Four days after we arrived and on day three of Winter Wonderland, we were halfway done with our Van Gogh jigsaw puzzle.
Ten inches of fluffy snow had fallen, and although that was nothing of consequence in these parts of New York, the temperature dropped below freezing and kept the snow on the ground. No melting happened. We weren’t exactly snowed in, and we didn’t lose power. Kirill said at least it wasn’t cold enough to worry about the pipes bursting. Despite my initial perception of him—that he was just a spoiled bratva king whohad his lackeys do the dirty work for him, Kirill was actually a handyman. He’d fixed a squeaky floorboard that had been driving me crazy; he’d tuned up the generator just in case the power went out, plus he was at ease keeping the fire going. The brutal winters he’d lived through in Russia had honed his survival instincts.
He was a terrible jigsaw puzzle player though, and I knew he was simply humoring me. I tried to make it more fun, so I made it into a contest. Whoever reached fifty pieces first got to ask a personal question. Then, each round was reset. That was why, four nights later, we were only halfway done. Plus, of course, Kirill’s condition of sex every quarter finished. And that was not the only time he’d fucked me. We had sex in every corner of the cabin. In fact, I told him my pussy was too sore already, not to mention my limbs seemed to be in eternal exercise.
“You’re just dying to at least ask one question,” I teased.
“I’m sure it’ll be better than the last one you asked,” he shot back.
The question being: “What was the dumbest thing you did in your teens?”
He’d taken a while to answer it. And I asked him if it was because he’d done so many idiotic things that it was hard to choose one, but he answered arrogantly that it was the opposite. Finally, he said, it was when he put laxative in their brigadier’s food because he punished Kolya for defying an order. He’d been thirteen then. Kirill got caught of course and was banished to a military camp to polish soldiers’ boots.
As for me, it was many little things. A rite of passage. Like coloring my hair bottle blonde simply because Mamma told me not to. It ruined the texture of my hair, and I had to cut it short to regrow. Basically, some of the dumbest things I did was to annoy my mother only to realize that she had my best interests at heart. She just wasn’t very good at the delivery.
“Okay, since obviously I’m better at jigsaw puzzles and you haven’t asked at least one question in the past ten we had, how about you ask one?”
His face expressed surprise, but he quickly asked, “First job?”
“Define ‘job.’”
He thought for a moment. “One that paid, not the internship kind.”
I thought for a moment, then I laughed. “Even one where I got fired after one week?”
His eyes gleamed with interest. “Yes, I want to hear about that one.”
“So, Dad suggested since I was a bookworm but needed help with organization that I try working at a bookstore. True crime was a popular section, so I thought of a catchier category and I organized them underhow to get away with murder.”
Kirill visibly stilled. Then his eyes crinkled at the corners before he threw back his head and laughed.
“You’re not laughing because I got fired?” I asked indignantly.
“No, Lusenka.” He had tears in his eyes, and his entire face turned a shade of red. “I’m just surprised given your sense of justice for mafia victims. Tell me, what would you have done if you had managed to kill me?”
“Ugh, you had to bring that up. That wasn’t funny.”
“It is,” he insisted. “We have to laugh about it, baby. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, our relationship will always have a sense of the macabre because of who we are.”
“What? Like the Addams family?”
“Surprisingly, I know that one,” Kirill admitted. Since he didn’t watch television or movies a lot and didn’t grow up with a normal childhood, many pop culture references went over his head. Aralina had helped to make sure he wasn’t totally in the dark. “Kolya and I were quite entertained by the comic strip.”
Something Kirill said reminded me of what I overheard Zio Luca tell Dom. That I had a little criminal in me and I just had to come into my own time and accept it.
“So tell me what you would have done, hmm?” he prodded.
“I don’t know. My first instinct would be to call Dom, and then we could go from there. I’d assume a new identity.”
“I’m glad I didn’t die.”
I laughed. I laughed because Kirill reached out and caressed my cheek tenderly. “Me too.”
“I was never afraid to die, Lucy, but I don’t want you to go into hiding. The thought that you would have to do that after killing me hurts me more. Now, I want to live and spend more time with you. Which is why I’m glad I didn’t die.”
My mind was spinning with what he was telling me. It was so overwhelming. Complex emotions that weren’t defined as love in his mind, but for me the glaring signs were there. Did I really need the words? “So how about you? First job?”
He appeared disappointed that we hadn’t pursued more of this line of conversation. But these were supposed to be fun icebreaker questions. Not a discussion of life and death.
