by R. J. Lewis
He runs his hand through his hair and turns away from me. His entire body is tight with anger. I don’t know what to do or say to alleviate the situation.
I’m so fucking inexperienced, I don’t even know how to process what’s going on!
This is meant to be an arrangement. A fuck for a paycheque, but I feel a little naïve for thinking it ever was going to be that simple.
Still not looking at me, Nikolai sighs slowly, peering down at a spot on the ground. His gaze is distant, and I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking.
“Nikolai,” I whisper, contritely. “I’m so –”
He cuts me off with a bitter scoff. “Go home, Alina, before I really say something hurtful.”
*
I feel dead on the ride back to my apartment. I really do just fuck things up, don’t I?
Logically, none of this should bother me. Nikolai doesn’t mean anything to me. Except he does. And it makes his harsh words all the more painful to relive.
I deserved it. I was foolish to think he would forget what I said to him the night before. I hurt his feelings, so of course he wouldn’t just spring back to his normal self with me.
It explains why he fucked me so hard. He was finding a way to take it out on me without hurting me back.
The right thing would be to cut things off, but just the thought makes my heart protest. I feed myself lies. Lies give me the illusion all is right. It shields my heart from feeling pain, so I lie with a fury.
He doesn’t mean anything to me.
I’m doing this for money.
Money.
Better future.
Scarlett.
Repeat.
Money.
Better future.
Scarlett.
I swallow these lies, but they don’t stay down like they did before.
I get off the bus and walk with my head down to the building. The homeless man I usually walk past stops me for a quick hello. I dig my hand into my pocket, fishing for change and throw them down for him. Then I plod on, step after miserable step.
*
The door is unlocked and slightly open when I arrive home. I hear footsteps inside my unit, and I slowly push the door open, refusing to enter.
“Fucking hell,” a voice fumes.
I sigh, my hands turning into fists at the voice of Grant.
What the fuck does he want now?
I wait there, at the door, arms crossed. I’m a mess right now, and the last thing I need is to have some kind of vicious confrontation with this drug dealing animal.
I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m antsy, worried for the money I’ve hidden. When he comes out minutes later, his face is red and unforgiving. He towers over me, forcing me to take steps back until my back is against the wall of the hallway.
“Where the fuck is your thieving mother?!” he roars.
I resist cowering, but my heart is aching in fear. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t fucking know?”
“No.”
“She just disappeared then?”
“I haven’t heard from her.”
“She owes me money.”
“She owes everybody money.”
“Sandra’s never been gone from me this long!” he grits out, seething over me. “Where the fuck is she, Alina?!”
“I don’t know!” I scream back, glaring up at him.
His face turns an even more impossible shade of red. He growls and slams his fist over my head, breaking through the wall, sending crumbling bits of it raining over me. Then he storms down the hallway, taking the elevator down.
The second he disappears I hurry into my unit. Everything has been turned over, and the panic I feel makes every bit of me shiver as I rush into the kitchen, my sights on the large coffee jar on the counter. I open it and dig my hand inside, sifting through the coffee grounds, searching for the feel of the glad bag I’d stuffed the bills in.
I nearly collapse in relief when I feel it. I pull it out and circle it in my hands, making sure it hasn’t been opened. Then I stuff it back in and cover it up. I put it back on the counter and bend over, feeling like I’m about to pass out from the terror swirling like a vortex inside of me.
It’s there. It’s there. It’s there.
My heart’s still racing inside my chest. I’m shaking and anxious. I slide to the ground and bury my head between my knees, taking in deep breaths.
I hate that man.
I hate him.
How do I rid him from my life?
I hear quiet footsteps, and I’m too weak to lift my head up. If he’s come back, I’ll just let him scream at me until he leaves.
The footsteps get closer, until they’re so close all it takes is for me to open my eyes to know who it is. But then I catch the waft of that familiar scent, and all at once my heart explodes and my mind goes quiet.
I feel him at my side, sliding down to where I am. His arm circles around my shoulder and he pulls me into his chest. I crumble a little more just then, shaking like a leaf as he settles me entirely over his lap, kissing me on the top of my head.
“It’s okay,” Nikolai whispers. “You’re alright.”
I close my eyes tighter and grip his plain tee to me. I take in deep breaths, feeling safe in the warmth of his embrace. We stay like that for what feels like a long time. I don’t deserve his affection, not after what I did, and yet here he is, holding me to him like all it matters is that I’m alright.
“Why are you here?” I ask him once I’ve calmed down.
“I’m always here after you leave me,” he answers.
“Why?”
“To make sure you’ve arrived safely.”
I feel like I’ve swallowed a large rock. I pull away and look up at him. His blue eyes are so tender, nothing like the hardness earlier. “You really do that?” I push out, my voice breaking.
He nods solemnly. “Of course I do. You won’t let me take you home. What choice do I have?”
“I thought you were angry at me.”
“I’m still angry at you, but it doesn’t mean I won’t make sure you’ve come home alright.”
