The name means nothing to me, but Mama says it like it’s a forbidden curse word I wasn’t supposed to know about. She’s grasping my hands painfully tight now, her knuckles white.
My father nods seriously.
“Zhukov was a friend of your brothers. We always knew he was a bad influence, coming from a family of lower-class workers the way he did. We thought he could be trusted… but we should have known better than to believe scum like him.”
My father’s face takes on a faraway look as he gets into the rhythm of his story. I struggle to piece it together. I’ve never heard about this person before, not ever.
“There was a whole group of them that I never should have trusted. They were hard workers, made their way into the most trusted levels of the docks, handling our most precious artworks and shipments. And then those slimy fuckers started scheming against me.”
I have never heard my father swear like this before.This is something different, I realize. My father is angry.
“Maksim… This is our daughter you’re speaking to. Remember your manners.”
That is it.
I wrench my hands out of my mother’s bone-crushing grip and pace around the room. I feel like screaming at her, or throwing something.
“I know what swear words are, Mama. For fuck’s sake, someone just tell me what happened!”
“See what you’ve done?” My mother hits my father with the magazine again, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Our daughter is swearing like a sailor because you are, Maksim.”
My father continues speaking, every sentence unravelling another lie they’ve told me.
“Your brothers were old enough to learn how the port worked. I wanted to make sure they would be able to manage it when the time came for them to have power. Zhukov and his gang weren’t happy about that… They believed they could run their own affairs without outsiders like us telling them what to do.”
My father scoffs. “As if the docks would have gotten anything done if we weren’t running the show! They had no idea how to handle the books and make sure everything was as efficient as possible.
“I should have seen their plan coming. They weren’t just greedy, they were determined to gain power. Zhukov was the worst of them. Absolutely willing to do whatever it took if it would land him a little closer to power. There were no limits to what he would do.
“It was late at night, but your brothers were such hard workers,malyshka. They wanted to inspect a large shipment. The second they entered the secure facility, the bomb exploded. Zhukov had set them up. He’d rigged the ship’s fuel tank to explode as soon as the door opened. Your brothers. $500 million worth of irreplaceable, rare artworks. All destroyed in a single second. One single act of greed.”
The understanding stops me in the middle of the room. I slowly turn to face my father, watching the strange anger burning in his eyes.
“They were murdered?”
“Murdered by someone they thought they could trust. And the worst thing was, he tried to blame them for their own deaths. Said that they were somehow involved with the explosive and that it had gone wrong. When all the evidence showed that he’d been the only one in the secure facility that day, the only one who could have possibly rigged the explosive.”
Murdered.
Assassinated.
My brother’s didn’t die in an accident, they died as part of a plot against my family.
“I don’t understand.”
My father’s face softens, his anger falling away.
“I know,malyshka. It’s hard to imagine what must have been going through the mind of a psychopath like that.”
“Not that. I know people can be greedy, the whole Bratva is full of people like this Aleksandr. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.”
“You were so young, Natalia. We didn’t want to scare you.”
He tries to approach me but I back away, across the room.
“Who else knows?”
Papa shoots Mama an uneasy look.
