I remember the day Fyodor came to me with his concerns. “You were right. I thought we could sharpen him. But he is not a blade. He is the hunger blades have for blood.”
I nodded once. “A knife you can sheath. Hunger eats the sheath.”
We still tried. But by the time I had Fyodor on my side, Vitaly was a fourteen-year-old with keen eyes and too much taste for pain. When Fyodor stopped teaching him, he learned on his own. Arguably, that was worse.
Vitaly should never have been left to his own devices.
He made friends by throwing my name or money around, then laying traps for his new friends. Sometimes, literally. To my knowledge, he didn’t have his first kill until he was seventeen, but there are a lot of ways to torment people without killing them.
Some of them are worse than death.
When we intervened, it was too late. Vitaly’shobbies, as he liked to call them, were an expensive pastime, and I was left holding the bag. Either paying off their families, or relocating them, or both.
Fyodor tried to make a soldier out of Bridgette’s urge. I tried to make a man who could put the urge down. In the end,Fyodor came down on my side. But with his inclination to family tradition, sometimes I wonder if he’s still there.
The door opens without a knock. Only one man does that in my house. Fyodor steps in faster than his age should allow, hat in his hand, breath steady but not calm. He closes the door and stays standing.
“You should be asleep,” I say.
“So should you.” He looks at me to see how much of me is still here. “I bring a rumor.”
“Since when do you trade in rumors?”
“Since the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket.” He sits on my guest chair on the other side of the desk.
“Say it.”
“The attempt on your life. Vitaly.” He shrugs. “Evidently, it was revenge, according to the grapevine. One year to the day since you went to your club and chose a scarred woman from the floor.”
“Who says this?”
“Vitaly’s guy, Lorenzo. He likes to talk when he drinks, and he was at Fernando’s tonight, running his mouth.” He clears his throat like he doesn’t want to say it. “The scarred woman you hooked up with was Mina Harbor. Vitaly’s ex-girl.”
I sit back, hands flat. “Fuck.”
“You didn’t know,” Fyodor says.
“No. I never got her name, and he didn’t tell me.”
“He would not,” Fyodor says. “He would expect you to know without asking.” He swallows the rest. Then, “There is more. About her.”
“Go on.”
“She has children. Twin sons. Alexander and Yuri.” He pauses, before his voice drops. “About three months old.”
The math is quick. One year since the night at Rope. Three months since birth. I do not need a calendar.
Mina wanted very specific revenge on Vitaly. That being the case, I know I’m the only man she slept with that night. I’m the only one who would insult him enough to satisfy her vengeance quest. That was cold of her. I respect it.
But since I’m the only man she slept with that night, those twins are mine.
He waits, then offers the clean path. “We can make it certain without asking. Quietly. A lab. Something from the trash. A swab. It keeps you from being wrong in public.”
“No.”
“It is safer.”
“It is cowardice. I was there. I know what I did. I do not need paper to tell me those infants are my own. We will act as if they are mine because they are.”
