4
Kat
The following morning, I watch Josh as he digs into the pancakes Lev brought him from the McDonald’s down the road. He eats them with a voracious appetite, and I remember we didn’t really have more than that snack at Lev’s cousin’s house last night.
“McDonald’s is a treat for him,” I tell Lev who is watching him with that same expression of awe and pride. And right now, a little wincing as Josh maneuvers a sticky piece of pancake dripping with syrup into his mouth, not quite getting it to its destination directly as it drops onto the open palm of the hand he’s holding beneath his plastic fork.
“Wow,” Lev says.
I have to chuckle as he takes in Josh licking the syrup off his palm.
“Is it driving you nuts?” I ask him, appreciating this moment of levity. Of almost normal. “I mean, you’re kind of a neat freak.”
He turns to me. “A little, but he’s cute. And I’m not a neat freak. I just like things organized and in their place.”
“Well, welcome to fatherhood.”
Fatherhood.
We both stop at my comment and just look at each other.
Lev reaches out a hand and brushes my hair back from my forehead, touching the bruise there.
“I wouldn’t change anything when it comes to him and you. I mean the part with us. Our family.”
I shift my gaze to the cup of coffee in my hands, smiling because I feel the same way. But at the same time, I know there’s the other part. The Russian mafia part.
As if on cue, his phone rings. We both have the new ones his cousin Alexei arranged for us. I don’t know Alexei, and a part of me questions whether he can be trusted. If he doesn’t have a way of tracking those phones and telling Vasily of our location. But Lev trusts him and even as fucked up as his family is, I see that level of trust between him and Alexei. I saw it with Pasha, too.
I don’t trust most people. Nina was the one who knew the most about me, but even she didn’t know everything.
Joshua knew. Joshua lived it with me. But he died, and after his death, I learned to keep my secrets.
But I told Lev the other night. I told him more than I’ve ever told anyone, and it felt natural. It felt good to say some of those things out loud.
Secrets hold power over you, and in a way, when you speak them out loud and tell them to another human being, it gives you your power back. I didn’t realize that until the other night.
I look up at Lev. He’s distracted, expression serious as he talks into his phone in Russian. And when I go to him and hug him, he’s surprised. I know it in the break in his sentence. In that moment, he hesitates before wrapping his arm around me. I see it in the way he looks at me when I pull back.
“Mommy?” Josh is standing behind me hands palm-up. “I’m sticky.”
I watch Lev walk into the small attached living room part of our accommodation.
“Shocker,” I say, putting my coffee down and walking him into the bathroom to wash his hands. He still doesn’t quite reach the sink easily, so after rolling up his sleeves, I lift him and balance him on one leg as I wash his little hands.
“Can we go home now?” he asks.
When I look up from his hands, I find his eyes on me in the mirror, and inside them, I see the residue of the events of the past twenty-four hours.
“Not yet, sweetheart. We’re going to take a vacation with Lev first.” I don’t want to lie to him, but I need him to keep feeling secure and safe. At least as much as possible.
“But I want to go home.”
I switch off the water and busy myself with drying his hands, then crouch down to talk to him.
“You were scared yesterday, weren’t you?”
His eyes grow glassy with tears, and he nods.
“That man was a bad man, Josh, but he’s gone now, and he can’t hurt you anymore, okay?”
He touches my face, the spot on my forehead I thought I’d covered up so well with my hair.
“What about you? Can he hurt you?”
I take his hand and kiss the inside of it, then hug him. “No, sweetheart, he can’t hurt anyone ever again.”
Lev knocks on the door that I’d left ajar, pushing it open all the way.
I straighten, keeping hold of Josh’s hand, and watch Lev process what he sees. I study him, seeing how tightly his jaw is set and the furrow between his eyebrows.
“Pasha’s doing well,” he says, then turns to Josh. “He said he’ll be making you marshmallow pancakes again in no time.”
I look down to see Josh smile, and he’s just a normal little kid again. “I love marshmallow pancakes.”
We walk back out into the bedroom where Lev switches on a cartoon for Josh.
“Pasha’s really okay?” I ask.
“Yes. He wanted to make sure you knew, and he also apologized.”
“Apologized? For what? He almost died for us.”
“He wanted you to know he felt bad about leaving you and Josh to go to the hardware store.”
“I hope you told him not to be silly.”
“I did. But he’s right. He shouldn’t have left you.”
“Lev—”
“We need to discuss other things, though.” His expression darkens. “Where’s your new phone?”
“In my purse,” I tell him, getting it out of my bag. I hadn’t even looked at it. This is the one Alexei had given to Lev. “Here.” I hand it to him.
Lev takes it, fingers quick as he types something in, then holds it out to me. “I just programmed Alexei’s private number.” He holds up the contact under AX. “If anything happens to me—”
“What?”
“If anything happens to me, or we get separated, or you can’t get in touch with me for any reason, you call him. He’s the only one you call. Do you understand?”
“We’re not going to get separated. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“Shh.” He glances at Josh. “I don’t want Josh getting upset.”
“But—”
“Just a precaution. That’s all. Nothing is going to happen to me, Kat.”
I take the phone and push it into my back pocket.
“Is everything okay? Did something happen on your call? Is there something new and that’s why—”
“We need to get on the road. I want to put more distance between us and Vasily. I’m going to run to the store and buy some things we need.” He gestures to my hair. “You’ll need to color your hair. It’s too recognizable.”
I touch my hair. “Josh is used to me like this. I don’t think we should change—”
“The important thing is to keep Josh safe, and that means to keep out of sight. We’ll find a way to explain it.”
“He wants to go home.”
“Yeah, well, he can’t do that right now, and neither can you, so stay focused, Katerina.” This is a different side to Lev from the tender one of last night and the fatherly one of this morning. This is the sharper, edgier side. And I realize something. Something I’ve known all along but never consciously acknowledged.
He’s a trained killer.
He watches me as I think this, and I know he knows what’s going on in my head. I see it on his face. But he doesn’t try to soothe me or fill my head with pretty, meaningless words. This is reality. He and I both know it.