by R. J. Lewis
Andrei casts his eyes to the ground, looking uncomfortable.
“That is more important,” I stress sharply, unforgiving. “We need to be making more returns, not falling behind them. Once someone goes past me and makes a runner, the rest will do the same. Think of that instead of your cocks.”
I return to my office and slam the door shut. It’s quiet for a few moments. I collapse once again on the couch before Andrei continues to talk about another girl. Unbelievable. This is what I get for recruiting newbies with no experience at all with our kind. I’d tell him to stop. Hell, I’d glue his lips together for his disrespect, but I don’t.
The boys here are maggots, but they’re family too, and I can’t turn family away. Besides, I need people I can trust to take care of business when it gets ugly. It doesn’t get ugly often, but on the rare occasion that it does, I’m not keen on getting my hands dirty. It’s a hassle that might cost me everything I’ve worked for, and the whole reason I’m here is to fly under the radar and make it without the heat of the Sokolov raining down on me.
I toss my smoke in the ashtray beside me. I don’t feel satisfied enough for it. My blood surges with stress. I can’t fuck up. This is my new beginning and I won’t have it ripped away because of distractions.
I lean back on the couch and shut my eyes, tearing my insecurities to pieces.
Don’t trust anyone.
Never show weakness.
Always stand tall.
Never fear your enemies.
I think of all the Bratva has taught me, and slowly the aggression dissipates. As I detach, my thoughts centre around the feel of that girl’s lithe body as she pressed herself against me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt the warmth of another body.
She wanted that money, but I’m just as certain she wanted my lips the same. It’s a dangerous mixture, business and pleasure. I know this girl’s kind. After a while, she wouldn’t know the difference, and that’s what I’m trying to stay away from.
She’s nothing like the women of my past in that respect. They knew their boundaries. They never cared when I casted them aside after we were done. That’s the way I prefer it to be. The only way I’ve ever known it to be. And while Alina is stunning to look at, she makes me wary. There’s something about her I just can’t shake.
The more I know about her, the more strings there’ll be binding me to her. I have no time for that complication in my life. I’m building an empire right now and with every new debtor walking through that door I’m expanding more every day. I’m not even finished laying down the bricks. There’s no room for commitment. If I could fuck her without one, I would. And god, I want to.
“I’ve been wanting to do this the second I saw your plump little lips and doe eyes.”
Thank fuck I didn’t say that in English before I took her lips against mine.
There’s a hard knock on the door. I get up and yank it open. The second Vlad comes through, the surge of anger I feel explodes out of me. I launch at him, gripping him by the collar of his shirt and slamming him into the wall.
“Are you trying to get a rise out of me?” I hiss gravely.
“No –”
“You talk about that girl like that one more time and I’ll bury you, Vlad.”
“I didn’t know it bothered you,” he has the audacity to say.
“Don’t lie to me!”
“Niko –”
“You knew what you were doing, didn’t you?” I tighten my grip and shake him roughly. “Admit it!”
He finally jerks his head.
I bare my teeth. “And you won’t do it again, will you?”
He nods a second time and I let go. “You’ll be right to never get a rise out of me again, Vlad. You know I’m not a forgiving man.”
“Yes, Nikolai. I know that more than anyone.”
“Then don’t piss me off.”
“I just needed to know,” he tells me as I make my way to the liquor cabinet to pour myself a glass of whiskey.
“Know what?”
He shuts the door and stands there, crossing his meaty arms to his chest as he studies me. I’m taking a gulp when he asks, “Is it coincidence that girl’s come here of all places?”
“Yes,” I simply answer, savouring the burn in my lungs.
“You go to that hole of a store every single morning, and suddenly she’s here, asking for money.”
“What’s your question?”
“Did you play a hand in that?”
I give him a curt glance. “You forget your place, Vlad. Again.”
“Assure me this is not the work of your obsession.”
I grit my teeth. “The girl clearly needed a loan.”
“Why didn’t you give her one?”
“I don’t prey on desperate women. She’s not good for the money. It’s simple.”
“That’s not what I meant.” The man never backs down. “You seek her out every single day, and the one time she seeks you out, you turn her away.”
“Again, what’s the question?”
“Either take her, or discard her. It’s evident you can’t stop.”
I chuckle dryly. “Reserve your advice for someone who gives a fuck, Vlad.”
“I know you give a fuck –”
“And I know it’s none of your business,” I interrupt, roughly. “I’m not here to fuck with some poor girl who can’t get her life together. I couldn’t give a fuck about her. I’m here to work.”
“Yeah, well, the more you turn girls away, the hungrier that cock of yours will get. You’re a prick as it is, and when you’re not warming your bed or beating some man’s face in, you become unreasonable. Now why is that? We came here not to change who we are, but to show the Bratva we didn’t need them. Yet you’ve changed, haven’t you?”
I don’t respond.
“You go from fucking the most exotic beauties one second to stopping completely cold the next,” he continues. “Something’s happened, and you’re not letting me in.”
