That night when my father gets home, he can’t look me in the eye. I’ve already washed off the makeup and changed back into my normal clothes, but I know he’s never going to forget the image of me on the arm of a Bratva boss.
Part of me is deeply ashamed.
The other part of me is furious at him.
How dare he be embarrassed for me, when he’s the one who put me in this position to begin with. I never would have spoken two words to Krupin or Stepanov, if not for my parents’ irresponsibility.
So I hold my chin high, and I keep my voice calm when I say, “I hope everything went well with dinner, Papa.”
“Well enough,” he says, still not looking at me.
I’m sitting in the kitchen, eating a little plate of cheese and rye bread. I never finished my food at the restaurant, and I’m hungry. I’m also trying to ameliorate the effects of the wine I drank on an empty stomach.
The rest of the house is quiet.
“Where’s Mama and Mila?” I ask.
I’ve been so busy the last few weeks that I’ve hardly laid eyes on them.
Papa leans against the cupboards, taking off his glasses and pressing his index finger and thumb into the inner corners of his eyes.
“Mila is studying at the library. She has an exam tomorrow,” he says. “Your mother has gone to Yaroslavl to stay with her sister.”
That’s strange. Usually Mama invites us, if she’s going to see Auntie Agata.
“How long is she staying for?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Papa says.
I put down my piece of bread and cheese.
“What do you mean?” I ask him. “Why don’t you know when she’s coming back?”
Papa sighs. He looks older than ever, and very tired.
“I don’t know if she’s coming back,” he says.
“Why?” I say stupidly.
Papa puts his glasses back on his face. The reflective glass makes it hard to tell, but I think his eyes are wet behind the lenses.
“She said she felt trapped here. The house is getting so dingy and run down, she’s embarrassed to bring anyone over. She can’t go shopping or to the spa like she used to, with her friends. She said her sister takes better care of her than I do . . .”
Papa trails off.
I stare at him dumbly.
Then I get up from the table. I walk right past him. I climb the stairs to my parents’ room, then open my mother’s closet.
I see that all her favorite clothes, purses, and shoes are gone. She’s left a few older items—the heavy plaid coat she said looked like a sofa. The alligator boots that pinched her feet. But all the things she liked best have disappeared.
I run over to her drawers. I know Papa had to sell some of her jewelry, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the abalone comb she got from great-grandmother. It’s not worth much, monetarily. But it means everything to Mama. She wouldn’t take it anywhere for a visit. She’d only take it if she were moving for good.
The comb sits in a lacquered box in her top drawer. That box is gone. And so is the comb.
Mama left us. She really left us.
And she didn’t even say goodbye.
Papa has followed me upstairs. He stands in the doorway, looking at the gutted room.
I can’t believe she left us, right when we were at our lowest and most vulnerable.
She made this mess, and then she walked away from it like it had nothing to do with her.
I hear the front door opening, footsteps in the entryway, and for a confused moment I think it must be Mama. She realized she made a mistake, and she came home again.
I sprint down the stairs, expecting to see Mama standing there, looking contrite. I won’t even be mad at her. I know how impulsive she is—I’ll just hug her and help her carry her bags up the stairs.
But when I reach the entryway, I see Mila instead, setting down her heavy backpack full of books.
“Hey!” she says, smiling. “You’re not working tonight?”
Her smile fades when she sees the look on my face.
“What is it?” Mila asks.
“Mama’s gone,” I tell her. “She went to stay with Aunt Agata. Papa says she isn’t coming back.”
Mila doesn’t believe it, until she goes up to Mama’s room and sees the same things with her own eyes.
Papa hasn’t followed us in this time. He’s gone into his study and shut the door.
“Should we go talk to him?” Mila says in a low tone.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Should we call her and tell her to come back?” Mila demands.
Mila always wants to take action. She’s not one to sit and mope.
“What’s the point?” I say. “If she doesn’t want to be here, we can’t make her come home.”
“She’s spoiled,” Mila says bitterly. “She always has been.”
I knew that. But I still believed she loved us . . .
Mila goes back down to the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge for food. I sit down in front of my bread and cheese, though it doesn’t taste as good as it did before.
Mila squints at me.
“Are you wearing lipstick?” she says. “That’s not like you.”
“Krupin made me come out to dinner,” I say. “With him and this other Bratva boss. Do you know Urvan Stepanov?”
