21. Nikolai
TWENTY-ONE
Nikolai
I stare across the table at my father. He’s wearing the nice suit he’d bought the other day, he has a new haircut, his beard is trimmed, and he’s even wearing fucking cologne.
Underneath all of that, I can still smell the alcohol.
“Why did you call me here?” I ask, looking around the small private room of the restaurant. I eye the corners, but I don’t see obvious cameras, and I can’t imagine my father would invite me to any location that’s surveilled.
My father scoffs. “Can’t I want to speak with my son?” he asks in Russian.
“No,” I say, and it’s surprisingly hard to keep my voice steady. “You never do.” I don’t want to sound like a little bitch, but it’s not like him to simply want to talk. “If this has something to do with the girl…”
What? What will I say or do if this does have something to do with Sierra?
“The girl?” My father’s eyes narrow. “Why do you mention her?”
“No reason,” I say quickly. “What do you want?”
“To enjoy a meal of good Russian food with my son!” my father says. Then he sighs and leans back in his chair. “You think I’m a bad father.”
“That would be because you are a bad father,” I retort. “You barely tolerated me growing up. You barely tolerate me now.”
There’s no sense in him even pretending he wants to be near me.
“I treated you better than your whore mother did,” he snaps back. He clutches the napkin tight in his fingers. “She left us, left you . I was the one who stayed behind and took care of you.”
“Even though you didn’t abandon me, that doesn’t mean you did a good job raising me,” I mutter, but maybe I’m being childish. Maybe I should be more grateful he didn’t give me up for adoption or leave me out on the street to die. “So yeah. What the fuck do you want, old man?”
“I’m doing right by you,” he answers. He drops the napkin and picks up his beer. After a long swallow, he continues. “Despite everything, you’re my son.”
“Doing right by me how, exactly?” I ask, taking a large gulp of my own beer. “All I’m hearing right now is bullshit.”
“I am going to keep you alive. That’s all a man can do.” My father looks me in the eyes. “Cut ties with baby Voronkov. Leave the city.”
I blink at him. I know he hates that I’ve thrown in with Kotya, but to tell me to cut ties and leave? That’s some next level bullshit right there. “Um. No.”
He glares at me. “You aren’t hearing me. You need to leave, if you know what’s good for you.”
“I’m hearing you just fine, but I’m not going to upend my entire life on some vague warnings,” I tell him hotly. “So unless you want to tell me what’s going on, I’m not going anywhere. I have a good life here—without you, without your influence.”
What the fuck would I do in some random city, without Kotya or Yuri or Sierra?
My father’s scowl turns uglier. “Kolya! I am telling you this for your own good. Listen to your father.”
“Maybe I’d listen to my father if he’d tried to help me at any other moment in my life,” I hiss at him. “If you’re going to tell me to leave, at least tell me why.”
He won’t. I know he won’t. Despite everything, he expects me to jump at his command.
My father stands up and slams his hands on the table. “I am telling you this to save your life, you stupid boy. You will be able to return! We will both win. But you need to go now, before…” He trails off.
I stare up at him. “Before what?” I ask, dread starting to override some of my anger. “What do you know? What aren’t you telling me?”
He shakes his head. “Never mind that.”
“Never mind? Never mind ?” I burst out. “You ignore me for years, barely even making sure I had food and clothing. You pretty much kick me out when I’m eighteen because that’s how you had it. You let me get involved in a life you’re now telling me to get out of, and you won’t tell me why. You’ve done nothing for me but let me dig myself deep, and I’m not fucking sorry that I found—” I break off. I’m not telling him that I found a family in Konstantin. “You’re lucky I bother with you at all, old man.”
“I’m not telling you to get out,” he argues, but I’m done.
I push away from the table, flip him off, and head out of our private room. The server who was about to bring us our food steps aside, startled, as I rush past her and out into the New Bristol streets.
When I get to my car, I throw the door open and slip inside, slamming my fists against the steering wheel.
He’s a goddamn motherfucking piece of shit. That’s all. He might’ve impregnated my mother, but he’s not my father—not in any way that counts. He never has been, and he never will be.
His vague, stupid warnings to get out have pinged my radar, and I’ll tell Konstantin about them because they do not bode well, but for now, I need to let off steam. I wish I was the gym-going type, where I could beat the fuck out of some punching bag, but all I want to do is go back inside and punch that smug bastard in the face instead.
I turn my key in the ignition, needing to get out of here before I decide to pummel him until he tells me what he knows.
I race off, barely missing two cars along the way, and I try to think of where I can go.
The only place I can think of is home—Konstantin’s, the place I’ve felt comfortable for the past few years, the place I’m not going to abandon no matter what my piss-poor excuse for a dad tells me.
The only person I can think of who could possibly help me is Sierra.
I’m not the type to tell people when I’m upset. I’d rather avoid my problems entirely.
But that hasn’t worked out so well for me in the past, and I doubt it’s going to work out particularly well for me right now. I need to talk, and the desperate urge of it almost has me calling her. I don’t, though. I’m barely able to drive as it is, and if I try to express any of this in words while I’m on my way back, I’m liable to get myself killed.
I get onto the grounds, past the gate, and into the garage without incident—somehow—and I stalk inside without a word to any of the guards. It’s not like me to be unfriendly and rude, but I have tunnel vision. The only person I want to see had better be available, because I will drag her out of Konstantin or Yuri’s rooms without a second thought if I have to.
I don’t know when I started needing her so much.
