7. Vitaly
7
VITALY
B y the time I find my mother’s grav e, the mid-morning sun forms beads of sweat beneath the hoodie my hands are tucked into.
I forgot what the winters were like here. When I was a kid, I used to shiver and complain, and my mother would laugh at me before telling me stories of her winters back home. Her family of nine would huddle around a wood stove after a weekend afternoon of skating on the iced pond outside. It was rare that my mother smiled, so I never interrupted, even when it seemed she could go on for hours about such mundane things.
She wore dresses in the wintertime that made me think she was cold-blooded, but now I understand. I understand what it’s like to be truly cold, to feel a bite in my toes so unforgiving I wished they’d fall off.
Now, fifty degrees feels like spring.
I stare at her name carved into the stone.
Nina Ivanov Petrov - Devoted wife and mother
Footsteps crunch on the gravel path, and I tilt my head ever so slightly that way but don’t turn. My eyes stay on my mother’s name.
The person steps up next to me, her perfume drifting with the faint breeze.
“I thought I might find you here.”
I don’t recognize her voice, but when I turn, I spot my aunt’s face.
I haven’t seen Sophie since I was a little boy, long before I was sent away. Her arms are wrapped around herself as she lifts her tight lips, a sadness in her eyes that makes me want to frown. So many people look different, but she looks the same, even after … fifteen years?
I turn back to the grave. “They let you come back.”
Her feet shuffle. “A few years ago when my father died and Nikita took over.”
I nod.
We stand in silence for several moments, Sophie rubbing her arms uncomfortably until she sighs and drops her hands. “What are you doing here, Vitaly?”
I gesture to the stone. “Is it not obvious?”
“I mean in Vegas,” she says impatiently. “It isn’t safe for you here. You must know that.”
“How did you know I was here?”
Did Mila tell her?
Are they friends?
Sisters-in-law as Mila claims?
“Nikita called to warn me. He thinks you’re here to dethrone him and that you’d use me to get to him.”
“Hmm.”
“ Vitaly .”
Taking a deep inhale, I point to the grave. “How did she die?”
Sophie doesn’t answer. I take in her pitiful face, her arms crossed over her chest.
I hold her stare, but the longer she takes to answer, the further my stomach drops until it’s sunk into my feet. I can see the dark truth written in her sullen eyes.
“They killed her,” I say, my voice smooth even as my chest threatens to quake.
Putting Petrov as her last name on the headstone… Devoted wife and mother . I’m surprised the Petrovs allowed it.
Sophie shakes her head, making my eyes constrict with confusion.
“Not exactly, no… I um…” She tucks a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “I wasn’t around when it happened, but Nikita told me about it.”
I turn back to the headstone, my face pinching as I grunt.
“She’s the reason I got to come back, Vitaly. He wouldn’t make up a story about it. Not to me.”
Still facing away from her, I work my jaw. It feels impossible to trust Nikita right now with anything , considering he’ll kill me the second he gets the chance, but I believe Sophie.
She’s Nikita’s twin. The person who’s always been closest to him. It ripped him to shreds when she was disowned by the Petrovs. If there’s one person in the world he trusts, it’s her. If there’s one person he wouldn’t lie to, it’s her.
“Well, as you could probably guess,” Sophie starts. “Nina wasn’t happy when you got arrested for drug possession. Vovachka swore he had nothing to do with it, but everyone close knew it was bullshit and that the Bratva set you up.” She pauses a moment while wringing her hands.
“Nina begged him for years to get you out, and he baited her along, telling her he was working on it. They kicked her out of the house after your father died, but she was still welcomed at family dinners. So one night, she brings a spiked bottle of wine to dinner, and um…” Her hands still, but her nervousness remains. “Vovachka was the first to die. Then his underboss, a few lieutenants…”
“But not Nikita.”
“No.”
My breath shakes with anger as it stirs in my chest.
He killed her. As punishment for his father’s death, he killed my mother.
He’s right to be afraid that I’m coming for him.
“She sat next to him. Your mama always sat next to Nikita at those dinners, and that night, she spilled his glass. Nikita’s certain she did it on purpose.”
My throat rumbles with a scoff.
