Page 10 of Chosen By the BRATVA Grump

Teplov begins with the version where he doesn’t know what this is about. I let him get four sentences in, then take his left hand, spread it flat on the bench, and break the smallest finger.

The noise he makes goes up into the roof and comes back down again.

“Names,” I say.

He gives me three, then a fourth he’d been saving when I take his ring finger in the palm of my hand. Mechislav writes them on the back of a job sheet.

“You no longer work for us,” I say. His face changes from pained to desperate.

“No,” he begs. “I need this job.”

“Then why were you working for Keplov?” I demand. “Taking his shit across the bridge in Federov vans?”

“It was just two birds with one stone, man,” he whines. “I got a kid on the way…” he trails off when I lift an eyebrow.

“I’m not in the business of second chances,” I say.

Sheremet finds him a bag of frozen peas from the crib room, which is more hospitality than I’d have offered.

Outside, Mechislav is standing with his hands on his hips.

“Everything okay?” he asks, and actually sounds like he means it.

I look at him through my shades. “Of course I’m okay, why do you ask?”

He shrugs his shoulders and lifts his chin in a non-committal way. “No reason, you just seem off your game.”

“Off my game?” I demand. “What the hell does that mean?”

He doesn’t answer me. Instead he asks, “Have you gone soft on me, cousin?”

I don’t hold my fist back. It connects with his jaw and he spins on the spot, losing his balance and falling to the floor. We always fought as kids growing up. Sparring, wrestling, honing our skills. I’m surprised he didn’t see it coming.

“Slav,” I say, almost in surprise. “Are you going soft?”

He grins up at me, his teeth bloody. “Thought I’d let you have that one. That’s how I know I’m right.”

“Asshole,” I call him. “You coming to the opening, then?”

My apartment takes eleven minutes with the traffic running the other way. I shower the smell of primer out of my hair and stand in front of a closet that holds work clothes and one charcoal suit from Eduard’s tailor, that I wore to his wedding, it’s not a tuxedo, but it is smart and made to fit me perfectly. I put it on with a dark shirt and a darker tie and the shoes I keep polished.

When I empty my jacket pockets onto the bed, her thong is in the left one, pale pink, exactly where I put it last night. I’ve carried that scrap of fabric with me since the moment I peeled it from her body. I harden instantly. Annoyingly.

The gallery at twenty past one is loud enough that I can hear it from the sidewalk.

There are forty people in there, maybe more, wine in most hands. Kimmie is at the far end in the gray skirt with her hair coming down at one side, talking to an older couple, using both hands to describe something to them and making them laugh.

Then I’m three steps inside the room, and the volume drops by about a third.

Two women by the cheese boards stop mid-sentence. A man I recognize from the corner store puts his hand on his friend’s elbow and says something into his ear without moving his eyes off me. Somebody’s phone comes up, angled down at their hip in a way they believe is subtle. A boy of about nine stares at me with open admiration until his mother turns him around by the shoulders.

I’ve been walking into rooms like this my whole adult life. It has never once bothered me. It bothers me now, because it’s happening in hers.

Kimmie sees me. Whatever her face does first, she puts a smile over the top of it, crosses the floor, and says brightly, for the room, “You came! Perfect timing. Let me show you the piece in the back.”

Then she has me by the sleeve in the corridor by the storeroom, between a mop and four rolls of bubble wrap, and she isn’t smiling anymore.

“What are you doing?” she whispers.