by J. A. Rock
The knock came again.
“Just a minute.” He put pajama pants on but left them slung low, the drawstring untied.
A car had followed him from DuPont. Ilia could have lost it, with traffic what it was. But he’d let it follow.
Hoped, maybe, that it was an associate of Mikhail’s. He was desperate enough for any connection to Mikhail that he’d take someone hitting him up for money or information, as long as they’d known the man Ilia had loved.
He wished he had Mikhail’s gun—just in case. Thing was, he didn’t seem capable of real fear anymore. Fear now was just surface nerves, like waiting to get called on in class when you hadn’t done the reading.
He opened the door.
Stared for a minute.
Nikolay Kadyrov.
Thinner than his brother, but just as strong looking. Black hair, pale, chewed lips and skin that glistened under his stubble. He had Mikhail’s eyes. Ilia had thought once people must look into Mikhail’s eyes and see a soulless black, like the inside of a gun barrel. Ilia had felt all the more special for being able to look into them and see warmth. Love.
No warmth in Nick’s eyes, but there was brightness, anticipation, as if tonight were a very special night. And maybe it was.
“Good evening,” Nick said. “May I come in?”
VI
Last year, Mikhail had invited Nick to the apartment. To their sanctuary.
Ilia had resented this for reasons he couldn’t explain. Mikhail paid for the apartment. Nick was Mikhail’s brother. If Mikhail wanted to have his brother over, Ilia could hardly protest.
But since Mikhail didn’t particularly like Nick, Ilia didn’t see why Mikhail had to let him come here.
He’d been sullen at first, letting Mikhail know how displeased he was. Then he’d noticed how Nick was looking at him—much the same way Mikhail looked at him, except Nick’s was a hungrier, clumsier desire. No refinement to it—he was like a toddler grabbing for candy, sticky already with things he’d possessed and consumed. Mikhail knew how to want things beautifully. He knew the value of patience. He could make an expression as articulate as speech. Nick knew none of that.
And so Ilia had begun to play with Nick. He leaned over the back of the couch and wound his arms around Mikhail, kissing his hair. He sat on Mikhail’s lap and leaned back when Mikhail embraced him with a breathy sigh, as though just having Mikhail’s arms around him brought him orgasmic pleasure. He interrupted a conversation between Mikhail and Nick to whisper in Mikhail’s ear, and when Mikhail chuckled and squeezed his hand, Ilia glanced over and met Nick’s gaze. Watched that desire grow uglier with envy.
Mikhail got in on it too. He joined Ilia in the kitchen on the pretext of getting more food, but they stood there making out for a full five minutes, knowing Nick could see them from the living room.
Ilia whispered against Mikhail’s lips, “Your brother wants me.”
“How could he not?” Mikhail whispered back.
“He wants everything you have.”
Mikhail kissed him again. “Mmm. I know.”
“But he doesn’t deserve it. He’s nothing, compared to you.”
Mikhail grinned. “You flatter me.”
Ilia ran his hand down Mikhail’s front, stopping just above the waistband of his pants. “I can tell he’s just like you say. The kind of guy who’d run a business into the ground. Can’t do anything right.”
Mikhail’s grin faded. “He’s my brother.”
“I know.” Ilia removed his hand and turned away. “I’m sorry. He just doesn’t do much for me.”
“Hey, lovebirds,” Nick called. “Where’re the chips and dip?”
“You do much for him,” Mikhail murmured, stepping up behind Ilia.
“Yeah.” Ilia faced him again. Smiled, wicked and dark. “You want to really make him burn?”
“Mmm, hm-hm-hm,” Mikhail took Ilia’s lower lip between his teeth, then let it go. “How do you mean?”
Ilia told him the rest of his plan.
In the living room, Mikhail set the basket of chips in the coffee table. “My Ilia has lost something,” he said to Nick. “I’m going to help him look. I will be right back.”
Nick shrugged and turned up the TV.
