5. Nikolai
FIVE
Nikolai
I want to fuck Sierra.
Unfortunately, she’s still recovering from the gunshot wound— thanks, Yuri— so Sierra is currently off limits.
I should go find somebody else to fuck. There are plenty of women who hang about our businesses, and if I’m not picky, there are always bars and clubs.
“I’m heading out,” I tell Konstantin, who barely even grunts in response. He’s too busy trying to detangle the files Sierra got from Don Marino, as if he can figure it out without Sierra’s help.
I hop in my car and start driving, fully intending to go to a strip club or a bar or maybe the club we use to distribute drugs.
I end up at my father’s house instead.
I could back out of the driveway and go somewhere else instead, but the old man will have already been alerted to my presence. He might be retired—or as retired as anyone in this life can be—but he has no plans of getting blindsided by anything.
I get out of the car, locking it and shoving my keys into my pocket as I stride toward the front door. I wave at the camera by the doorbell before knocking.
It takes a few moments before my old man opens the front door. He’s wearing sweats and a t-shirt, and is holding a lit cigarette.
“Why are you here?” he asks suspiciously. “Did your mother die?”
I scoff at him. “Is that the only reason I could have for wanting to drop by?” I ask, but we both know I’m stalling because I never just drop by. I sigh, my shoulders slumping. “No, she’s still alive.” As far as I know, anyway.
He takes a drag of the cigarette and exhales the smoke almost directly in my face. I wrinkle my nose but don’t say anything.
“Fine,” he says, stepping aside. “Maybe you can answer some of my questions too.”
I stop, taken aback. “Questions about what?”
“Inside, boy,” he orders me.
I grumble, but he’s not wrong to be careful. I step past him into a house that smells like cigarette smoke has been absorbed into the walls and is exuding the smell. He leads me down the hall into the living room, and I glance at the TV. He’d been watching some show I don’t recognize, but at least he’d been willing to put it aside for a few minutes.
“What questions do you have?” I ask suspiciously.
He sits down in the well-worn recliner. The table next to it has several empty bottles of beer on it, as well as an ashtray full of ashes and cigarette butts.
“I heard some strange things from my buddies,” he says vaguely. “Something about a big shake-around in Benton.”
“Shake up,” I correct automatically, which gets me a glare from my father. I glare back. If he doesn’t want me to correct his English, he could say all this in Russian instead. “Yes. There was an assassination attempt on some of the major players in Benton.”
I sit down on the threadbare couch. I should care more about the attempt that Konstantin was dragged into, but all I can think of is Sierra’s body lying there with blood spilling from the wound in her chest.
I drag in a breath, then cough when it brings so much cigarette smoke into my lungs. It’s a wonder my father isn’t fucking dead yet.
“So the Americans?—”
“Italians,” I interrupt.
“Stop interrupting, boy!” my father snaps. “And they are as Italian as you are Russian.”
The words are like a slap to the face, and I grit my teeth to keep from snapping at him that he’s nothing more than a pathetic old man whose opinion doesn’t fucking matter. “Go on,” I say in a carefully measured voice.
“The Americans, they hosted a big party, and somehow the host perishes?” He takes another drag of the cigarette. “Sloppy. Very sloppy. That would not have happened on my watch.”
I look pointedly at him in his pajamas to the television. “I can tell nothing would get by you,” I snipe.
“Sarcasm is lazy,” he answers. “In my youth, I was one of Voronkov’s most feared enforcers. They whispered my name with awe and dread.”
I’ve heard this story many times before. I used to be impressed by him and his stories, but these days, I can see through a lot of the bluster.
If he was such a great and trusted enforcer, why did Konstantin’s father send him to New Bristol? Igor Voronkov would have kept anyone truly useful directly by his side.
Which is why Konstantin keeps me close.
Maybe I hadn’t been his second-in-command at first, but with Yuri gone, he’d come to rely on me—and now I’m indispensable.
“And now they don’t even know what your name is, old man,” I mutter. “Did you have questions or not?”
“Wondering what Baby Voronkov is doing now.” My father snuffs out his cigarette. “He’s going to destroy everything Petrov and I worked for, with how things are going.”
I let out an exasperated, impatient sound. “Konstantin isn’t destroying anything,” I argue. “It’s not his fault he’s having to clean up Petrov’s messes along with everything else.”
Though I have to admit, at least to myself, that Konstantin has been noticeably distracted. We’ve been figuring out who we can trust, and it’s hard enough to keep our businesses running as they were before Petrov got arrested—never mind expanding them.
My father snorts in disbelief, but he doesn’t comment anymore. He goes back to watching his Russian talk show, and for a while we sit in silence.
It’s similar to how we spent afternoons when I was a teenager and still living here.
During a commercial break, my father gets up to get another beer from the kitchen. When he returns, he stares at me. “So? Why are you here? Not to sit on my couch.”
He’s not wrong about that. I wouldn’t willingly come and sit on his couch and breathe in this poison. I could do that at any club with a beautiful woman at my side without dealing with a cranky old man.
“Why were you with my mother?” I ask.