I work my jaw and take another gulp of my drink before slamming it down. I don’t meet his eye as he continues. “And then there’s this blondie. Maybe she’s nothing to you, but I know you don’t go to that store for its fucking juice. You go there because of her. If she’s just a poor girl, you wouldn’t walk five blocks in the opposite direction to buy a three dollar drink every single morning. This is what you do, Nikolai. You observe. You taste. You get hooked. Immersing yourself so deeply in something, you wind up fucked over in the end. You can’t stop yourself. Look at what you did for the Sokolov!”
My eyes are dead when I look at him. “Why do you think I left that life behind? They were bleeding me dry.”
“You let them,” he wickedly retorts, pissed. “Your father turned you into a weapon, and now you’re weak for some girl.”
I glare at him. “What do you want me to do, Vlad?”
“Get her out of your system and move on to better things.”
He leaves me after that.
Leaves me to be consumed by the dark thoughts festering inside my head. The little prick always has to bring up the Bratva, as if the wounds have closed back up and I’ve long moved on.
I haven’t.
Not at all.
I finish my drink and slam it down on my desk, and then I collapse into my chair and bury my face into my hands.
You get hooked.
He’s right. I do. When I see something I like, I allow it to consume me. I’m a greedy man. I take what I want until there’s nothing left of it.
I think about my father, the cold emotionless shell of a man, and all I can remember from my early days is the face of my mother, torn and broken apart by the hands of the Sokolov, by him.
I’m like him.
I have his vicious temper and obsessed nature. I have the ability to break, and it’s this ability that keeps me away from all that is precious.
There’s a darkness in me. I feel it at times, twisting like a serpent inside of me. I run from
the Sokolov because the serpent bends to their call. I feel its movements, its urge to indulge in wicked things.
I don’t want to be that man anymore.
He would destroy me.
Chapter Seven.
I don’t sleep all night. I toss and turn, unable to keep my mind from wandering back to Nikolai. I brush my fingers across my lips that many times, but I can still feel his mouth there, and it makes my body warm with longing.
I expected to feel regret along with my humiliation. I mean, I’m the one that kissed him fiercely. He’d just been along for the ride, and I know why I don’t take it back. I liked the contact. I can admit that to myself because denying it won’t get me anywhere. I liked it very much.
Since Scarlett’s birth I’ve never been close to someone else. I may have run amuck before then, bouncing from boy to boy to forget the broken home I came from. I was a disaster. Every drug under the sun I’d experimented with. I was dirty and I didn’t mind it, so long as I got to feel the rush that distracted me of thoughts of the revolving door of men in my mother’s life – men that had violated me throughout my childhood and stolen the depth of my innocence. Men I can’t even put a face to because my mind has an uncanny ability to bury that trauma. I sought out the same sort of men and took control over them just to feel like I was getting back at the ones that stripped me of it before. Often I wonder the psychology behind that.
I stopped caring for a long time, but the second Scarlett came into this world I felt responsibility. I couldn’t sit back and watch the same horror touch her life. I knew Mom wouldn’t change for her, she was too far gone to. Meanwhile, there I was at seventeen with a newborn to look after, and Scarlett had been so tiny. She’d been underweight at birth because Mother chose alcohol over food throughout her pregnancy.
I may have been on the wrong path, but I was not entirely lost. The second Scarlett was in my arms, I felt something inside me change. I hadn’t thought of what would happen when Mom gave birth. Never thought how quickly my love for a baby I’d never put aside any thought to would impact me so much. Scarlett was my second chance at life, and I don’t regret a single sacrifice I made in the process of looking after her.
I still cringe when I think of those earlier years. Shoplifting for formula and diapers. Wrapping her in a bedsheet and cradling her in my arms. Losing sleep. Waking up on fumes while she screamed for food. She occupied my every moment and filled it with purpose. She became my entire world overnight while my mother got lost in oblivion.
I haven’t been touched by a man in five years.
God, when I actually think about that, about how long it’s been, I’m in disbelief. It hasn’t felt that long. I can still remember the feel of them on me, inside me, touching me in places that made my stomach turn. It never felt good, or right. Why did I put myself through that? I don’t understand the girl I used to be. I’m deeply ashamed of her.
Five years gone in the blink of an eye, and it’s been like this. A cycle of waking up, working, scraping food together and starting all over again the next day. Sometimes I feel like I’m outside of myself, watching this robot go about her days in the same order. I’ve lost any sense of self. I don’t really know who I am because I have never had the time to figure it out.
Time. That word is lost to me. I’ve never had time to just…live. It makes me kind of bitter and empty.
I hate my mother.
I hate this world.
I hate that I cradle the hundred dollar note to my chest all night because I’m too scared of something happening to it if I close my eyes.
I hate that my bed squeaks when I move, and that the sound of men walking down the hallway just outside my unit makes me nervous and alert.
I hate life. I hate it. I really fucking do.
Most of all, I hate my mother for bringing an innocent soul like Scarlett into this fucked up world. I hate her. I hate her. I feel rage in the rawest form in the centre of my being, and I welcome it because it chases something darker away.
Depression.