Mila shakes her head.
“He’s a creep,” I say.
I shudder, remembering the feeling of his hand sliding down the front of my dress. Fondling my breast while Yakov leered at me from across the table.
And right in front of Snow, too. I could see how it enraged him. His blue eyes looked like pure propane flame. I could see the tension in the muscles of his shoulders and arms, as if he were holding himself perfectly still so he didn’t jump out of his seat.
Paradoxically, Snow’s anger was the only thing keeping me sane.
While all the other men at the table acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for Stepanov to put his hands all over me, only Snow was furious on my behalf.
Instead of feeling like a victim, I felt angry too. Stepanov was trying to force himself on me, not caring what I wanted for myself.
Well, I wanted Snow. His were the only hands I wanted on my body.
When he got up for a smoke, I excused myself a minute later. I found him, pulled him into the storage room. And then in an act of pure defiance, I took what I actually wanted, from the only man who could give it to me . . .
It was insane. But the danger only made it all the more heady.
Those five minutes were the most intense, erotic moments of my life.
I can feel my face burning, just remembering it.
The way I gave myself to him, and the way he took me, in revolt against all the would-be powerful and dominating men at that table . . .
Right under their noses, we defied them.
“What on earth are you thinking about?” Mila demands. “Your face is lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head.
“You’re lying,” Mila says. “Tell me what’s going on. You look like you’ve got a secret. You’re not just giving check-ups to gangsters . . .”
“Well . . .” I hesitate. I don’t want to tell Mila anything that could put her in danger. But she’s my best friend. And I need to hear from a friend if I’ve completely lost my mind.
“There’s this boxer . . .” I say.
“I knew it!” Mila cries.
“Shh!” I hush her before Papa hears. “I stitched him up after a fight . . .”
“What’s his name?”
“Snow.”
Mila wrinkles her nose.
“They all have nicknames. Trust me, it suits him.”
“What does he look like?”
“Tall. Broad. Cold, at first. Actually, the first time I saw him, he terrified me. He has this dark expression, like he’s never felt anything but rage. He’s got blue eyes like . . . like . . .” I search for a way to describe them. “They’re like the moon in winter. Or sea glass. Or a glacier. The lightest, clearest blue imaginable. They’d be beautiful, except the rest of him isn’t beautiful at all, it’s rough and brutal and masculine in the extreme.”
Mila is definitely staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Once I started talking to him, I realized that he is blunt and coarse . . . but he’s not only that. He’s ambitious and perceptive, and even sometimes kind, though I don’t think he knows that he is.”
I shake my head. It’s so hard to describe him. It’s so hard to explain how I feel when I’m around him. I feel like I’ve discovered something that no one else can see. And I feel like he finds the same things in me—characteristics I didn’t even know I had. He perceives them, and he brings them out of me.
“You don’t want to date a boxer, though, do you?” Mila asks. “He’s probably a criminal like the rest of them . . .”
“He’s not like the rest of them!” I say sharply.
“Sorry,” Mila says, holding up her hands. “I haven’t met him. I just thought . . .”
She thought I’d marry someone like the boys we went to school with. The ones whose parents used to socialize with our parents . . . until Mama and Papa lost all their money.
I used to live in the world of the wealthy and privileged.
But it’s funny—I never fell in love with any of those boys. Even after years of knowing them, I never felt a connection like the one that developed between Snow and me in a matter of days.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say to Mila. “Nothing can happen between us. I work for Krupin. He owns the next twenty years of my life.”
Nothing can happen between us.
But it did.
I almost start blushing again, wondering if I should tell Mila. She’s not a virgin. She used to tease me about waiting so long. Just get it over with, she told me.
Well, I did. And now I think I’m addicted. I keep thinking about it, obsessing over it, craving it. Is it normal to be so attracted to someone that you’d risk anything, even your own life, for five minutes in their arms?
“It won’t be twenty years,” Mila says, putting her hand over mine. “Once I graduate, I can get a job too. I can start paying down the debt . . .”
I shake my head hard.
“Absolutely not,” I tell her. “You’re not getting dragged into this. You’re going to have a normal life. A great life.”
Mila doesn’t say anything, but she presses her lips together stubbornly. I know my sister. I know she’s not just going to stand by and watch me suffer.
The thought only depresses me. I can’t bear to see Mila be buried along with the rest of us.
God, how are we ever going to get out of this?
