”
Her bottom lip pushes up and she looks away from me.
“Until my father killed him,” I finish for her. “I know it would be nearly impossible for me to hate him as much as you do, but he’s taken my daughter twice now, so I promise you that our hearts are in the same place. I have no desire to defend him or excuse his behavior. He’s a monster.”
She glances at me. Leaning against the armrest of her couch, she cups her chin in her hand. “You love him, don’t you?”
“He’s my father,” I say, frowning. “I hate him for what he’s done. I don’t know about love. It’s complicated and—”
“No,” she interrupts. “Not your father. Maksim.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I … I care about him a lot.”
“You love him,” she repeats. “I felt the exact same way about Ravil. Loving a dangerous man is always painful. Even when everything is good, you always have to be afraid that they’re going to get hurt. You have to be afraid of who he will hurt to protect you. I was so confident when Ravil was around because he made me believe that I was worth more than anyone else. I knew he’d kill a hundred men to protect me. It was flattering and terrifying. Now … I have no one like that. And there will never be anyone like that again.”
She stands, going over to a small desk in the corner, where a laptop is set up. She plucks a piece of paper off the corkboard beside it.
“I’m certain you can find someone new,” I say, but the words come out hollow. She forces a smile as she sits back down.
“That’s kind of you to say, but I had my great love story. One day, I’ll pick myself back up, but it just won’t be the same. I thought of taking down our photos, so I don’t have to remember him every second, but I’m happy with the memories. I’m happy with our children. He left pieces of himself with me and I’m going to cherish them.” She hands me the piece of paper. “That’s the number that Maksim gave me in case I wanted to contact him. He gave it to me right after Ravil was killed, so I can’t be completely certain it’s the same one he’s using now, but I’m confident that if he changed his number, he would have told me. He and Ravil were like brothers. He felt obligated to take care of me, for Ravil’s sake.”
I take the number from her and dial. I bring my phone up to my ear as I look at Lynna. She’s right about loving a dangerous man, but it’s not just that
they make you feel worthy. They push you farther than you ever thought you could go. They turn you into someone worthy.
22
Maksim
Dr. Lisov owns two houses in NYC. One is a Tribeca penthouse. The other is a brownstone on Ninth Avenue. Cassie left him out of her article—I find it highly unlikely she forgot his name, so I assume she decided he did more good than bad, therefore his anonymity was worth keeping. For all the mass destruction her article committed, at least this means that his brownstone is a good safe house. I pay him to convince his mistress to give it up for a week.
The remaining lieutenants and I sit at Lisov’s massive glass table. I’ve drawn all over it with a dry erase marker. We break into intense arguments, but there’s a sense of grief as we know that we’re missing three of our members: Timofey was killed when we attacked the Balducci’s meth lab. Semyon was killed at his house. Rostislav was killed leaving his kid’s concert. Five of us remain, a wide range of emotions making us temperamental.
I put an X over one of the streets. “We can’t attack them here. They’ll be prepared for it. We’ve already attacked them at that location twice before.”
“That’s because it’s the perfect place to attack them from,” Nail retorts. “There’s nowhere that they can get the high ground.”
“They don’t need the high ground right now. Gianluigi is willing to throw his men forward to be slaughtered. I’m not willing to do the same,” I say.
Nail rubs his temple. “This would be simple if we used the one bargaining chip we have.”
“We’re not using Cassandra,” I say. “Gianluigi doesn’t love her. I’ve already tested him a couple of times. He couldn’t care less about her. She’s worthless to the Bratva.”
While it’s the truth, it’s not the whole truth. Spending all this time locked away from the rest of the world, I’ve been trying to focus on strategizing, but I’ve spent significantly more time cycling through my memories of Cassie and Lily and concocting daydreams of them—ones where we do the mundane activities of an average family. After all of this is over, I’ll do what it takes to bring us back together. I’ll earn back Cassandra’s trust. I’ll adopt Lily. I’ll get them a nice house just like this one and I’ll be a better man than I’ve ever been before.