Anatoly's Retribution: Book One (The Medlov Men 5)

by Latrivia Welch

  Renee knew about the argument Anatoly had with his sister, but she didn’t know he hadn’t spoken to Anastaysia since. His family in Moscow was much different from her family. They weren’t close at all and it seemed that all of his siblings resented him. It was a shame, considering, he was always trying to do anything to make their lives better. In her opinion, they didn’t deserve him, but she kept that to herself.

  “You think she just needs some time to cool off?” Renee asked, trying to make him feel better.

  “It could be.” He rubbed his temple. The duality of the situation was giving him a headache. He wanted to answer Renee truthfully, but he also wanted to devour her. “I’m done waiting on my sister to return my calls. I sent someone to find her. If she doesn’t want to talk, fine, but this is fucking ridiculous. I’m just waiting on a call back from the guy to give me an update.”

  “Well, I’ll be praying you get good news.”

  “Enough about that. How are you doing?” Anatoly absolutely hated when too much attention was focused on him, even if it was with Renee. What he had going on in his life wasn’t important right now. She was the one who had just lost Big Momma.

  “I’m coping the best I can.” She smiled to reassure him. “But…” her voice trailed off. “I just can’t believe that I’ll never see her again.” She felt the tears starting to form again. Clearing her throat, she tried to pull herself together. “Does it get better?” She remembered when he lost his mother. He was sad for a while, but he handled things much better than she did.

  No, it never does, Anatoly thought to himself. But he would never give her such a bleak outlook. “At least you got to say goodbye,” he said, opting for something more positive. “That makes all the difference in the world.”

  He would have given every dime he had and a few he didn’t to be able to say goodbye to his mother before she died, to let her know that he was alright, but she had died in a hospital in Moscow fighting cancer from working at the oil refinery, surrounded by all of her children except him. It was a cruel reality that he had created for himself by shooting that pedophile, and he thought about it all the time. Still, he wasn’t sure, if he had to do it all over again, if he would have done anything any different.

  “Death is not something we can negotiate with, Renee. It takes what it wants. Everything we are going to say must be said before the bastard shows up at your doorstep. But you were lucky even if you don’t realize it. You had a chance to tell her that you love her,” Anatoly said, rubbing Renee’s soft cheek. “You got a chance to show her. That’s all that matters.”

  Renee held his hand to her face. “We both did.” She knew how much Anatoly cared about her grandmother, and it wasn’t until that moment that she realized this must have hurt him as well. “If I didn’t say it, I’m so glad that you are here. I feel like now I can get through this.”

  “There is no other place for me, but here beside you. The only thing that is missing is Alexandria,” Anatoly said,

  Renee pushed a breath out. “I miss her too, but I knew this wasn’t where she needed to be right now.”

  “No, no. I wouldn’t want her to be down here in the middle of this. She’s just a little girl.” He yawned. “I’m sure that Royal will bring her for the funeral.” Pulling off his black leather gun holster, he placed it on her nightstand along with his Glocks. “Plus, we need a minute alone, da.”

  Renee knew what he meant. Her lips curled into a smile at the thought, but before they got to that, she needed to talk to him. Gently, she took his hand. “It seems like every time I have something important to share, it’s in the middle of a crisis.”

  “When are we not in crisis?” Anatoly asked sarcastically. He rubbed his hand over hers. “You have to fit it in where you can in this family.” Lifting her chin with his index finger, he made her look at him. “What’s wrong?” He had a feeling it was about his hectic schedule lately, but he wouldn’t start grovelling until she confirmed it. Instead, he braced himself.

  Her arched brow shot up, but her gaze dropped to the floor. “Nothing is wrong.” She wove her fingers into his.

  “Why am I not convinced,” Anatoly asked, furrowing his own brow. “What did I do, Renee?” It would be a perfect end to a perfectly long day to get into a fight with his wife after he had flown thousands of miles to get here, but he wouldn’t be surprised. “Lay it on me,” he said finally, after it took her a second to respond. He hated pregnant pauses. They were like farts in an elevator, stinking up the place and choking out the air.