Depression would be worse. It would make me stop functioning. It consumed me once, and it had been the roughest couple months of my life. When you’re depressed, the days start bleeding into one another. You lose sense of time. It made me want to stop moving and trying, like the weight of the world was pressed upon my chest and I just wanted it to crush me to death. Depression is a very scary thing, especially when you’re watching the cars on the street and wondering what it would be like to step in front of one. It’s still there, lurking in the shadows, but I refuse to give it light. Scarlett gives me enough purpose to shut the bad away.
When morning comes, I’m barely awake. My eyes ache as I half-watch the sky through the window growing brighter with every passing minute.
I don’t often sleep. The night makes me feel frightened, like the shadows are telling a story my mind understands but I don’t want to relive. I’ve never felt safe here, or anywhere for that matter. It makes closing my eyes an impossible task, because when you’re sleeping anything can happen.
Scarlett stirs next to me, her hand seeking mine. When she finds it, she stops squirming and falls back asleep. I watch her and, god, she looks so content, her hair over part of her face, her mouth parted as she breathes peacefully.
Both our stomachs growl in unison, and I squeeze that hundred dollars in my hand tighter.
Food is coming.
*
I get Scarlett up early so we can dress and walk to the grocery store a block from the apartment building. She’s still tired, and she keeps looking at her shoes as we walk. I know they’re uncomfortable and they’re hurting her, and I’m tempted to buy her new ones with the little money I have. I try to make it work in my head, but I’m not sure it’s possible just yet.
I buy a loaf of bread and a generic version of Nutella for ninety-nine cents. Then we return home and I make two sandwiches. We sit on the couch as we eat over our plates. She’s cuddled against my side, scarfing her food down her throat at a scary rate. I have to tell her to slow down or else she might get sick. It’s happened to me too many times to count, and as hungry as I am, I take small bites and chew slowly.
“Can I have another sandwich?” she asks me when she’s finished.
I make her another.
Then I say fuck it and make myself another one too.
This time she’s much slower, and her lips are coated in hazelnut, causing her to lick around her mouth. She barely gets any of it off, and I laugh at her, using my fingers to wipe away the rest of it. Scarlett is fucking adorable.
After we’ve eaten, we lounge for a bit. She rests her head against my lap and I run my fingers through her hair before making it into one long braid down her back. She likes when I do things to her hair. It makes her run to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror, a shy smile on her face as she twirls in a circle.
I love her so much.
I stuff my money in my pocket before we leave, not trusting to leave it behind in case Mother returns to clean me out again. I wouldn’t put it past her. I sort of wish she’d do it when I’m at home so I can beat six shades of shit out of her.
I hate her so much.
We leave the unit and I lock the door behind me. Then I knock on Roberta’s door, and before she opens it Scarlett turns to me and hugs me tightly, her arms around my hips, her face pressed against my stomach.
“I’m going to miss you, Alina,” she whispers to me, batting her brown eyes up at me.
I smile down at her, my chest tightening as I hug her back. “I’ll make you something good when I get back, okay?”
She nods and Roberta opens her door, smiling warmly down at Scarlett. “Come on in, child.”
Scarlett goes in and disappears from sight seconds later. Roberta looks at me, her eyes running up and down my frame. “You okay?” she asks. “You came home and practically shoved me out.”
I give her a reassuring smile. “Everything is fine.”
“You got
what you wanted?”
“No, but I didn’t walk away with nothing.”
“That’s ominous, Alina,” she says bluntly. “Really damn ominous.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
She’s still straight-faced. “Terribly ominous.”
I don’t meet her eye. “Really, everything is fine.”
She’s curious but she’s not nosy. “Alright, you look after yourself.”
I don’t tell her that I’m struggling to. I just say, “I will,” as convincingly as I can. We have small chat, about the weather and other frivolous shit I won’t remember later. Then I hand her Scarlett’s hazelnut spread and loaf of bread right before I leave so Scarlett has something to eat while I’m gone. After all is said and done, I turn around and start my trek to work.
Back to the grind I go.
*
Oksana is a no-show (there was a note on the counter that said ‘b bak l8tah’, which was very helpful) and Ivan has come and gone. I have to handle everything alone. It’s all so very brilliant. I have rainbows coming out of my heart right now.
That’s a fucking lie.
It sucks so much I might as well be feasting on the sweaty ballsacks of a thousand chimps. Because if there’s one thing I learned working at a convenience store in this area, it’s how unbelievably weird some people are. During the rush, a dude moves to the front and the first thing he puts down on the counter isn’t the bag of skittles he’s buying, no, it’s his gold tooth he’s just removed from his mouth.
I wish I could say I’m disgusted, but eighteen months on the job has earned me a strong stomach.
“It’s eighteen karats,” he tells me. “Yours for forty dollars. Bargain, yeah?”
I want to ask him if he is seriously trying to sell me his saliva soaked tooth, but judging by the crazy look in his eye, I know he is totally serious.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” I say regretfully.
He’s understanding about it, grabbing the tooth and inserting it back into his mouth before he tells me he’ll try next door. Then he completely abandons the skittles by tossing it on the counter.