by J. L. Drake
The office door was closed when I approached the study. I could hear Vladimir clicking away on a keyboard, so I stood there, not sure if I should knock or wait until he opened it. Boris huffed, tapped on the door, and—with his big hand on the small of my back—ushered me inside.
Vladimir was seated in a leather chair with a steaming cup of tea in front of him on the desk. There was a map of Russia behind him, and a big, black box with wires and blinking lights connected to six computer monitors. I squinted to see if I could make sense of the information scrolling across the screen, but there were no words. Just a bunch of undecipherable programmer jargon and useless keyboard characters. His office was more high-tech than the cockpit of the International Space Station.
Even at an early hour, the boss had on a suit and looked fabulous, but he reeked of alcohol. He shook his head when he caught sight of my jersey-wearing ungodliness. “What’s this?” He held up his hand to Boris questioning my disheveled condition. Boris updated him in Russian and handed him his cell. Vladimir slid on a pair of glasses and thumbed through photos—of me, I presumed—on Boris’s phone. “You had a nice evening with the boys?” He leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk.
“Um—” I covered my mouth to keep from laughing. Seriously? These super-badasses have nothing better to do than worry about what I’m up to on Friday night?
The boss waited for me to respond, but I didn’t know what to say.
Boris clamped his heavy hand down on my shoulder. “The pakhan is talking to you. The answer is yes or no.”
“Yes?” I said, although I was sure it was the wrong answer.
Vladimir leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, looking sexy smart in his dark-rimmed glasses. “When I agreed to let you go to the game, you made a promise, remember?”
I straightened my shoulders and swallowed. “I promised not to have one drop of liquor around the guys.” My words came out slurry.
“So, you lied to me, in my house, in front of my face?”
My ability to twist a story was epic. With the Russians, however, I had to be careful. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I pissed either of them off too much. “Mr. Ivanov, I kept my promise. I waited to have cocktails until I got back to Kiki’s. I just had a few beers at the party to be social.”
Boris needled his fingers into my collarbone. “Don’t you dare pull this shit—”
I squirmed to get him off me.
The boss raised his hand to silence him. “I made myself clear about drinking around boys. Want to learn your lesson with my patsani out back? Want to find out what happens when you lose your inhibitions around those animals?”
Vladimir was threatening to sic his attack dogs on me? “They don’t scare me.”
“Did she do drugs?” Vladimir asked Boris.
“Nyet.”
“I’m sorry I’ve upset you, Mr. Ivanov. You taught me a valuable lesson last night. Honestly, though, I don’t know why you’re so mad. What I do in my free time is not your concern, and it’s definitely not cool to have me tailed all night. I can take care of myself.”
“Have you no sense?” Boris jumped in. “My boys out back would love to find a girl like you walking the streets at five in the morning, drunk on her own stupidity—”
“Give me a break.” I shook my lanyard at him. “You’re lucky I didn’t unleash on you.”
“Dear, you are lucky one. If a bad guy had found you stumbling down the street, you would have been bound, gagged, and locked in the trunk of a car before you could even scream ‘rape whistle.’ ” He tugged on my lanyard until it was snug across my neck to prove his point. “You make it too easy.”
I pushed his hand away. “What do you mean if a bad guy had found me?” I jammed my finger in his chest. “You’re pissed because you waited all night for me to screw up and have nothing to show for it.”
Boris caught my pointy finger, turned my hand around, and poked me in the chest with my own finger, like, ten times. “Ouch! Stop it, you big bully.” I grabbed him with my other hand and tried to pry him off me. Nice try. My effort to protect myself against him was as productive as a scrawny little monkey battling it out with a giant silver back freaking gorilla.
“Blow your whistle, tough girl.”
“Get off me.”
“Enough,” the boss said.
Boris let go of my finger and turned me around to face the pakhan. “When I hired you, Miss Cook, you became part of my brand. Your actions—on the clock and off—are a reflection on me. Perhaps I had a rare lapse in judgment when I hired you and your papa.”
