Walking home from Krupin’s house is almost worse than the journey over. For one thing, it’s colder and windier than ever. I turn my collar up to try to protect my face, but it doesn’t help much.
It’s long past midnight now. Hardly any people remain on the street.
I take my phone out of my pocket, seeing several messages from Mila. I hadn’t wanted to check it at Krupin’s house, in case his men thought I was taking photos or recording or something.
Where are you?
What’s happening?
Is everything okay?
With stiff fingers, I text her back.
On my way home now.
I feel sick and shocked. There’s a strange unreality to this moment, as if I can’t really be walking around St. Petersburg in the middle of the night, on my way home from a gangster’s house. If I weren’t shivering so hard, I’d think I must be in bed, dreaming.
I had dreams of what I might do as a doctor—become a surgeon. The head of a department. Maybe even the chief surgeon of the whole hospital, eventually. I imagined traveling, perhaps working for Doctors Without Borders. Or else working in a country where doctors are more prestigious and respected, like in Europe or America.
I had so many options.
Now all those doors have been slammed and locked.
I can do only one thing now: whatever Krupin says.
I’m so lost in thought that I almost walk right past my own door. I look up at our house, a single light still gleaming in the right-hand window on the upper floor: Papa’s office.
I sneak inside the house. Honestly, the stealth is probably pointless. Mila already knows where I went, and Mama sleeps too deeply to hear me even if I were running up and down the stairs, hollering like a banshee. The only person left to disturb is Papa. And I’m going to speak to him right now.
I hang my coat in the closet, then climb the stairs. Papa’s office door is ajar. I knock softly, before stepping inside.
He looks up from his desk, which is strewn with papers and torn-open envelopes. Papa used to be so neat and tidy. He used to stamp his papers and documents with the date, then file them away. But of course, you can’t file things away when you haven’t yet paid the bill or answered the letter. You can only let it pile up in front of you, all the problems you can’t fix.
Papa has taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. His arms look thin and veiny, the collar of his shirt limper than ever.
“You’re up late,” he says to me.
“I spoke to Krupin, Papa,” I say.
He’s wearing his reading glasses. He blinks at me through the beveled lenses, owlish and vulnerable.
“What did he say?” Papa asks.
“You have to sign over the restaurant to him. He wants you to keep running it, though.”
Papa sighs. It’s a hard blow, but he knew it was coming. He nods his head, resigned.
“You don’t have to pay anything else,” I say.
Papa looks up, quickly. I see the spark of hope in his face, though he can hardly dare to believe it.
“So it’s just the restaurant?” he says. “That’s all he wants?”
“No.”
His shoulders slump again.
“What else?”
“I’m going to work for Krupin. For . . . a while.”
“Work for him? How?”
“As a doctor.”
I can see the struggle in my father’s face. He wants to protest.
Papa loves me. He’s always protected me. Yet he knows our position as well as I do.
It hurts him. Worse than the loss of the restaurant. But all he can say is, “Be careful, little love. These men . . . they can’t be trusted. They’ll look for your weaknesses. They’ll take advantage.”
He winces.
I’m sure that the Bratva offered their loans to my father so generously at first. That was his weakness—trust, and generosity. His desire to receive it, and his desire to bestow it on his wife and daughters, without the means to do so.
“I know, Papa. I’ll be careful,” I promise him.
There’s nothing else to say. I bid my father goodnight, then return to my own room.
Unlike Mila’s bedroom, it doesn’t look the same as it used to. I cleared out most of my things when I went away to university, and Mama made this a guest space instead. Mama has very feminine tastes, so now everything is soft and floral, with white ruffled pillows stacked four deep on the bed, botanical prints hung on the walls, and delicate little vases balanced in inconvenient places on the nightstand and shelves.
I flip on the light, not realizing that Mila has fallen asleep on my bed, waiting for me. She sits up, rubbing her eyes.
She looks like a little kid. Mila has such a pretty, innocent face. She’s only three years younger than me, but it looks more like six or seven years. My desire to protect her is stronger than ever.
“What happened?” she demands.
I’m exhausted, and I don’t want to have to keep saying out loud the awful devil’s bargain that I struck. So I try to explain as quickly as possible, with little emotion and few details.
Still, Mila looks just as pained as Papa.
“Sasha!” she cries, her hand over her mouth. “There has to be another way! You can’t work for the Bratva.”
“I can and I have to,” I say shortly. “Now let me lay down, please. I’m very tired.”
I pull off half my clothes then flop down on the bed, kicking Mama’s ridiculous pillows out of the way. Mila lays down again too, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
“You were very brave, going over there,” she says.
“It’s not brave when you don’t have any choice,” I reply.
“What was he like? Anatoly Krupin?”
I pause, trying to think how to describe him.
“Do you remember when we saw Julia Roberts outside the Four Seasons?” I ask Mila.
I feel her nodding.
“Even though she was wearing sunglasses and a coat, and not talking or smiling, all these people turned to look at her anyway. The bellhop, us, the other people on the street. Just the way she walked, it pulled your eye in. Krupin is like that. He’s frightening, but he has a kind of magnetism. When he’s in the room, you have to look at him.”
Mila is quiet, imagining it.
After another minute, she says, “What are we going to do about Mama?”
“Cut up all her credit cards, for one thing,” I say. “Other than that, I don’t know. Krupin is paying me a little money, but it isn’t much. We won’t be able to spend like we did. Mama won’t be happy.”
“I’m not sure she was really happy before,” Mila says softly.
My sister’s arms are warm and comforting.
It’s the only thing that allows me to fall into a troubled sleep.