  “Just lay it on you?” she asked, looking back up at him as if to accept his challenge. That wasn’t at all how she planned on him reacting.

  “Da, just tell me.” He swallowed hard, muscles tensing in his broad shoulders as he tried to seem less tense than he was.

  “Ok.” Another pregnant pause. “I’m pregnant,” she said, exhaling a breath. “Two months.” And there it was. The big bomb. She waited to access the collateral damage.

  Anatoly blinked slowly. He hadn’t expected that. What he had expected was a lot more brutal, confrontational and explosive. But this was…amazing. “Are you serious?” Maybe his thoughts hadn’t caught up with his face, because it was still unreadable.

  Renee tilted her head. “It depends. Are you happy?”

  He looked down in between them and touched her stomach gently. His child was growing inside of her. How could he not be happy?

  “No, I’m not happy,” he said, unable to miss an opportunity to get a rise out of her.

  Renee’s mouth flew open. Talk about a gut punch. “Really?”

  “No.” He pursed his lips together and tried to give her the most serious face he could muster. His baritone deepened. “What word is better than happy?”

  “Elated,” Renee said, voice low. What was he getting at exactly?

  Anatoly’s stoic face brightened into a smile. He clenched her hands tighter and stepped in closer. “Then I’m elated.”

  Smiling, she hit his rock-hard chest. “That wasn’t funny. You scared me, Ana.” She smoothed her hand over his chest again, this time much more gently.

  “I know. I know.” Bending to her face, he kissed her mouth, tasting the sweetness that he had missed for seven days. Opening his eyes, he ran his hands down her back, feeling the warmth of his body. “But I really am…elated, Mrs. Medlov, that you are carrying my child.” At that moment, he was already hoping for a boy.

  “You are?” she whispered, unable to hide her grin or the tears of joy that fell down her cheeks despite her sadness.

  “Yes. Very. Let me show you how…elated,” he said, pulling her closer. This world was peculiar. Death took one and life gave another. It was time to greet his wife properly and celebrate their victory. After all, family was everything.

  Chapter Six

  What is Your Purpose?

  Atlanta, Georgia

  One Week after Fight Night

  D id I turn my cell phone off? Anatoly asked himself silently. The last thing he wanted was for work to interrupt. Renee didn’t ask much of him, but he knew that she wanted his full attention without pause today. He knew that without being asked.

  In a black tailored suit, hair pulled into a neat ponytail, he stepped out of the hot summer sun into the coolness of the church foyer and pulled off his shades. He hadn’t put on anything but jeans and T-shirts for so long until the fine fabric felt odd against his skin. Pulling at the collar of his shirt, he took a deep breath.

  Renee looked up and noticed his discomfort. “You okay?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

  He composed himself. “I’m fine, baby. You okay?”

  She nodded. Okay was relative right now.

  They walked into the main sanctuary where the other guests had already gathered, and instantly he felt the attention shift toward them.

  Funerals were not Anatoly’s thing. They required too much emotion – something that was beyond him to give. The last time that he had set foot in a church was when h
e attended his own mother’s funeral seven years ago in in Moscow. Talk about a mind fuck. That experience had been a trauma from which he was still recovering, mostly because no one wanted him there, especially his siblings.

  After that fiasco, he had sworn he’d never go to another funeral until the old man finally kicked the bucket. Yet, here he was again in a packed church of prying, judging eyes, preparing to bury another matriarch of a family and end another legacy. He didn’t like it. All of the rancid memories from his past rushed to the forefront of his mind along with unresolved issues that he had fought hard to entomb.

  “Oh, Lord!” a woman cried to his right in a pew, not far from where he was standing. His head snapped toward the sobs and without intention made eye contact with an elderly black woman wearing a big black hat with a see-through veil over her face.

  He raised a brow and took a deep breath. Might as well get used to that. It was after all a funeral.