I understood the underlying threat in his words. I had pushed him too far. Fucking up and getting myself fired was one thing, but I couldn’t risk sending Dad back to financial hell. “No, you didn’t have a lapse in judgment. I’m sorry.”
Vladimir stared me down. “For?”
“Lying to you about where I was going.”
“And?”
“And for drinking around boys.”
“And?”
I cocked my head as I thought. “And? No and. That’s it.” I peeked over my shoulder and looked up to Boris for guidance. “What else did I do?”
He tugged on Ryan’s jersey.
I turned back around to face the boss. “Oh.” I shook my head. “It’s not what you think. We’re just friends. Really, really good friends. Not friends with benefits, you know, just the regular kind of friends.” I made a flat line motion with my hand to drive the point home.
Vladimir glanced up at Boris.
Boris responded in Russian and tugged on his belt. I imagined the boss needed clarification on the friends with benefits colloquialism, but Boris looked angry enough to kill someone.
Vladimir exhaled and pinched the bridge of his pointy nose. “This is exhausting.” He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “Remember the rules of our arrangement?”
“Good grades, keep up the sporty, and stay out of trouble?”
He rested his elbows on the desk and tapped his fingers together.
“Two out of three?” I lifted my shoulders and grinned.
“She has proven to be untrustworthy. I want to see her schoolwork from now on,” he said to Boris, then finished his orders in Russian. Then the pakhan set his sights on me. “I’m out of patience. I’ll deal with you on Monday.” He eyed me like I was yesterday’s garbage and flicked his hand at me. “Get this filthy shlyukha out of my office.”
Chapter 13
Down
I used an app on my phone to translate the word shlyukha: whore.
I sequestered myself in my bedroom instead of going out with my friends Saturday night and stayed home all day Sunday. Weak and humiliated, I wrapped myself in a blanket and camped out on the floor beside my bed. The wind howled and a wintery mix of hail and freezing rain pelted the windows, providing a dismal soundtrack for my self-loathing mood.
Ryan kept calling. I didn’t pick up.
I had a picture of us on my nightstand. I turned it down.
Dad sent Karen the Mediator to check on me. I said I had a ton of homework.
My little sister Megan brought an armload of beanbag kittens into my room, but I was too emotionally wrecked to play with her.
As I lay on the floor, swaddled in my ratty old comforter, I chewed my fingernails down to the quick and tried to convince myself to talk to Dad about my arrangement with Vladimir. I knew it was crazy not to, but I was terrified Vladimir would fire Dad—or worse—if I told him the truth.
Weighing my options, my family was better off if I kept my mouth shut, financially and physically. The thought of what the boss would do if Dad got up in his face made me sick. He carried a gun. Dad and his New York temper were definitely better off not knowing what was going on for that reason alone. I hoped Dad wasn’t unwittingly involved in anything illegal.
Since my Saturday morning Russian smack down, I was so downtrodden I had completely lost my appetite. I couldn’t stomach more all wee
kend than a handful of stale raisin bran I had stashed in my room.
By Monday I still couldn’t shake Vladimir’s crass assessment of my character. Ryan probably thought I was a shlyukha, too. How could anyone think I was skanky? I was a virgin. So I drank and sat on Ryan’s lap…Then I remembered: Do you have tattoos all over? Did I really say that to my boss? Maybe there was more skank in me than I realized.
I told Karen I had cramps and cut classes on Monday. I couldn’t get tattoos out of my head. All the Russians had them. I spent the day searching the Internet for Russian organized crime. It took hours to filter through the prison tats of violent pornographic images, iconic religious motifs, and propaganda that revealed the Russian’s secret criminal codes.
I had never given much thought to the ink Vladimir and Boris had engraved on their hands, but I did remember the watch tattoo the boss had on his wrist. Its meaning: time served in full. Vladimir had spent time in prison. Up until what I had witnessed on Friday, I would’ve never believed someone as sophisticated as Vladimir had a criminal past.