I find her alone in her room, typing away with that intensity she gets when she’s working on something, but I’m inside and closing the door before I can think about it.
“Sierra,” I rasp, and I realize that for some fucking reason, I’m holding back tears.
She blinks up at me, and whatever she sees in my expression has her closing her laptop and setting it aside.
Now that I’m here, I’m not sure if I want to talk or fuck, but I’d probably end up hurting her in the state I’m in.
Hurting her, or hurting the baby that very well could be my blood.
I will never, ever abandon them.
I will be the father I never had.
I go to her, sitting on the bed next to her before pulling her into my lap. I bury my face against her neck, breathing in her scent and trying to calm the fuck down.
She starts to tentatively stroke my hair, and I let her. “Hey,” she says, her voice quiet and cautious.
I don’t answer. I cling to her, though, feeling like a child for it but unable to make myself pull away.
This isn’t like me.
This isn’t like me at all.
But maybe it’s time for me to stop running away from the truth, from my truth, and finally admit to myself that I’ve been fucked over by life for so long that it doesn’t even surprise me anymore.
“Don’t leave,” I mumble to her.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sierra tells me. She snorts. “I should, but the three of you are too deep under my skin. I’m not…” Sighing, she goes quiet for several long moments, to the point where I’m sure she’s not going to continue talking. Then she says, “I couldn’t.”
“Good,” I say. “I’m not leaving either.”
That seems to take her aback, because she’s silent again. Thinking, probably. Trying to make sense of this mess I’ve thrown her into without warning. “Is that what this is about? Thinking someone wants you to leave? Because I don’t think they do.”
I shake my head, still unable to bring myself to pull back and meet her gaze. “No. No, I don’t either.”
I sure as fuck hope not, anyway, because I am all in no matter what my piece of shit father says.
Fuck him for trying to get me to turn my back on Konstantin. I’d say I don’t care what reasons he gives, but that would imply he’d given me any reason at all—not that I think anything he could’ve said would’ve changed my mind.
I need to talk to Konstantin because somewhere in those words was a warning I can’t make sense of, but I can’t bring myself to move away from Sierra.
“You want to talk about it?” Sierra eventually asks, stroking my hair.
No. Not really. But I find myself saying anyway, “He’s such a dick, Sierra.”
“Around here, you’ll have to be more specific,” she says, and despite the dry humor in her voice, her tone is gentle.
I snort, relieved for the break in my misery. “My dad.”
“Ahh,” she says, and strange as it is, I think she understands even though she’d seemed to be all over him. “I never told you,” she murmurs, as though reading what I’m thinking, “that I was only trying to find out why he’s dressing up. I forgot to tell you and Kotya both.”
I blink up at her. “You were what?”
I think back to the day in town, when she’d been flirting with my father hard enough to make me want to gag, and I realize that I’d missed something that should’ve been obvious. Her carefully laid questions… and the way he’d pegged her as too clever for her own good.
She nods. “But tell me what happened this time. I’ve never seen you this upset.”
I breathe out, kissing her throat again. It would be so easy to get distracted with her body, and it’s tempting to do that. But there’s something in me that’s bursting to get out, and I can’t stop myself from saying, “He wants me to get out. Leave town, or some shit. He hates Kotya.” My lips twist into a sneer. “Not as much as I hate him .”
“Yeah, he didn’t seem like father of the year material,” she says quietly.
I laugh at that. “You could say that. Or you could say that he was an abusive piece of shit who barely even tolerated me. My mother… She ran off, left both of us behind.” I grip her upper arms. “You have to promise not to do that, Sierra. You can’t leave us all behind.”
“If I leave, the baby’s coming with me,” she says too calmly, calmly enough to where I wonder if she’s thinking of leaving.
“Thanks, I think,” I tell her, my voice barely shy of bitter.
Shrugging, Sierra replies, “If Kotya pulls that shit again, and if you two decide to go along with it, I’m out. I’m not going to be a part of that. I don’t care what I have to do.”
I believe her. “What about your dad?” I ask, partially to change the subject and partially because I’m curious about what kind of man raised her.
Her fingers go still in my hair. “I…” She sighs, and I pull back again to look at her. “He tried, I guess. With me, anyway. My brothers were fucked because they were male. It wasn’t until I was older that I really saw him for what he was.” It’s her turn to grimace. “And a lot of that happened because I was stupid enough to be caught trying to contact Yura.”
“Yura?” I repeat, confused.
She nods, her cheeks flushing red. “He visited, and I was fascinated. I found his phone number, and I was going to text him to see if he wanted to… I don’t know, go on a date or something.”
I don’t speak, letting her sort through her thoughts.
“He got so mad, Nikolai,” she whispers. “My dad. I’ve never seen that side of him, but he lost his shit at me. I didn’t go back home for a while after because I was scared of what I’d seen.”
“Then Yura ended up in jail,” I say, putting the pieces together at last.
She nods again. “Yeah,” she rasps. “It was all my fault. Yura wasn’t wrong to blame me for it, honestly.” She forces a smile. “I wish Yura hadn’t responded like he had when he got out of jail, obviously, but yeah.”
I exhale slowly. “Yeah.” I feel calmer than I had when I got home, and I tell her slowly, “I should tell Kotya about what happened.”
“Yeah,” she replies. She touches my chin, getting me to tilt my head up so she can brush her lips against mine. “If your dad wants you out, something’s definitely going on.”
“Not that I think he really gives a fuck if anything happens to me,” I mutter. “But he’s up to something.”
I just wish I knew what.