My father’s expression changes. “Why are you asking that now? She left us.”
I grit my teeth. I don’t need the reminder that she left us, but at the same time, maybe I do need to remember that that’s what women do. “There is a woman,” I say, surprising myself. “There shouldn’t be.”
My father barks out a laugh. “There is a woman? There are many women! There should be many women. They are good for one thing: fucking.” After a pause, he adds, “And maybe cleaning.”
I try to imagine telling Sierra that she needs to start cleaning up around the mansion and snort. “No, she’s not the cleaning type.” But she’s definitely good for fucking, even if it seems like Konstantin and Yuri are interested in more than that. They don’t seem like they want other women, either, which isn’t something I understand.
Or do I?
Do I actually want someone else to fuck, or am I fooling myself?
“So fuck her, but don’t marry her.” My father scowls. “Never marry. They will attempt to take all your money.”
Konstantin will end up marrying her.
I’m sure of that, but I won’t tell my father. There are some things that don’t need to get back to Konstantin’s father. He probably knows more than he should about Sierra. That can’t be helped, but like hell am I going to make this worse for us.
“I’m never getting married,” I say, and the words are both a relief and a weight all at once.
My father nods approvingly and gets back into his recliner. “Good, good. They are all cheating whores anyway. You will end up raising some other man’s child.” He laughs. “Better to impregnate another man’s girlfriend, so he has to pay child support.”
I nearly choke on my laugh. Yeah, I think it’s safe to say I’ll end up knocking up someone else’s girlfriend—or is that the way it works if the woman in question technically has three boyfriends?
Something occurs to me, though, and I frown at him. “You heard about everything that happened in Benton?”
He gives me a sly look. “You think I am old and don’t know things? I have many friends, Kolya. They whisper things to me about what shit you step into.”
I grimace at the nickname. He uses that name when he wants to be demeaning. It’s one of the reasons I told everybody never to call me that. There’s no sense in getting angry about him spying on me—partially because that’s how he is, but mostly because he’s spying on Konstantin and I just happen to be in the picture.
“Yeah? Which friends?” I challenge him. “I might need to tell Igor Aleksandrovich his people have loose lips.”
I use Voronkov Senior’s name and patronymic because I know my father respects him a lot more than he respects Konstantin, no matter how stupid that seems to me. But my father retired long before Konstantin took over, so he doesn’t know Konstantin like I do.
My father barks out a harsh laugh. “Why do you think I keep up with what you are doing? Igor Voronkov thanks me for my information.” Then he narrows his eyes. “I am telling you this only because you are my son. Don’t be too quick to tie yourself to Baby Voronkov.”
“He’s not a ‘baby’ anything,” I snap at him. I wonder how many of Konstantin’s men are reporting back to his father, too. If I thought my father would tell me, I’d ask more, but he’d just sneer at me and laugh some more. “Which you would know if you were actually paying attention to what you’re learning instead of gossiping about it like an old woman.”
“I am looking out for you! Putting in good words for my useless son.” My father’s expression gets harsher, and his Russian accent thickens as he continues, “You want to be big man in this world, but you don’t belong in it. You are playing at being gangster. Baby Voronkov, he doesn’t have half the balls his father does. The next time his father comes to inspect the businesses, you should be far away.”
My hands ball up into fists at my sides. “Yeah? And when is that going to be? Since you know so much?”
He shrugs. “None of my business. I am old and retired.”
I scowl at him, but I’m done dealing with his riddles and disrespect toward Konstantin. I get to my feet. “Thanks for being helpful, I guess,” I mutter.
I get up and start for the front door.
Halfway there, my father shouts, “Do not be left with the nose!”
I have to mentally translate the expression back to Russian before I understand what he’s saying.
Don’t be duped.
Duped? By who or what?
I leave without responding, and again, I consider going to one of the clubs to find company.
I don’t want random company, though.
I want Sierra’s company.
I think about the conversation with my father the entire drive home. I know I’ll need to tell Konstantin about it later on, but that can wait.
Instead of finding him, I seek out Sierra instead. She’s in her room alone, fast asleep. I should leave her alone and let her rest—to recover so I can start fucking her again—but I crawl into the bed behind her. I bury my face in her hair, breathing in the scent of the shampoo Konstantin bought for her, and wrap my arms around her.
She stirs slightly with a sleepy, “Hmm?”
“Shh,” I murmur to her. “Go back to sleep.”
“Nikolai?” She turns her head, her bleary eyes trying to focus on me.
I feel like I’ve been caught doing something wrong. “Yeah,” I tell her. “Just… wanted company. Shut up and sleep, or whatever.”
Sierra makes a groggy but amused sound, and she nods. “Good night, Nikolai.”
“Good night, Sierra.”
I wait for her to drift off again, her breathing evening out, then I slide my hand down her stomach. I can’t feel a baby bump or anything yet, but I know it’ll be there soon. My father had said to impregnate someone else’s girlfriend, and it’s possible I’ve done that.
Not that it matters. The child is Konstantin’s.
I wish I knew how I felt about that.