Mikhail and Ilia went to the bedroom together. Stripped down and fucked. Mikhail was rough, possessive, taking Ilia from behind and panting like an animal. Ilia begged, cried in time with the thrusts. Mikhail’s grunts quickly became shouts; he gripped the headboard and then the bed started moaning along with them.
“Hit me,” Ilia whispered between gasps, and braced himself as Mikhail’s palm cracked against his thigh, gunshot loud. Mikhail did it again.
Ilia couldn’t come, though—maybe because he was thinking about how they must sound to Nick. The TV was still on, but it couldn’t be enough to mask the racket Ilia and Mikhail were making.
“What a show, Ilie,” Mikhail murmured. Sweat made his hips slick against Ilia’s ass. He had a hand on Ilia’s cock and was shaking it like a can of spray paint.
Ilia arched, breathed out slowly, and laughed.
Then he heard the bedroom door open.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Nick silhouetted in the doorway. Tried to throw Nick a smile, but Mikhail shoved his cock into him, making him wince and drop his head.
Nick didn’t speak. Ilia could feel his stare again, and this time it wasn’t quite so amusing or pathetic. There was the noise from the TV, there was the sound of Mikhail fucking him—but Ilia experienced a moment of too-quiet, a moment the possibility of danger slipped in.
He didn’t want Nick watching him. Didn’t want Nick to see what he shared with Mikhail. That seemed to give Nick a power they’d never take back from him. Ilia had wanted to put on a show, yes—a show that Nick could listen to and hate. But not a show he could watch the way he was watching them now.
Mikhail slowed. He was clearly tired, and Ilia most certainly wasn’t going to come. Not with Nick watching. But Ilia could hear the amusement in Mikhail’s voice when he said, “Hello, Nick. Something…I can…helpyouwith?” He bucked twice more into Ilia’s ass, then paused to catch his breath before giving a long, slow thrust.
“I came here to talk,” Nick said coldly. “I came here to talk about the money.”
Mikhail picked up the pace again, sliding a hand down Ilia’s damp back. “Ask me later.”
Nick stepped closer.
“No. I’m going to ask you now, while you’re fucking your whore.”
Nick didn’t emphasize the word. Didn’t say it like an insult. Said it calmly, like it was a fact. That was what made Ilia go cold.
Mikhail slid out of him. Stood and shuffled to Nick with his pants around his ankles. Still managed to look terrifying.
Ilia rolled onto his side and pulled the comforter over his hip.
Mikhail stared at his brother. “That is not my whore.”
In the dim light, Ilia saw Nick smile. “Fooled me.”
“He is mine.” Mikhail’s voice was low, dangerous. “Do you understand me? Not my whore. Mine.”
Ilia wished he could appreciate having his honor defended. But every second he spent under Nick’s gaze was shame stuck in him like varas into a fighting bull—no matter how he twisted and thrashed, the points stayed lodged under his skin.
“You ought to pay him,” Nick said, voice still perfectly calm. “A performance like that. Though—“ He glanced around the bedroom. “I suppose you do, in a way.”
The next sound was Mikhail’s fist connecting with Nick’s jaw, but it brought Ilia no relief. Even when Nick was on the floor, even when he wasn’t moving, Ilia still felt watched. Known.
VII
Nick didn’t say much at first.
Preliminaries: “He’s gone.”
“Yes,” Ilia said.
“You must miss him.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I’m his brother.”
Ilia didn’t check for auth
enticity in Nick’s broken voice, in the ugly collapse of his body onto the edge of the bed. Nick didn’t know how to be honest, Mikhail had said after Nick had left the apartment that day. Ilia had told Mikhail never to invite him there again, and Mikhail never had.
Ilia looked at Nick as little as he had to. Nick had probably come about the will, about whatever Mikhail had left Ilia.
“I’m taking everything,” Nick said finally.
Ilia looked up.
“The business. All of his assets.”
“He left them to you?”
“They’re mine,” Nick said, which didn’t answer the question Ilia had asked.
“You’ll run the business into the ground,” Ilia said. “He never trusted you.”
“Yeah, well.” Nick shrugged.
