by Bethany-Kris
Roman was living with his failures, dealing with the consequences of his bad decisions, and toxic lifestyle ... his father just didn’t think it was enough, maybe.
Perhaps it wasn’t.
Demyan was already lighting another cigar by the time the man had swept the floor to find all the little shards. Pointing the cherry-red tip, smoking curling upward in tendrils, at Roman, he said, “What is happening in your relationship has nothing to do with staying in control—that’s where you’re weakest, Roman. And I don’t know how to help you fix that, son. I never did.”
THIRTEEN
Demyan kept good on his threat—Roman hadn’t done much since his father’s outburst. In fact, the first chance he had to leave the Avdonin property, he found himself face to face with a handful of men. Who, in no uncertain terms, made it clear what their orders were.
“You’ve gotten a few knocks to the head this past month—how many more before you’re drinking food from a straw, Roman?”
He had choices—and trying to make good ones.
Roman opted not to test the bull’s theory out, and had returned to the house.
Demyan also let it be known that he didn’t want Roman going anywhere alone. Staying in his own loft was out of the question, and the city apartment was no-go as well.
For the first time in over a decade, Roman found himself sleeping in his childhood bedroom.
Claire was surprised to find him at the breakfast table the next morning. Apparently, Demyan hadn’t filled her in on anything, and she’d gotten home late after visiting a gallery viewing by a friend in the city.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she told him, tightening the belt on her fluffy house robe.
“Coffee’s warm in the pot. I’ll be hanging around here for a while, Ma, so don’t be too surprised to see me here tomorrow morning.”
Claire was smiling because she suddenly and unexpectedly had her son back, but she could also sense Roman’s displeasure if the lingering glance she gave him was any indication.
“Something tells me this is not by your choice.”
Roman cleared his throat, muttering, “Some shit went down with dad.”
“What did you do?” she asked while she worked on making a coffee.
“Why do you automatically assume I did something?”
Claire tipped her head to the side, fixing a bemused stare at her son from her position across the kitchen island. “Did you?”
Roman wasn’t entirely sure of the conversations his mother and father had behind closed doors. Especially when it concerned him. His parents had always been careful in that regard, and Demyan’s desire to keep Roman’s problems out of Claire’s sight didn’t help with that, either.
“Well, did you?” his mother asked again.
Roman sighed, wrapping his hands around the lukewarm mug of coffee he’d been nursing for the better part of twenty minutes. “Maybe, but people around here seem to forget that I’m a grown man with a mind of my own. I’m prepared to face whatever consequences my actions have. I don’t need him—”
“You’ll always need him.”
Roman quieted, passing his mother a look.
She only shrugged back, adding, “Roman, a lot of your actions have consequences on your father and me, too.”
“Are you referring to Karine and my marriage to her?”
Claire brought a mug of coffee over to the table, and sat in the seat next to her son.
The absence of Karine and being forced to stay in his family home like he was a misbehaving teenager had put him on edge again. He had to furiously tap his fingers on the kitchen counter to control the urge to go looking for something that might cure the itch in his spine; to quell the chaotic emotions he hated feeling all the damn time.
But he wouldn’t.
It was an easy fix.
It didn’t last.
“It’s not just about Karine, and how dare you, because you know that I like her,” Claire scolded, though her tone remained kind. His mother had never needed to be mean to get a point across. “I think you’ve done very well by choosing her as the woman to spend your life with. That is not the part I’m worried about. There are some other choices you make that I don’t particularly care for.”
Reaching over, she patted his cheek like she used to when he was a boy, and he pulled himself away. Claire still smiled, anyway.
“You and your father think I don’t know about the demons chasing you, but I do, and I think I know why, too.”
Even though his mother didn’t seem unhappy or sad, he could sense how she saw right through him. It had probably taken her just a few seconds after she saw him sitting there to figure out what was really going on.
He didn’t want her to worry, though.
“I am good, Ma—or I’m trying,” he told her.
Claire nodded. “I hope so. I’m sure I can find something to keep you busy with while you’re here, hmm?”
“I’m not on house arrest, Ma,” he complained.
He’d certainly never been the type for chores. God knew she had enough maids to do things for her, anyhow. Roman promised his mother nothing in that regard, and she could tell his mood on that topic by the scowl settling into his face.
Claire broke into a laugh just as they heard feet shuffling and running outside the kitchen before two of the ladies who handled cleaning the bottom level of the house stumbled past the entryway.
Roman glanced up, his ear tuned to all the sounds. It seemed like some chaos had broken out in the house by the stampede of footsteps overhead.
“Did Demyan leave—”
“A good hour ago or more.”
Something had the men who were designated to stay inside the house in an uproar. Roman had already stood from the table, not bothering to push the chair in as he spun on his heels.
“Stay here—don’t move,” he barked at his mother, making a beeline for the door.
Whatever happened, it started in the driveway. The two maids had been running away from the front entrance to the home, while the men thundering down the stairs were heading for the outside.