  And he had learned one thing for sure while being here about his wife’s culture. Black people truly mourned their dead. His mother had all of thirty people at her funeral, and she was as devout a Christian as Renee’s grandmother. Yet, this church was filled with hundreds of members, friends, family, community and even a couple of local cops. But they were probably not there for the funeral as much as they were there to keep an eye on him.

  Word had gotten spread around town. The Russians were here. It might have been the entourage of luxury cars parked outside of Big Momma’s house or the bodyguards who stood around the property with earpieces and suits, but there was no one in Washington Park who didn’t know that Renee’s other family had arrived. The attention was enough to make him gag, even though he had become accustomed to it in other circles.

  However, despite his predilection to shy away from the attention, over the last week, Anatoly had been there at his wife’s side, being attentive as possible while she took the calls, made the arrangements, picked out the last dress her grandmother would ever wear and finally prepared to receive guests coming to pay their respects.

  Now, here they were – all of them – in this place together to say their final farewell. He couldn’t lie and say that he was not anxious to get it over with. Since he woke up this morning, at the crack of dawn, he had dreaded what promised to be a long day.

  As Anatoly moved with the long family processional down the middle aisle of St. Peter Missionary Baptist Church, one arm holding his daughter, Alexandria, and the other arm locked around a weeping Renee, he tried to comfort both.

  His baby girl was too young to truly comprehend what was going on, but from the moment she had set foot at Big Momma’s house, she could feel the tension and sorrow. As a result, she had clung to him like white on rice. Everywhere that he went, she followed, pulling a brown stuffed bear with her and begging to be picked up constantly. When he couldn’t hold her, Renee or Marat did. But most of the time, she just wanted to be with her Daddy.

  The church organist played an old hymn setting the mood for what would surely be an hour of psychological torture while the pastor sat in his high back chair in the pulpit, eyes closed, meditating over the eulogy.

  Anatoly was certain that the pastor had a special word in store. He had assured both he and Renee of it a few days ago when they met with him for coffee to go over her expectations for the program.

  Renee had asked for something memorable and meaningful. She said that it was what her grandmother would have wanted.

  In Anatoly’s novice experience, funerals and eulogies were never for the dead. They existed to warn the living. This will be you whether you like it or not one day. But as far as he was concerned, he wouldn’t go into the dirt until he had put all of his enemies there first.

  Ah shit.

  He glowered at the bronze coffin, propped up just below the pulpit, and felt his chest tighten. It was waiting on them as they slowly advanced forward at a snail’s pace while the elders in front of him viewed the body.

  Flowers from family and friends filled the front of the church surrounded by wreaths and large potted plants. Renee had spared no expense for her grandmother’s homegoing, but the money wasn’t what stressed him out. It was viewing the body that was the kicker. For a guy who had killed more than his fair share over the years, seeing an innocent woman dead in a box unnerved him more than he cared to admit. Flashes of his own mother lying in her coffin flashed through his head and a small trail of sweat started to bead around his forehead.

  He took another deep breath and gripped his wife tighter, hoping that his own anxiety wasn’t starting to show. After all, hang ups aside, this wasn’t about him. It was about Renee. She was quietly slipping out of his grasp, leaning farther into him as the grief overwhelmed her.

  She had already told him, “I won’t cry.” And he could see her fighting to keep her word. Not that her crying bothered him. If anything, he wanted her to deal with her emotions. Keeping it pent up would only stress her out more and possibly affect the baby.

  But evidently, somewhere between making the arrangements and dealing with overly dramatic family in a continual loop, Renee said that she had gotten closure and was ready to simply move on.

  “Big Momma’s gone,” Renee lamented the night before while they were putting Alexandria to bed in her grandmother’s old bedroom. Her tired eyes were red from exhaustion, and it looked as though she had lost a few pounds from stress. She looked up at her husband lovingly and moved a strand of his golden hair from his face. “There is nothing left for me in this place now. I just want to move on and live my life the way that I know that I’m supposed to.” Maybe being pregnant helped her cope with the loss or maybe unlike him, she didn’t carry a mountain of guilt for not always being there for her grandmother, but she was being much stronger than he had anticipated.

