One word. Flat and final, saying everything she didn’t put in it.
Something uneasy turns over in my gut.
“Is he giving you trouble?”
“He’s my brother. It’s complicated.” She pulls the blanket over her lap, fingers picking at a loose thread.
She’s doing it again. Smoothing the edges off something sharp, packing it down tight so it fits inside a sentence that sounds likenothing. Like if she keeps her voice steady enough, I won’t notice what she’s actually saying.
“Nat.”
“It’s fine. I can handle him for one day.”
The way she sayshandlemakes my jaw tighten. “What does ‘handle him’ mean?”
“It means what it means.” She meets my eyes. “I let him say what he says, I don’t argue, and he leaves.”
My fingers curl against my thigh. The anger is building, but it’s not the blind-rage kind. It’s the cold kind. The kind that settles into your bones and waits.
“He doesn’t get to come into your space and make you feel like that.”
She sighs, resigned. “It’s not that simple.”
“You said that on the beach, too.” I don’t let up. “But you shouldn’t have to just absorb it because it’s what he’s always done.”
“Johnny, please.” There’s an edge to it now. Not anger. Fatigue. The kind that comes from explaining a thing so many times that the words have gone meaningless and smooth, like river stones. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” I push off the counter and cross to the couch, settling onto the opposite end. Giving her space, but not the whole room anymore. “Because every time I ask, you hand me the safe version.” I keep my voice level, but I hold her stare. “That was before I watched you fold in half from a sixty-second phone call. So I’m asking again. What is this, really?”
She looks away. Toward the window, toward the black water outside. Her throat works once, twice. The silence stretches long enough that I think she’s going to shut me out entirely, rebuild the wall and plaster over the cracks.
Then something shifts. Not a dramatic collapse. Just a loosening. Her shoulders drop half an inch. Her fingers stop shredding the blanket thread. And when she speaks, her voice is quiet. Careful in a different way now, like she’s choosing each word knowing she can’t take it back.
“Nikolai isn’t just difficult.” She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at her own hands. “He’s cruel. He has been since we were kids. He enjoys it, the way some people enjoy crossword puzzles or golf. It’s recreational for him.”
My back teeth grind together. I can feel the muscles in my forearms tighten, readying for action. I don’t even know this guy, and I already want to break something that belongs to him.
She pauses. Her mouth opens, closes. Whatever she’s chewing on, she’s not done with it yet. So I keep my mouth shut and let her get there.
“But Nikolai isn’t the problem. He’s just the one who shows up.” Her mouth thins. “My father is the reason I can’t do anything about it. He doesn’t just control things. He hurts people. It’s what he does, it’s what he’s good at, and he doesn’t make exceptions for family.”
The beach house feels less cozy now. More like what it actually is: a box on stilts at the edge of the continent, miles from anything, with a girl inside it who’s been put here by people who hurt her.
“Jesus, Nat. That’s not a family. That’s a prison.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she exhales, slow and deliberate, like she’s letting go of something she’s been white-knuckling for years.
“My father’s in a business where people don’t get to leave. Where the things he does to strangers, he’ll do to his own blood if it serves him. He runs things in Las Vegas. The kind of things that don’t show up on tax returns.”
Las Vegas. My skin prickles. A faint pressure builds at the base of my skull, like a door straining against a lock.
“What kind of things?”
She holds my stare. The blanket is bunched in her fists now, knuckles white.
“My father runs the Russian mafia in Las Vegas.” Her voice is toneless. Almost eerily so. “And my brother is his right hand, and tomorrow he’s coming here, and I need you to understand that these are not people you stand up to.” Her voice drops to almost nothing. “These are people you survive.”
Russian mafia. Las Vegas.