Both the guys had ring tattoos, so I spent some time figuring out the symbolism of each one. I hoped I would never have the occasion to see either of them with their shirts off, but I was dying to know what brand of evil they had inked on the rest of their bodies. Every single image I found had a specific meaning. Star tats on the knees meant they would bow down to no one, stars on the shoulders meant they were high ranking members of a prison gang, and a knife tat like the one Boris had on his neck meant he had killed someone in prison and was available for hire—a hit man.
A lot of the images I found were, oddly enough, beautiful in their own way. The old school tats featured Russian cathedrals and monasteries on the bearer’s back, and were given to convicts during the Soviet era. Each spire represented how much time or terms the prisoner had served. Boris probably had a lot of ornate bulbous towers engraved on his skin.
After I had my fill of the tats, I searched Russian organized crime in Brooklyn, because Dad had said Vladimir had lived there at the same time we did. It turned out an entire community of Russians immigrated to Brighton Beach near Coney Island. According to multiple websites, it was a hub for Russian organized crime.
The crimes associated with the Bratva ranged from drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling, and the usual offenses one would expect from the criminal underworld. Then, I stumbled on to something much bigger associated with the Russians—highly sophisticated cybercrimes and widespread scams led by the super intelligent ringleaders.
These Russian masterminds had implemented brilliant banking schemes as well as tax and insurance fraud. And supposedly they were behind Internet hacking cases that were so well planned and executed, many of the people involved had scored millions and millions—without ever being caught.
Well, it didn’t take a genius to figure out where Boris and Vladimir landed on the Bratva pie chart. Boris headed up the traditional way of doing business, and the boss led the intelligence side of the new technology-driven Russian mafia.
After I absorbed all the information I could stomach, I dragged myself out of bed and got ready to face the Russians. Boris would King Kong on me if I failed to report to him after practice. Skipping work was not an option.
It would have served me well to have forced down a protein bar or a shake before tennis practice, but I wasn’t of sound mind. Rakhi and I held strong and wouldn’t give up our crowns in an intense queen-of-the-court drill. Slamming balls was therapeutic. We stayed alive round after round, but when I went for a wide backhand shot, my legs gave out. Down I went. Coach tossed me a sports drink and asked what was up. I blew the whole thing off like he was overreacting. I tripped over my own feet, I explained.
“You’re weak.” He glanced down at my shaky hands. “The pressure of playing on court one getting to you? I can knock you down to three if you need a break.” I knew he was more concerned about me, rather than my tennis game, but the words “knock you down” still stung.
Coach had been a pro at the club for twenty-plus years. He’d handed me my first racquet and taught me how to swing when I was in grade school. I’d played for him at the junior level, all through high school, and I’d found my way back to him in college. Court one was reserved for the top players. It was the most revered spot on the team, a competitive pressure cooker, and I would never let anybody knock me off my doubles pedestal.
I chugged the Gatorade and assured Coach everything was fine. I knew I looked like hell, so I said I needed to rest. He let me go, but I wasn’t convinced he bought that excuse either.
Now—because of the Russians—I was bleeping on Coach’s fuck-up radar. There was no way I would let the boss and his locked-and-loaded sidekick screw up my court one status. As I marched to the car, I assessed my situation.
Vladimir wanted to spend time with me, but I didn’t give a damn about him.
If I had my way, I would walk away from our arrangement and never look back.
The boss, however, couldn’t handle losing his ex-girlfriend’s little ghost.
Translation: I had the upper hand in our bullshit storm.
I was only a few minutes late for my rendezvous with disaster. I got into the car without speaking to my ill-tempered, grabby keeper. The Russians wanted to spy on me? Pelt me with insults? Threaten to teach me a lesson? Game on. They’d knocked me down for a round, but I was back in ready position, bouncing on my toes, hands up, ready to throw the next punch.