A long silence.
“You’re glad he’s gone,” Ilia accused dully.
Nick didn’t answer.
Ilia had first become aware of death at age seven, and it had scared the shit out of him. “Will you ever die?” he’d asked his mother.
“Of course,” she’d said. Silly question.
“Who will take me to school?”
“Probably I’ll die long after you’re done with school. You’ll be a grown up. You won’t need a mother so much anymore.”
Stupid. Wasn’t that the point of love? That you never stopped needing it?
“But if you die soon? Like, tomorrow?”
“Your dad would take you to school.”
A fact of life, he told himself now. A fact of life, a fact of life. Death is a fact of life.
“I’d like you to come with me,” Nick said.
Ilia almost laughed. “What?”
“You can live where you’ve been living. In the apartment.”
Ilia did laugh then—a choked snort. He checked his arms, his skin. He felt the break in his life like the point where a CD started skipping. Everything after Mikhail’s death would just be stabs of sound, no rhythm, no melody, no story. He started to shiver.
“Oh,” Nick said softly. Like it hurt him to see. He stood and came to Ilia.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” Ilia said. But he didn’t back away. His pants had slipped down, exposing most of his underwear. He wished he’d showered. He didn’t know why, but he wanted Nick to see that he was still beautiful, still wantable.
For an instant Nick seemed as nervous as Patrick. He had his hand in his pocket. “This is...this is how it’s going to be.”
He kissed Ilia, and before Ilia could pull away he felt something hard and cold against the small of his back, pressing on his laces. He stopped shivering.
“I’m taking everything,” Nick whispered.
CHAPTER THREE
I
The apartment didn’t seem real, which Ilia supposed was fitting.
He’d thought that maybe stepping inside the place again would feel raw, like salt water thrown over an open wound, but there was nothing sharp enough to cut through his numbness. This apartment belonged to some other boy, to a boy who had been happy and loved.
Plates and bowls gone from the glass door cabinets. Books gone from the shelves. The knife block had vanished. The dining table was there, but no chairs. The couch was still in the living room, as was the coffee table, but the shelf with Ilia’s movie collection had vanished. There was a TV—not Ilia’s—newer, smaller.
Ilia hesitated.
“It’s clean,” Nick said, nodding toward the bedroom.
It would never be clean again.
But Nick had the pistol at his side, and he seemed to be waiting, so Ilia walked stiffly toward the hall.
“Shower first,” Nick said.
Ilia nodded.
Under the heat and the steam, grief almost choked him again when he flipped the lid of the body wash open. Mikhail had loved the smell of it, and had chased it over Ilia’s skin with nips and kisses, grabbing him when Ilia giggled and tried to squirm away.
“What are you doing, Ilie?”
Ilia watched the bubbles wash over his feet and then spiral down the drain.
He ached for just a fraction of what Mikhail had given him—no, not a fraction. A cheap substitute. Nick was incapable of tenderness, but his eyes looked enough like Mikhail’s that Ilia wanted to touch him.
His world had shattered; he was falling through space.
There was nobody to catch him, and he didn’t care anymore.
II
“You remember what you did?”
Ilia looked at the bed. The sheets were new.
Nick leaned in the doorway. “You remember how I watched when my brother fucked you on this bed?”
“Yes.”
It was never the whole picture, but it was the one they’d chosen to show Nick. One tiny facet of the whole, and they’d used it to tease Nick, to make him jealous, and to make him angry. Nick wouldn’t have understood the truth—that Ilia wasn’t a possession, wasn’t a whore; that Mikhail and Ilia had loved each other. He wouldn’t have burned with envy if he’d seen them watching TV, or eating Chinese takeout on the floor.
Nick glanced over his shoulder, into the living room, then turned back to Ilia.
“Go to bed,” he said coolly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He walked out of the room.
At first, Ilia was too shocked to do anything. When he stepped out of the bedroom, Nick had stretched out on the couch and pulled the throw over himself.
That was it?
Go to bed, I’ll see you in the morning?
