“I’m sorry,” I told him. “For hitting you.”
We stared at each other so long my hand grew tired and slipped from his face. I must have fallen asleep again. When I opened my eyes, Ronan was gone, and Kirill silently read a book in a chair beside my bed.
agathokakological
(adj.) composed of both good and evil
Albert occupied the chair in front of my desk, his careful gaze and silence on my skin. He had a good reason to be cautious. It was a while since I’d been so angry my hands shook—three months exactly, when I found Pasha’s body mutilated by Mikhailov hands.
The irony of the situation was one of the reasons I’d forced myself to sit here and wait for the rage to cool before I shot my men one by one to find the traitor in our midst. The other reason . . . well, it made me a little nauseous. It was the idea Mila’s soft eyes were almost permanently snuffed out by a cup of tea. The burn in my chest whenever I thought of it reminded me of the time I fought for air in an old Volkswagen filled with icy water.
I wasn’t sure why I shared that story with Mila considering I didn’t even tell my brother after walking into our apartment later that night dripping water on the cracked linoleum floor. I didn’t often dwell on the past, but the odd sense of . . . relief Mila would live reminded me of my first breath after breaking my head through the surface of the Moskva.
“Where have you been?” Kristian asked me in Russian, pulling his gaze from the tiny TV with rabbit ear antennas that sat on the floor.
“Swimming,” I answered.
Momma was passed out in the apartment’s single bedroom. Dark hair covered her face, and an arm hung off the bed, a cigarette dangling from her fingers. I used to think she was pretty, but now, at eight, all I saw when I looked at her were burned silver spoons, empty eyes, and a heat in my gut that expanded further every day.
I grabbed the baggie of crack rocks off the table and flushed it down the toilet. There’d be hell to pay for that later, but I doubted it would be worse than another night of my momma smoking that stuff. It made her act crazy, and she’d say things that didn’t make any sense.
After I stripped out of my wet clothes, I plopped down on the stained mattress next to Kristian and stole the remote from him.
“You don’t know how to swim,” he said, keeping his eyes on the TV.
I flipped the channel. “Do now.”
“It’s March.”
My brother could be so annoying. He kicked me in his sleep, watched boring shows, and thought he knew everything. The fact he was mostly right irritated me even more. I’d also punch any kid who was mean to him. Momma’s friends were mean to him the most. They never bothered me, but still, sometimes, an angry red mist covered my eyes when they were here. Those men were too large for me to hurt now, but someday, I’d be big enough.
“Everything’s still frozen,” he said.
I wouldn’t admit I’d held onto a piece of ice until I reached the shore even if Kristian saw me at it. With a shrug, I said, “I got hot.” In fact, I was feeling a little sweaty from the shaky nerves and my cold skin. I wiped sweat from my chest onto his cheek. He glared at me and rubbed it off with a hand.
The room went silent, the dark room lit by the TV with a broken speaker. “We should go there,” he said to the TV, to a scene of New York City. “To America.”
I shook my head. “I want to stay here.”
His eyes came to me. “What are you gonna do, sleep on this mattress all your life?”
“No, dimwit, I’m gonna be like him.” I nodded to the TV as a political commercial came on.
“He’s the president,” Kristian said.
“I know.” I didn’t know that. I just liked the way he looked in expensive clothes, with an audience in front of him.
After a moment, he said, “You could be the president if you wanted to be.”
“I don’t want to be the president.” I rested a sweaty arm on his shoulders. “I’m gonna be something better.”
“Like God.”
The old lady next door invited me and Kristian over sometimes. We went for the tea and biscuits while she read us passages from the Bible. So many “thou shalt nots” and pointed looks over her glasses.
“Kind of like God,” I said, and after a moment of silence, a smile touched my lips. “But I’d rather be the devil.”
I took a drag from my cigar. My mother didn’t remember what she’d done until the police knocked on the door the next morning and asked why her car was in the Moskva. She talked—or, rather, fucked—her way out of it, and then she made me and Kristian syrniki. The decent meal was almost worth it.
“Viktor is questioning Anna,” Albert said.
I stared at him, not knowing who the fuck Anna was.
“The girl who’s been serving your meals for the past three years.”
“Ah,” I mused. “The little mouse.”
She was the most obvious suspect. Although, I had my doubts. I only needed to look in the girl’s general vicinity, and she’d tremble with fear. It annoyed me so much, I ignored her presence like she was a frightened, stray dog. If she poisoned Mila, she didn’t do it alone.
“How’s Mila?”
My eyes narrowed at the concern in Albert’s voice. “Alexei’s daughter is fine.”
Kirill was confident she didn’t ingest enough poison to be in a critical condition.
Thank fuck I called the girl a whore. Otherwise, she might not have destroyed the rest of the poison in her teacup, and I would have lost my collateral. But the thought of my revenge slipping through my fingers didn’t explain the tight sensation inside each time Mila’s look of betrayal flitted through my mind.
“You know she doesn’t belong here,” Albert said.
Darkness spilled through me. “You got a new mind-reading ability you haven’t told me about?”
“If Alexei hasn’t relented yet, he’s not going to.”
I held his gaze. I hadn’t told anyone but Kristian her papa was ready to trade himself in. The knowledge of that getting out would make me look weak, as if Mila had actually dug her Mikhailov claws into me. She hadn’t. I just wasn’t finished with her yet, and I knew if I let her go now, I would end up dragging her back to finish what we started. That felt too close to monogamy for me to stomach. Not to mention, it would probably be a much more difficult task to get her into my bed with her father’s head as a centerpiece on my table.
“We could have followed Alexander,” he told me.
“We didn’t need to follow him.”
He raised an annoying brow.
“Alexei will come to heel soon enough,” I said shortly, finished with the conversation.
“It would probably move things along if you sent him a finger or two.” He was baiting me. I wasn’t going to cut off Mila’s fingers, and Albert knew it.
“Go make yourself useful somewhere,” I said, eyes hard. “Like finding the fucking rat in my home.”
I swore, the bastard fucking smiled as he stood.
He hadn’t even stepped out of the room before we found the traitor. In fact, she threw herself at my feet and confessed in a flurry of Russian and tears. The little mouse was actually a rat. Viktor stood in the doorway. At least one of my men was making themselves useful.