Roman joined the men.
*
It was Marky.
Roman recognized him right away even though he was lying face down in the driveway with his limbs twisted in crooked angles. He knew it by the leather jacket his friend wore every day—proud of the years and stories the piece of clothing could tell about a decade or more of his life.
There was a lot of blood, just not on the driveway. His friend’s jeans were soaked in a deep red, and the matted, wet hair tinged the bit of slushy snow on the ground with a pink hue.
Roman came to a halt outside the front door, just at the top of the stairs, his breath having been knocked out of him. Time slowed, then, like the old reel of a film skipping toward the end as the strip started to run out.
He felt the cold air surrounding him, but he couldn’t move.
Blood rushed in his ears.
Around him, the men who had been inside the house blew past his still form, running to where Marky laid unmoving. Someone running up the driveway shouted about how a truck had burst through the mansion’s front gates, driving full speed.
Another guy said the body had been kicked out of one of the doors before the truck burned rubber strips onto the asphalt driveway as they left at the same manic speed. Someone had even taken a few shots at the truck, but it didn’t do any damage.
The only thing Roman fixated on was how they had now started referring to Marky as the body. He was vaguely aware of the neighbors who had come to stand at the end of their gated driveway, surveying the damage and the scene in front of them. One was on their phone.
Calling the emergency services, he bet.
Fuck.
They wouldn’t be able to hide this.
And it was already too late for Marky by the looks of it.
He took a few steps closer, wiping his palm across his mouth to hide the way his breaths shook in clouds around his face. The ci
rcle of Avdonin men—the half a dozen tasked with watching the house and property—stood around his broken friend. Nobody had the balls to turn him over.
Not a single one stepped forward to touch him. Marky hadn’t once moved. Roman suspected he’d probably been dead before he even hit the driveway. In the peripherals of his vision, he could see the way their faces turned towards him in unison.
Roman stood over his friend for a moment, the whoosh of blood still loud in his ears, and his heart aching with racing beats while he took in the scene again. The gawking neighbors and the woman shouting she had called for help; his father’s men waiting for him to say something; and his friend, broken and bloody, at his feet.
Bending down, he grabbed the ripped, blood-soaked arm of his friend’s jacket and turned him over. The wind picked up as he laid eyes on his dead friend, and the stab wounds that peppered his body telling a horrifying story of a violent end.
He wasn’t surprised the wounds were focused in the front—the cuts on Marky’s hands, wrists and arms where his sleeves had been shredded said he fought. He wouldn’t have turned his back or tried to run. In the final moments of his life, he’d been fighting.
Roman should have been out there with his friend, asking questions and making his presence known. It would have afforded Marky more protection because he shouldn’t have had to hold the fort down by himself.
Everything about the scene in front of Roman was coldly calculated, and it had Dima’s bloody fingerprints all over it. It screamed his kind of work.
Dima didn’t appreciate being rejected by Demyan repeatedly. He wanted to be treated as the new Chicago boss as he believed he rightfully was. He wanted to exact revenge on the Avdonins for the insult. Marky was out there looking for Masha. Digging. Asking questions because he knew the right people to get answers, but it was dangerous work all the same.
He’d been alone with no backup, and close enough to the Avdonin family for his brutal killing to make an actual impact on the people who mattered the most.
A loud shrill shriek snapped Roman out of his daze. He turned to find his mother standing at the open door of her home. She stared straight down at Marky covering her mouth with trembling hands, collapsing into a puddle of tears.
The man who had accompanied her to the door was close enough to her grab her before she fell to the ground.
“Who would do that to him?” he heard her cry.
He knew who.
Wanted so badly to make them pay for it, too.
He just had other things to handle first.
“Take her inside. Someone call the boss,” Roman barked, turning away from his friend’s body.
The faint siren in the distance might not have been a cruiser coming for them, but it reminded him instantly that the police presence would be thick on their property soon.
This was going to be bad. Really bad.
*
By the time Demyan returned to the Avdonin home, the cops were already littering the property, their cruisers, and forensic vans filling the driveway. His father wasn’t pleased, and had his wife not been home, likely wouldn’t have returned to the property but sent lawyers in his absence.
No crime boss wanted this mess.
Not that Demyan had to worry. The moment a pig walked across their threshold, nobody had anything to say. That was the law of the land for people like them. As much as it killed Roman, his statement was the same as everyone else’s when the police and detectives cornered him earlier.
He didn’t know Marky.
Didn’t see what happened.
Didn’t have anything to say.
They’d have to prove differently.
“Where is she?” Demyan growled at one of his men who stood at the front of the house with Roman.
The bull gestured at the house, directing him inside to Claire. There was already a clear line drawn between the police doing their job and the rest of the men—the ones that had to stay, anyway. A few had already taken off to avoid the police presence. The second the detectives that showed up started talking about taking people to the station, lawyers were called.