How was he supposed to go to bed with Nick here? He had no idea what Nick wanted. What he planned to do to Ilia. For the first time in days, Ilia felt something beyond the stupor of grief. Felt alive and alert and scared.
But he didn’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing him voice his questions. So he went back to the bedroom. Shut the door and tried to lock it, but there was no lock on the inside anymore. He opened the door quietly and checked the outside. There was a key code.
He went back in and looked in the dresser for Mikhail’s gun. It wasn’t there. Not that he’d expected it to be. His clothes were gone too. He couldn’t open the window; the pane was no longer glass but something much sturdier.
He climbed into bed and lay awake until he was convinced that Nick’s snores weren’t fake. Then he crept out of the bedroom and went to the front door. Couldn’t open it. A key code there too.
The kitchen window wouldn’t open either. He moved on to the balcony doors. Those, he could open. He stepped out into the cool air and stared at the empty street eight stories below. No way down. If he yelled, Nick would be the first to hear.
He felt better, though, knowing he wasn’t completely trapped.
He stepped back inside. Nick was still snoring.
Ilia wandered around the apartment. Everything sharp or heavy had been removed.
The only things in the refrigerator were a tub of cheese dip and a bag of carrots.
A prisoner in his home. His former home.
He stepped closer to the couch, wondering if he could attack Nick. If he could take him by surprise, get him in a chokehold. Or shove a pillow over his face and smother him.
Nick shifted, and Ilia knew he couldn’t. Was too afraid Nick would wake in an instant and shoot him.
He had no life left to speak of, and he still didn’t want to die.
He went back to bed.
III
In the morning, Nick unlocked the utility closet, which, Ilia realized, also had a key code. Must have cost Nick a fortune, rigging the apartment like this. Which gave Ilia some small hope. Why go through all that trouble if he didn’t want Ilia alive, at least for a while?
Nick dragged out a chair and took it to the table. Returned to the closet and retrieved a briefcase. Opened it. It contained papers. Flash drives. One of Mikhail’s gold bracelets.
He spread everything out on the table and sat.
“Come here,” he said quietly, without
looking up.
Ilia didn’t move. He was still wearing the pajamas he’d come here in. His closet had been emptied too.
Nick glanced up. “I need your help.”
No warmth in the voice or the eyes. But not menacing. Not angry.
Ilia was curious enough to go to the table. He kept his hands jammed in the pockets of his pajama pants. Wouldn’t let Nick see his fear.
Nick had receipts. He had flight records. He had lists and printed emails and blurred, grainy photographs from security cameras. He had a ledger. “I’ve been able to get ahold of a lot of my brother’s things,” Nick said. “But he’s left behind quite a mess. I need you to help me. I need you to tell me who some of these people are. Identify some of these places, and tell me which ones are fronts, which ones are legit.”
Ilia looked at the papers. He saw a copy of an email from Mikhail to him, underneath a stack of receipts. His throat tightened. “I don’t recognize this stuff,” he said stonily.
“Sit. Have a closer look.”
Ilia glanced at the door.
“Sit,” Nick repeated.
There was no second chair. Ilia refused to sit on the floor.
IV
By midmorning, they’d gotten nowhere. Ilia wouldn’t answer Nick’s questions. Some of the answers he knew; some he didn’t. But Nick didn’t threaten him, didn’t so much as raise his voice to him, so Ilia saw no reason to cooperate.
After the twentieth grainy picture—“I don’t know who that is”—Nick sighed and stood. Opened a cabinet under the sink and took out a kettle, filled it with water and put it on the stove. Ilia hadn’t known the kettle was there. He looked on, a plan forming. Tonight he could boil some water while Nick slept. Throw it on him. That would fuck Nick up so fast he wouldn’t be able to draw his gun. And if Ilia poured it on his head—right down his fucking ear canal—maybe he could even kill Nick.
Ilia leaned against the wall. He was bored. Hadn’t known it was possible to be bored and scared at the same time. If this had felt more real, maybe he’d have been more scared. But it all felt like an ugly dream.