The mood in my father’s house is strange and tense.
Adrian will barely look at me, let alone speak to me.
Rodion seems to shadow me more closely than ever. He’s always lurking around when I leave my room to eat or swim in the pool. He watches me with those piggy little eyes, like he’s enraged that I’m about to slip away from him forever.
It doesn’t help that it’s sweltering hot, hot enough that the air conditioner can’t possibly cool all the space inside this house. I wake up sweating every night.
A few days before the wedding, I’m so hot in my room up on the top floor that I have to pull on a swimsuit and go downstairs to the pool.
I let myself out through the patio doors, careful not to make too much noise. If I wake my father, he’ll be furious.
I slip into the water, which barely feels cool compared to the muggy night air. Still, it’s better than my stifling room. I stroke back and forth across the pool, thinking about the apartment Seb and I will be moving into on Goose Island.
It’s a gorgeous industrial-style loft, with a view of the water on both sides. It has a professional-grade kitchen, which made Sebastian and me laugh, because neither one of us can cook for shit.
“We’ll learn together, I guess,” Seb said.
I can’t believe I’ll be living there in just a few more days. Him and me, all alone, without anybody looking over our shoulders.
Enzo Gallo already gave us our wedding gift: a brand-new grand piano, which is currently sitting in the living room of the loft. It’s bright and gleaming, and perfectly tuned. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
I don’t expect any gift from my father, and I don’t want one.
All I want is to be free of this place.
I roll over on my back and stroke across the pool, looking up at the sky. You can’t see too many stars here—the city lights drown them out. But I can still pick out Ursa Major and a faint glimmer down near the horizon that might be Venus.
Looking up at the stars fills me with happiness, remembering how Sebastian proposed to me. He made the proposal feel special and intentional, not at all like he was forced into it by my father.
I don’t understand how I got so lucky, meeting him.
I’ve never felt lucky in my life. Quite the opposite.
It’s unbelievable to me that something my father orchestrated with such ill intent could turn out in my favor.
Sebastian said I should apply for a music program after the wedding. I’m thinking of applying to the Bieber School of Music at Northwestern, or maybe DePaul.
Sebastian is going to keep helping run the Gallo empire. The truce between his family and mine is more of a formal cease-fire vs a collaborative partnership, but who knows—eventually Adrian will take over from my father. Maybe he and Seb will work together. Maybe my brother will get married, too. Maybe our kids will play together, and eventually run this city together . . .
As I lay on my back looking up at the sky, the possibilities seem endless . . . Our futures unspool in front of my eyes, bright and shining as the moon overhead.
Until a shadow passes over my face, and I realize that Rodion is standing at the edge of the pool, looking down on me.
He looks as vast as a mountain, looming over me. And as displeased as some kind of volcanic god demanding sacrifice.
His silence is unnerving. It makes him seem without empathy, without any kind of soul, though I know he does feel things.
Lust, for instance.
I see the way he looks at me.
A lot of men look at me—almost all of them, in fact. But only he stares at me with resentment, as if I belong to him, and have been unjustly taken away.
One of my greatest fears before this engagement to Seb was that my father would give me to Rodion someday, as a reward for his loyal service.
What bothers me most of all is how well I understand him. I’m used to picking up the meaning of small signs and gestures, because of my mother. She communicated silently to avoid the attention of the bratoks, or my father himself.
I hate that Rodion reminds me of her in a strange and twisted way. He’s like a monstrous, bizarro version of her. Large and hulking, where she was gentle and petite. Malevolent, where she was fundamentally kind. Menacing, when she would have done anything to protect me.
I hate that I understand him, without meaning to, and without wanting to. I know what all his signs mean, though I never meant to learn them.
Perhaps that’s part of why he’s fixated on me. Because he knows that I do understand him. He thinks there’s some kind of connection between us.
Maybe I should pity him. After all, losing your ability to speak is awful, particularly in such a humiliating way. Honor is everything to the Bratva. Rodion was stripped of his honor and his authority. He’s labored relentlessly for years to recover his leadership position under my father.
But I can’t pity him. Because he has no pity for anyone else. I’ll never forget the hour of torture he inflicted on Raymond Page, while I was forced to sit watching. I saw the pleasure on Rodion’s face, and on my father’s.
And that’s why I will despise them both, always.
I understand violence out of necessity. But to enjoy it . . . that I’ll never understand. And I’ll never respect it.
I’ve stopped swimming. I bob in the water like a buoy, looking back at Rodion with every ounce of disdain that I can muster. I can’t let him see how much he terrifies me. I know he feeds on fear.
Instead I demand, as sternly as I can, “What do you want? You’re bothering me.”
Rodion looks down at me, unsmiling, arms crossed in front of his broad chest as he refuses to answer with even a sign.
My heart is beating hard, but I tilt up my chin, pretending that I’m looking down at him instead of him looking down at me while I float, half-naked and vulnerable, in the water.
“Go away,” I say, as if commanding a dog.
Rodion just tilts his head slightly to the side, eyes narrowed, lip curled.
“If you come near me again after I’m married, my husband will kill you,” I hiss at him.
Then, without waiting for a response, I force myself to start swimming laps again. I feel horribly exposed, knowing that we’re all alone in the backyard. He could jump in the pool and drag me down with his massive bulk, drowning me silently in the chlorinated water.
But I keep swimming anyway, refusing to stop, refusing to look at him. And when I finally glance up again, after twenty laps or so, he’s disappeared.