There are so many things I want to do in this moment.
Kiss him.
Hug him.
Tell him what that means to me.
But he just shakes his head, telling me with his gaze not to say a word about it. Like he knows I’m not prepared to. It makes the ice inside of me thaw even more for him.
“Now tell me what the hell happened,” he demands. “I come up to find your door wide open and you on the ground.”
“Grant was just here. He seems to think I know where my mother is. He turned the apartment inside out by the time I arrived.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “Why does he do anything? Because he’s a lunatic.”
“How did he get into your apartment?”
“He must have a spare key. Maybe it’s Mom’s key, or he made one for himself back when he lived here. I don’t know.”
“Has he done this before?” Nikolai’s words come out more clipped. I can tell he’s angry.
“Yeah.”
This time he hooks his finger around my chin and forces me to look him dead in the eye. “Has he hurt you?”
Not for a long time. “No.”
“Has he ever?”
“No,” I lie. Because I’m not going to talk about it. Not here, not now, not ever.
He knows I’m not telling the truth, but he doesn’t push the matter. He helps me up instead, and then he gives me a hand tidying up the unit. It’s nothing compared to what Mom did, but it’s still frustrating having to put everything back where it belongs.
When we’re finished, he makes a phone call in the hallway and I pick up Scarlett. I take her inside and run her a bath. She seems to sense something’s happened, because she rubs my arm tenderly.
“You look sad,” she says.
I go to tell her I’m not, but then I hesitate, knowing she won’t believe me if
I lie. “I’m a little sad,” I admit.
“You’ll feel better, Alina,” she assures me, still rubbing my arm.
I smile at her. “I know I will. I’ve got the best sister in the world to cheer me up.”
That makes her eyes light up.
I give her a bath and change her into clean clothes. Then I brush her hair and settle her into bed. I look to the front door before I do, catching sight of Nikolai still standing in the hallway, talking.
“Who is he?” Scarlett asks me after she’s climbed into bed, clean and flushed from her bath.
“My friend,” I answer.
“Is he nice?”
“He wouldn’t be my friend if he wasn’t.”
She settles under the covers, her arms reaching out for Rumple. Then she sits up. “Where is he?”
I search for the bear, looking under the bed and then in her toy box. “Try to get some sleep,” I tell her. “I’ll look for him in the living room. I’m sure he’s there.”
She lays back down, hugging the bed sheet to her chest instead. I turn off the light and leave the door half-opened, and then I proceed to search for Rumple.
He’s not in the living room, or the kitchen, and I’m starting to think she took him into Roberta’s, when I stand on something round. I look down, making out the familiar shape of the button I’d recently bought for his eye. I pick it up, my heart already crashing in my chest.
I scan the kitchen floor, catching sight of another piece of something white. A bit of stuffing.
Rumple’s stuffing.
My movements slow as I follow the trail to the garbage, where some more stuffing is hanging from the lid. I open it and look inside, instantly finding Rumple in at least six different pieces.
Frantically, I pull all of him out: his arm, his head, the remainder of his body, and all the stuffing coming out of it.
Grant is a sadistic fuck. He knew what this fucking teddy meant to her.
I feel like I’m going to cry.
Over a teddy bear.
That dick. That motherfucking dick.
“Alina,” I hear Nikolai’s voice.
I’m fuming too much to respond.
He comes back in and walks to where I am. “What is that?”
I sniff and look up at him, my hands full of stuffing. “It’s Rumple.”
Chapter Twenty-Six.
Nikolai makes me bag up Rumple, assuring me he’ll find someone who can put him back together again. I highly doubt it, though. I think he’s a goner.
Scarlett’s fallen asleep, thank god, but she’ll want that bear the minute her eyes are open. I’m thinking of what I’ll say to her in the morning, when the front door suddenly opens and Vlad appears, a workbag in hand.
Nikolai says something to Vlad and he nods in return, turning back to the door. When Nikolai stares at me, he answers my questioning look simply with, “You need a new lock.”
I don’t know how long I stand there in disbelief, but by the time I snap out of it, Vlad is already getting to work.
“It’s a form of prevention,” Nikolai tells me. “If he wants to get in, he will, but if he’s lazy, he’ll just move on.”
I haven’t even come down entirely from Grant’s intrusion, and Nikolai’s already getting the lock changed.
“Thank you,” I tell him sincerely.
He nods once and leaves my side to help Vlad.
Within a half an hour, the lock’s been changed and I’ve been given a new set of keys. I thank Vlad and he leaves. I expect Nikolai to follow, but he’s walked into the living room, stopping at the balcony window to peer out.
I can already hear the sirens in the background and the banging next door. Crazy psycho man from next door was replaced by crazy psycho man number two over a month ago. This one does a lot more screaming than hitting, though, so he’s the lesser of two evils.
Nikolai hears the shouts and his back stiffens. He looks over his shoulder at me, frowning at the commotion. “This must keep you up.”