Roman stood back, watching while his friend’s body was bagged up and lifted onto a stretcher heading for the coroner’s van. He met the gaze of the plain-clothed detective standing next to the van for a second before turning away.
There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing anybody could do about the situation. Marky was gone, and Roman didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. He didn’t even have the chance to thank him like he intended to, just those few passing words.
His friend deserved more.
Leaving Demyan’s men to deal with the cops, Roman went back into the house. His mind still wasn’t out of the dark cloud he’d sunk into. None of it seemed real.
In the foyer of the house, his mother’s cries echoed from one of the rooms deeper in the house. Demyan’s encouraging whispers accompanied her sobs.
He went to them, finding his mother a mess in her sitting room. Sobbing into her hands where she sat on a chaise in the corner.
“I think we’ve let Dima go on for long enough, don’t you?” he asked his father. “Has he done enough yet—is here where I should really be now, Papa?”
His parents looked over at him—Demyan from his kneeled position in front of his wife. Claire, through her fingers, wet with her tears.
“No, Roman, please. Demyan, you can’t let him just get himself killed. He can’t be the next body thrown in the driveway!”
Roman refused to look at his mother because he wouldn’t be swayed. Her pain was justified, as were her fears, but that didn’t change what would happen after today.
Dima would pay for what he did to Marky.
If they didn’t act now, or soon, they were essentially giving him the go-ahead to do it again. Who would be next—Karine, maybe?
Demyan stood, letting go of the hold on his wife’s wrist to rub his hands together.
“Do what you need to do,” he said.
“Demyan!” Claire shrieked. “Roman, please, just give it a day ... let things calm down before you do something rash. I know you’re angry, but—”
“He’s getting too close—too bold,” Roman said sharply, cutting his mother off as she winced. “I’m not going to keep playing these fucking games, Ma. His next target isn’t going to be you, or Karine. It’s over.”
For the first time, Demyan simply stood back and said nothing, maybe blaming himself for what happened. He just wasn’t the kind of man who would admit it. His last interaction with Marky wasn’t a particularly friendly one, and while his father was a lot of things, he wasn’t a monster. He did send him off on the job, though.
A job that got him killed.
“He’s made it clear, Ma. It’s a war, now. It won’t stop until the right man dies.”
Dima had won the first hand, but Roman needed to win the table if he was going to keep Karine alive.
He didn’t wait to hear anything else his mother had to say. Leaving his parents together in the room, he absentmindedly stroked the butt end of a cigarette with his thumb. If Marky was there, he would have handed him one without Roman asking for it.
Always waiting just outside the door, ready for his friend.
He lit the cigarette just beyond the threshold of the front door. Chaos continued to ensue outside with police lights blinking in the driveway, and vehicles crowding the front lawns. They’re certainly drawn a crowd from the neighbors.
The last time their family had a police event this large at their home, his mother sold the property the second she could and bought this one. He’d been quite young when that happened.
He figured for this, she’d do the same.
Roman understood why. Already, he couldn’t stand to be there. All he could see was the spot where Marky had laid. It’s all he would ever see now.
FOURTEEN
Karine thought she would be fine.
When she kissed Roman goodbye and told him not to worry, she
genuinely meant that. Maybe ignorantly, but she was hopeful enough to believe their separation wouldn’t affect her as greatly as she let it in the past.
Recovery was something she craved; starting with trusting the people she worked with every day, and making an effort to at least try. At anything—everything—Karine was willing to try. Even when that meant waking up in a room that had a locked door, cameras, and didn’t feel like hers, or talking about her most shameful secrets, memories she wished she could forget forever. If it would make the next day better, if she could start it new each time, she did it.
However, she wasn’t prepared for it to still hurt when he wasn’t there. It was as though the more time they spent together, the harder it became for her to be without him. Every time she saw him, he left her a little more hooked on him. Just like the pills she used to take, she became lost in the happier, brighter world she found when he was around.
It didn’t stay when he was gone.
The morning after Roman had left—Karine woke up physically sick. She couldn’t remember if she’d eaten dinner or the last time she drank any water. The staff coaxed her out of her room, into therapy sessions with Sylvia and activities around the facility, but her mood remained the same.
Bleak.
Empty.
One day melted into two, and then five in a blink. Her contact with Roman had been limited to a couple of short conversations where she gathered enough to know something had happened after he arrived home in New York. He also made it clear it wasn’t something they could discuss over the phone, so she was once again in the dark.
Soon, Sylvia or someone from the staff would be knocking on her door any minute now. Even though she was hungry, she didn’t want to eat any of the breakfast they’d bring her. She still would because health started with providing her body with what it needed, even if that was food that she couldn’t really taste.
Not that she wanted to, but Karine was sinking into that lonely hole of abandonment and betrayal again. Though she worked hard to tell herself what she felt today might not be the same as what she woke up feeling tomorrow, it didn’t seem to matter. She wished her emotions weren’t so constantly broken, whipping back and forth to create a storm she couldn’t escape.