  “I can do this,” Renee said aloud to herself.

  “You’re right, you can,” Anatoly assured, feeling Renee’s body trembling all over.

  Anatoly stopped at the casket with his wife and watched her inspect her grandmother one last time. She had asked the slimy mortician to take extra care in making her grandmother beautiful for her last church service, throwing him a few extra dollars to ensure a job well done.

  Surprisingly, the mortician had taken the money, even though it was supposed to be his job. That rubbed Anatoly the wrong way. There was no honor in the man. So, while Renee was with the mortician’s assistant picking out caskets in the other room, Anatoly had threatened the man with physical harm, if everything didn’t turn out absolutely perfect. “Make her happy or pick out your own coffin,” he had warned the son of a bitch.

  In Anatoly’s mind, after purchasing the rip-off, over-priced, Stairway to Heaven package, the most expensive thing in the brochure, the least they could do was a stellar job.

  Moving slightly to the left with Alexandria, he gave Renee space to bend over in the casket and kiss Big Momma’s carefully painted face. He could feel his daughter gripping him, afraid of the corpse that resembled the woman she had grown to love in her few short years.

  Alexandria didn’t understand the concept of death, even though they tried to explain it to her. But he knew that after this, they would have to revisit the conversation. That’s just the way kids were.

  “Daddy, is that Big Momma?” Alexandria whispered as she wrapped her small arms around her father and hid her face in his neck.

  It was a reaction that he had already anticipated. Fear of the unknown. “You don’t have to look,” he told her, kissing Alexandria’s reddening cheek.

  “I love you,” Renee whispered to her grandmother, one lonely tear dropping down into the white cushions of the coffin. What she wouldn’t give to hear her say it back. She rose from her crooked position, then nodded at Anatoly. She was ready to take her seat.

  Alexandria could evidently feel her mother’s pain. Reaching out for her, she transferred from Anatoly’s arms to Renee’s.

  Hugging her daughter tightly, Renee melted into the little gi
rl, grateful to have her, and kissed her forehead. It was the first time that she thought about the fact that one day Alexandria would have to bury her.

  “Mommy, I want to go home,” Alexandria whispered, looking out at the sea of faces in the church.

  “Soon,” Renee promised. She wanted to go home too.

  The elderly male usher standing at the end of the casket extended a white-gloved hand toward the front pew, motioning for them to take their assigned seat beside Big Momma’s five children and their spouses, a host of people had mourned the passing of their mother profusely, but didn’t exactly volunteer to foot the bill of her elaborate funeral. That responsibility was left to Anatoly, along with six-figure hospital bills, which he paid without uttering a word.

  Before Renee got started making the final arrangements last week, Anatoly had Marat bring her a satchel jam packed with stacks of crisp hundred-dollar bills. He wanted to ensure that while his wife was doing one of the hardest things in her life, she wasn’t troubled with expenses. He knew that she could afford it on her own, but it was important for her to know that he wanted to do it. It was the least he could do considering his family had not allowed him one courtesy when they buried his mother.

  Shortly after they took their seats, his entire family came up to the casket to view the body. Dmitry and Royal stopped at the coffin first. His father didn’t bat an eye as usual, but Royal couldn’t control the gushing tears streaming down her face.

  Having never had a grandmother herself, when Royal had visited through the years with Renee, Big Momma had become hers. She wiped her tears with a handkerchief and shook her head, mumbling something to Dmitry before he escorted Royal and his baby sister, Anya, down the aisle to pay their respects to the family.

  Royal bent to Renee and hugged her tightly, then kissed Alexandria on the head. Dmitry simply nodded, knowing that his condolences had already been received by paying off Big Momma’s house and sending the deed to Renee’s father, Jesse, so that he’d have to place to stay when all of this blew over.