I was out of hand Friday night, but Vladimir had no right to berate me the way he did, and Boris crossed the line when he manhandled me like some asshole who owed him a C-note for a bad gambling debt. If I didn’t stand up for myself, then I would be setting the precedent that I was beneath them. It was time to find out how the Russians would handle a taste of my poison.
Boris studied my pale face when I slid into the car. “Why did you ditch classes?”
I didn’t answer.
He stared at me, threatening me to change my attitude. “You’re going to try this shit on the pakhan?”
No reply from me.
More death rays from him.
Once we got to the house, I skipped a shower. I would never be clean enough for the boss anyway. Instead, I pulled a stack of graded papers out of my backpack and, using a handful of kitten-themed magnets I’d brought from home, proudly plastered my over-achiever test scores all over the fridge. When I covered every inch of stainless steel, I sat down at the bar and got to work on an English lit essay.
Boris poured himself a cold shot of vodka. Then he moved to the fridge to study my work. He didn’t utter a word. He was probably devising an action plan to make me talk. I could just imagine his internal gangster dialogue: She will beg to speak after I cut out her tongue. “Want a drink? The boss wants you to learn how to handle your alcohol in a safe environment.”
I resisted the urge to guffaw and kept working.
“Boss will be here soon. Better shape up.”
I yawned.
Boris left the room, probably to stop himself from tossing me to the wolves on the basketball court. After I finished my homework, I started dinner. I had the notebook out Boris had given me to make lists. I kept myself busy doodling a picture of the lovebirds Igor and Natasha in the margins. I worried about how Vladimir would react when I failed to greet him at the door and wag my tail like a golden retriever, but I refused to waver. I had to stick to my game plan. It wasn’t like my situation could get any freaking worse.
The Big Chill was my weapon of choice with Dad. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe it would work on Boris, but I was optimistic I could wear down the boss. Ideally, he would grow tired of my bullshit and put an end to our arrangement, but still keep Dad on the payroll. I heard the garage door open. Vladimir was home early. He probably couldn’t wait to see me so he could flay me some more. Was I prepared to go to war with the pakhan?
Stay strong. Show no fear.
I focused on the vegetarian chili I was sti
rring on the stove. When the boss came in he didn’t say a word, but I felt him standing behind me.
He didn’t speak.
I didn’t move.
He wrapped his hand around my elbow and gently turned me around. He had a bouquet of two-toned red and pink roses in his hand. “Can you ever forgive me, Carter?”
I hadn’t seen this coming. No one had ever given me flowers before.
I dug my nails into the tips of my fingers. I couldn’t look at him. He set the vase on the counter and gave me a hug. When I didn’t hug him back, he picked up my limp arms and wrapped them around his body.
“I worry about you. You’re so beautiful. Don’t you see how the boys look at you? I couldn’t think about anything but you since you left the house.” He stroked my hair. “Then today, your papa said he was worried because you stayed in your room all weekend.”
My breath caught in my throat; I squeezed my elbows against my ribs.
He lifted my chin. “He confided in me about your problem.”
There. A kill shot to the head. Dad had told him what happened to Sophia. In sixth grade, I had gotten slapped with a detention for talking in class. I didn’t want to get into trouble, so I begged Sophia to pick me up so Dad wouldn’t find out.
Icy rain fell from the November sky and the temperature had dropped below freezing, but Sophia promised she would hurry so we would get back before Dad got home from work. Soaking wet, shivering, and chilled to the bone, I waited and waited and waited…
I covered my ears when a line of fire engines and police cars and ambulances raced past the school and shielded my nose and mouth from the noxious odor of burnt rubber and scorched metal that hung in the air. It wasn’t until later I realized where the fire was coming from—and what had been burning.
On her way to pick me up, Sophia skidded off the road and slammed into a tree, which caused her car to burst into flames. She had survived the initial impact. It was the fire that killed her; she had been burned alive. The accident happened so close to the school, I could smell the wreckage.