I smile shortly, collapsing on my couch. “He’s not so bad compared to the last one.”
He turns to me, crossing his arms now. “This is a very fucked up area.”
I shoot him a wry look. “Yeah, I know, I live in it.”
“Has anyone ever hassled you?”
“No.”
“You answered that too quickly.”
“Because it’s a straight forward question.”
“Getting the truth out of you is like drawing blood from a stone.”
“You’re just as evasive, Nikolai.”
He takes a step closer to me. “What do you want to know?”
“Nothing.” Everything. All of the in-between.
“Come on,” he insists, watching me. “You must want to know something.”
I begin to shake my head, on the verge of denying that, when I pause.
Being around Nikolai so much has taught me a lot about him. He’s a pissy man; he’s got a temper as short as my arm, but he’s also fiercely passionate about his pawn shop and…being with me in the bedroom. He’s fair, but not easily forgiving. I’ve witnessed this countless times when he’s dealt with men that owe him. He’s adaptable and cocky as fuck. He’s also painfully close to Vlad, an unbreakable bond I get curious about often.
I don’t fear him anymore because I know the nature of him well. I’ve got that down pat, but…there are still the simpler things about him I’m in the dark about. Things like…
I look up. “What do your tattoos mean?”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
I expect him to answer vaguely, but as he looks over the tattoos on his hands, a thoughtful look flashing through his eyes, he nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you.”
I wait, but what he does surprises me. He throws his shirt off and then his pants, until he’s in nothing but his briefs. Then he stands there, in my tiny little living room, half-naked for me to inspect.
I’ve already seen his body countless times before, but never as he’s standing so still. I look over his chest and abdomen, and the tattoos crawling over his thighs and legs. When I ask him to spin, he does, and I see all the other markings, some blurred from countless scars.
After I’ve looked him over, he turns back to me and starts to run them through me. “This is the insignia of the brotherhood I grew up in.” He points to a cross the size of his hand that’s on his chest. It’s covered in thorns and there’s writing over top of it. “That reads ‘No Honour Among Cowards’.” I want to ask him about it, but he blazes through to a series of markings on his chest. “These are the dates I went to prison, and the crimes committed.”
“You’re a criminal.”
“By my choosing,” he explains. “Every time I went to prison it was for a reason. The actual crime was committed for the sake of getting inside the walls.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t meet my eye. “I did things in there. All for the Sokolov.”
He tells me more dates. Special dates for particular things he doesn’t get specific about, but I have a feeling they’re worse than the prison dates.
“On my back is the ranking I held in the Sokolov.”
I can’t help but ask, “What was your ranking?”
Nikolai shrugs casually. “Not important.”
I doubt that.
There are bible quotes about salvation, and a word over his heart that translates to ‘lawless’. More quotes, about choosing to live against the law than a slave to it. There’s a black raven on his abdomen; a symbol, he explains, of the mediator animal between life and death.
I’m blown away, to be honest. Every single one of them stands for something. None of them are there to make his skin look pretty. There’s no flow to them, either. In a way, they all look like they’re clashing for space.
I catch notice of a series of dots on his inner bicep, and when I ask about those, he simply says, “Every dot is
a year served in prison.”
There are a lot of dots.
“What about the ticks on your upper back?” I ask.
He hesitates this time. “A count of something else.”
I go still, my face paling when I start to realize what they might be.
Shit. I’m with a madman.
The ones on his hands are dates. One of his mother’s passing, another of the day he started his life over. I wonder if they coincide, but with the sudden frown on his face, I realize they must.
Then there are others he won’t tell me about, and I’ve reached a point I’d rather not know.
“It’s a canvas of your life,” I remark at the end.
“The Sokolov believes you must tell your life story with your body. It’s a habit I couldn’t shake, even after I left,” he explains, sliding back into his pants. “So there you have it, rybka. That’s that.”
“You were still evasive.”
He gives a stern look. “For your sake, you don’t want to know the details.”
“Of what?” I push, tilting my head to the side as I stare at his chest. “That you really are mafia?”
He pulls the zipper back up and tucks his hands into his pockets, looking down at me. “Was, Alina. I was.”
I watch him throw his shirt back on, curious more than ever about why he isn’t in it anymore. Then something occurs to me, and it disturbs me a lot more than those tattoos did.
“Sokolov,” I state. “That’s your last name. Your… family is mafia.”
He nods once slowly. “Yes.”
“So your ranking must be high.”
Another nod. “It was, but not anymore.”
What were you?
He pulls his keys out of his pocket and I know then that he’s intending to leave. I don’t want him to. His company fills a void in this place. He makes me feel safe and warm.
“What happens now?” I ask him.
“With what?”
“We had a bit of a tiff today. Do you…Do you still want me to come around or…?”
Nikolai doesn’t answer for a few moments, deliberating my question. I’m scared of the answer now, and every silent second makes me more anxious.
“You look worried, rybka,” he finally says, studying me. “What does it mean to you if we stop?”