My mind tries to crawl back to the spa. I let it. I feel the cold tile and the hallway and the sheet. Then I force it toward tomatoes. Ugly and red and perfect in bad soil.
I close my eyes. The hallway is gone. The garden remains. The boys sleep in a room that smells like soap and wood. My mother argues with a kettle and wins. A door closes. A bolt slides. Tomorrow exists.
When I open my eyes, Roman is watching the wing. His hand rests on the armrest, so I curl my fingers over his.
“Better.”
It makes me smile to hear him say that.
I pick up the black phone and put it face down again. I could read about the fourteen dead bodies found at the resort. I could wallow in despair and guilt for their deaths. I could do a lot of things, but almost none of them are useful to the dead. Or to me.
As much as I blame myself for what happened, I know it’s not true. Vitaly did this. Not me. Not Roman. Vitaly is an angry, jealous man who thinks he is entitled to everything he wants.
He wants to be pakhan. He wants revenge against me.
He will have neither.
The plane rides a smooth pocket of air. The sky on the other side of the glass is the kind of blue that paint tries to copy. Roman’s hand is warm under mine. Fourteen is still a number in the world. It is not the only one. Two babies, sleeping. One woman, breathing. One man, watching the wing.
Right now, that’s the only math that matters.
When we land, the math changes. But I’ll be damned before I let that monster hurt my babies, and if that means I have to be bait, so be it.
22
ROMAN
The house is too quiet.The silence is wrong, but the choice is right.
I don’t like being home without my sons. It feels empty. Funny that. I’d thought the noise and chaos of them would be too much, that I was too set in my ways to be the father of twin infants.
Now, I yearn to hear their fussy cries and wear their spit-up like a badge of honor. They’d been here for only a few weeks before we sent them away, and now that they’re gone, I feel as though I’m missing a limb.
What I’m missing is worse than that. Bigger. More painful.
Children are like that, though. You can’t prepare for them, not in any real way. For the past year, I’d been living my life as I always have, unaware two miracles were born with my blood in them. But the moment I met them, the world narrowed to their two tiny bodies.
Two enormous possible futures for the Bratva.
I make predictions I know will be wrong in the details and right in the shape. Alexander is heavier in the arm and louder. He laughs first and calms. He looks at the world as if it belongs to him. He will be the bigger one. He will take the first step into any space and make strangers feel like friends. That is how doors open in this world.
Yuri is smaller and fine edged. He watches before he moves. He listens to the air. He notices a change in a voice and turns his head toward it. He settles slower and deeper. When he smiles it is earned. He will be the one who reads the table and names the danger before it stands up. That is how houses stay standing.
I hope those lines hold as they grow. The loud one and the quiet one. The hand that reaches and the hand that steadies. Together they could balance the weight I carry better than I do. Together they could keep each other honest.
Maybe that is what our people need. Not one crown on one brow. Two brothers who split the work. One to greet. One to measure. One to lead the parade and one to watch the crowd.
The need for them to grow up and have lives of their own…it’s all-consuming. Primal. I will protect them no matter what. Even if Mina would never approve of my methods.
I don’t need her approval. At the moment, I need her out of the picture, so I can handle the business of keeping my family alive. Her exhaustion is evident in the slope of her slender shoulders, the flat gaze. She’s been worn down by Vitaly, and not for the first time.
I haven’t asked about their relationship, because it’s none of my business, but also because anytime the subject is brought up, sheshrinks in on herself. I will not pull at that thread until I know I can sew her back together when she comes apart.
Mina pauses in the foyer and turns toward the nursery without thinking. Her hand finds my sleeve. She does not speak. She needs a bed, not words.
“They are where they should be. This house will feel empty tonight. That is the price we pay so they live to fill it again.”
She nods, and we go upstairs. The staff withdraw without being told, though Sergei watches silently from a distance. He has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and at the moment, his old eyes fill with concern for Mina. Maybe for me too.
