Page 56 of Hold the Line

He stumbles several steps before catching himself. “How did you find me?”

I walk past him without answering.

The apartment is small and badly furnished, the kind of place rented by someone who never expected to call it home. On the kitchen counter sit two bottles of vodka, one half-empty and one still sealed. A used glass beside them tells me where the missing half of the first bottle went.

“Sit.”

He watches me, searching for the authority he once carried so easily, but the alcohol and the years have hollowed it out. Eventually, he drops into the armchair beside the coffee table. “Son,” he begins.

I bring two glasses from the kitchen, fill one from the open bottle, and set it in front of him. I pour less into the second and sit opposite him, holding it loosely near my knee. “Drink.”

His gaze moves from my face to the glass. “What is this?”

“I said drink.”

The instinct he beat into both of us answers before pride can stop him. He raises the glass with an unsteady hand and empties it, grimacing as he swallows. I refill it immediately.

The remaining half of the first bottle disappears quickly. Sergei drinks while trying to convince himself this is a reunion, and his suspicion fades as the alcohol drags him deeper beneath its surface. “You think you are better than me?” he asks in Russian, his words already thickening. “You come into my home dressed like some American gangster and order me around?”

He takes another drink before continuing. “You are nothing. You hide behind that loud American whore and your mother’s skirts, but she was mine and always will be. That boy will leave you too. Everyone does.”

I open the second bottle, and the crack of the seal cuts sharply through the room.

Sergei smiles when I fill his glass again, mistaking my silence for surrender. “That is better. Sit with your father. Drink like a man.”

I lift my glass in a shallow imitation of a toast. He is too drunk to notice that it never reaches my mouth.

“You are weak,” he says after another swallow. “Pathetic, just like I always told you. People cheer for you now, and you think that changes what you are?”

I continue pouring. The second bottle empties one glass at a time while his insults lose their shape and his tongue grows heavy. His face becomes a mottled, unhealthy red, and when he tries to set the glass down, he misses the table before catching the rim with an irritated grunt.

Eventually, the venom shifts into memories.

“Do you remember when you were six?” he asks, leaning forward as though sharing a cherished family story. “You cried because I hit your mother too hard and tried to fight me with those little fists.” His laugh is wet and ugly. “I knocked you across the room. You learned quickly after that. Good boy.”

Nothing says good father like teaching a six-year-old that love looks like bruises and broken ribs. I keep my expression neutral while he empties another glass.

“And the closet,” he continues, his eyes brightening with drunken nostalgia. “You talked back, so I locked you inside. Your mother begged me to let you out and cried on her knees like a weak little bitch, but you needed the lesson.”

For an instant, I can smell the dust beneath the closet door and feel my small hands pressed against wood that would not move. I can hear my mother crying somewhere beyond it while I tried to become quiet enough to disappear.

“I made you strong,” Sergei says.

I fill his glass again. He drinks because I am finally listening and because every swallow convinces him I have returned to him.

“You remember the snow?” he asks. “Barefoot because you looked at me wrong. Your feet turned blue, but eventually you stopped crying. That was when I knew there was something worth saving in you.”

When the second bottle empties, I rise and retrieve another from the cabinet. The crack of the new seal makes him flinch, and his glassy eyes follow me back to the chair.

“Viktor…”

“We are not finished.”

Vodka spills across his fingers when he reaches for the next glass, but he drinks anyway, swallowing with visible effort. “You are my son,” he tries to say. The words drag against one another. “I made you strong. I made you…”

You made me into the man who is going to watch you die.

His head begins to loll as his breathing turns shallow and uneven, punctuated by wet clicks at the back of his throat. One hand grips the armchair as though it is the only thing keeping him upright. The pride is slipping away now, leaving behind something smaller and far less impressive.