I shouldn’t have worried—Sabrina is never awkward, and nothing phases her.
She comes bursting into our room, still dressed in her gown, hair and makeup a mess, apparently just stumbling home from whatever she’s been doing with Ilsa Markov.
“Somebody left you pastries!” she announces. “You have to share them with me because they smell phenomenal.”
She’s already pulling a fresh verhuny out of the basket, taking such an enthusiastic bite that flakes of pastry and powdered sugar rain down on the tops of her breasts.
I’m reminded of the simultaneous softness and firmness of Sabrina’s body under my hands. My cheeks burn.
Sabrina catches me looking. She grins, licking the sugar off her lips.
“Don’t worry.” She winks. “You can look.”
“I don’t want you to think that I—”
“Oh, relax,” she laughs. “I know you’re crazy about Ares. But a girl’s allowed to have a little fun.”
“You look like you had more than a little fun with Ilsa,” I say, grinning right back at her.
“She’s fucking sexy, isn’t she?” Sabrina sighs, taking another bite of pastry.
“Aggressive too,” I laugh, noting the love bites running down the side of Sabrina’s slim brown throat.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Sabrina passes me the basket so I can enjoy a bite of my own pastry.
I don’t need the card to guess that Ares left them. Only he could be that thoughtful.
The verhuny are deliciously light and flaky, with a hint of spiced rum mixed into the dough. It’s the quintessential flavor of Christmas for me—bringing to mind the twelve-foot tree my father always cuts and hauls home for the holidays, decorated in his clumsy and over-the-top way with huge handfuls of tinsel and fresh holly.
I feel a pang of guilt, knowing it will be his first Christmas without me. He’ll have all his soldiers around him, and they’re sure to get roaring drunk and probably spend the afternoon ax-throwing or some other raucous activity that really shouldn’t be done intoxicated.
Still, I know my dad will be lonely. At the very least I need to call him today.
So even though I’d rather go find Ares and give him my own small gift, I tell Sabrina she’s welcome to eat the last pastry, and I dress and head over to the Keep to use the bank of phones on the ground floor.
It’s early enough that the phones aren’t yet packed with students calling home. I only see one Freshman Accountant tearily telling her mom that she misses her, and Tristan Turgenev crammed into a too-small booth, thanking his parents for the gifts they sent.
Wanting privacy, I walk all the way down to the last phone.
I hadn’t seen that it was occupied, because the boy sitting in the booth was hunched over, speaking quietly into the receiver. He hangs up as I approach, turning and squinting at me through two heavily swollen eyes.
His face is so battered and bruised that I almost don’t recognize him. His two black eyes are little more than slits in a lumpy, misshapen face, his right cheek and lower lip puffed up like beestings. Even his shaved skull bears several ugly goose eggs.
“What do you want?” Estas asks, his voice coming out mushy through the puffy lips. I’m not sure how the person on the other end of the phone even understood him.
“I . . . I was just looking for a phone,” I say.
Estas has been a constant annoyance at Kingmakers, stirring up the negative sentiment that swirls around me when anybody remembers my last name. I always felt his grudge was unjust, since my dad promised me he had nothing to do with Estas’ brother’s death. It seemed like Estas was just looking for somebody to blame and he latched onto me.
Still, the aftermath of Ares’ beating is hard to look at. It no longer seems like a proportionate response. I’m grateful that Ares defended me—but I feel guilty that this whole thing has spiraled so far.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I say.
Estas just looks at me, the whites of his eyes bloodied around his dark pupils.
“That was my mother on the phone,” he mumbles through those swollen lips. “She couldn’t hear a thing I was saying because she was bawling the whole time. My father’s been in prison all my life. You only get so many conjugal visits—she had my brother, and then me ten years later. No other kids.”
I don’t want to feel sympathy for Estas.
I don’t want to hear about his life.
And I definitely don’t want to argue about his brother again. But I’m rooted in place, maybe because for once, Estas isn’t trying to physically intimidate me. He’s still seated, his voice low and slurred, his shoulders slumped.
“My brother was killed on December eighteenth,” he says. “Have you ever seen New York in December? In the summer it stinks, and the winter’s cold and sleety. But when they put those Christmas lights up, and the display windows are like dioramas, and people are skating at Chelsea Piers . . . it feels like magic.”
Against my will, I picture it: the scent of cocoa and perfume gift sets . . . the bustle of shoppers . . . the sharp slice of skates over ice . . .
“Kyrylo said he’d take me to Rockefeller Center to see them light the giant tree. It’s kid stuff, I know, but I was only twelve so I guess I was a kid still. He told me to meet him at the marine terminal. That’s where he worked, in the port authority office. He and my uncles all worked there, it’s how they smuggled in shipments.
“Kyrylo was the one who made the deal with your father for the Soviet guns. My uncles said he shouldn’t do it. They said Marko was sure to fuck them, one way or another.
“But Kyrylo liked your dad. He thought the rumors were bullshit. And anyway, we were family. Whatever Marko might have done in Kyiv, he wouldn’t betray his own family.”
Estas’ lip has split open again from all the talking, but he doesn’t seem to notice, even as a thin line of blood runs down his chin.
“Marko was supposed to send twenty crates of AKs. They arrived on the sixteenth. I was there at the marina, waiting for my brother. I saw him open the crates. He broke the seals, used the crowbar to wedge out the nails. Threw off the lids.
“They were empty. He stood there, staring inside the crates. He even ran his hands through the sawdust, like the guns might be hiding underneath.
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he said, ‘Nothing, wait here.’
“He went out back to the alley to make a call. I heard him talking for a long time, low at first, and then starting to shout. He came back thirty minutes later, pale, sweating.
“I said, ‘Can we still see the tree?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, of course, nothing could stop me.’
“He took me to Rockefeller. He wasn’t talking much, but I was too excited to notice.
“Two days later, my uncles found him in the warehouse, hanging above the dock, gutted like an animal. Cut from here to here.”
Estas traces a line from the divot of his sternum, straight down to his crotch.
“My brother was a big guy. You’d have to be pretty fucking strong to lift him up and hang him.”
Estas’ eyes are fixed on mine, red and unblinking. He told the story simply, with no hint of embellishment.
Through dry lips I say, “That was six years ago?”