“You’re forgetting the age gap between your father and Nikita. Our mother was shit. Nina practically raised him. He was a son to her.”
One side of my lips pulls as I laugh at Sophie’s sad attempt at tempering me. I turn to her, my head shaking as her presence here begins to make sense. “Are you trying to use my dead mother to make me spare your twin, Auntie?”
Her lips purse as she glares and stabs her finger at the headstone. “Nikita paid for Nina’s funeral. He didn’t tell a soul other than me about what she’d done because he knew what it would do to her name.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he’s a great guy.”
“He’s…” Sophie’s mouth shuts, and she closes her eyes as she takes in a long breath, her shoulders pulling back.
When her hands tremble, I think it’s out of anger, but her eyes glisten with tears as they open.
“He’s my brother.” Her voice is so full of emotion, it makes me wonder how she could have ever grown up in the Petrov house. How she could ever be Nikita’s twin. “And Vlad was my brother. If I could convince Nikita not to kill you, believe me, I’d be there right now instead of here. But he blames you for Vlad’s death, and he isn’t open to reason. You aren’t safe, and we both know you and him in the same city ends with one of you dead… Please , Vitaly… Just go.”
Just go.
Run like the coward people claim I am.
When I turn away from Sophie, she lets out a defeated whine, like she really thought she could change my mind. Little does she know, I never intended to stay.
Sophie turns to leave, but I speak before she can walk away.
“Did Nikita get married?”
She huffs. “ Nikita ?”
She offers nothing else, which is fair because the idea of Nikita committing to a woman truly is absurd. Many things have changed since I’ve been away, but some things never will.
“Never mind.”
She creeps up to me, laying a hand on my shoulder while staring at the stone with me. “She was a brave woman, Vitaly… I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye.”
When I don’t respond, Sophie takes that as her cue to leave. She gives my shoulder a light pat before walking away.
Once she’s gone, I take a step closer and lower to my knees, my nose inches from my mother’s name. I close my eyes and swear I can smell her perfume. Hear her voice.
She was a good woman. I have many, many fond memories of her.
But in this moment, one memory sticks out amongst the rest.
Vitaly
Fifteen years ago
“Aye!” Mama startles as she turns toward me, hot oil sizzling in the pan at her back. She swats my flour covered hand. “What are you doing? Feeding mice?”
I let out an exasperated sigh and allow my shoulders to sag. “What? What am I doing wrong now?”
“This dough?” She pulls up the dough I was just flattening before wiggling it in front of my face. “Way too thin.” She bundles it up in her palm and tosses it down on the counter. “Try again.”
Throwing my head back, I grind my teeth while glaring up at the ceiling. Mama goes back to the pan while I bring my eyes down to glare at her back.
“Fucking pointless,” I mutter, shaking my head as I go back to the dough on the counter.
Something flat slaps the back of my head and jerks me upright. “Ow.” I touch the back of my head as I turn. “What the hell?”
“ Mouth ,” she chides, stabbing the spatula in my face.
Lowering my hand from my head, I wave it around the kitchen. “Why am I even in here, Mama? What is the point in forcing me to make dinner?”
“Forcing you?” She rolls her eyes and turns around to shut off the burner. When she faces me, she sets the spatula on the counter. “I’m teaching you, synok .”
“Why?” I groan, my nose wrinkled.
She stares at me a few moments, her eyes wide before she puts a hand to her forehead and mutters something under her breath in Russian.
“I get a wife when I turn eighteen, don’t I? There are other things I could be doing now. This is a waste of time.”
“Why do you say it like that?” she asks, her hand falling away from her face.
“Like what?”
“Like you're being gifted slave.”
“Like I’m being gifted a slave. You forgot the article.”
Her narrowed eyes and pursed lips push my grin down.
“Jeez, I’m kidding.”
Instead of continuing her lecture, she bats me out of the way to start rolling out the dough she assigned me to. Her clenched jaw sticks out, and her lips look primed for snapping at the slightest indiscretion.
I consider bolting. She’s giving me an out by taking over my job, so I may as well, but I know she’d only be angrier.
I run my hand through my hair, dusting it with flour, and tap my teeth together while looking between the exit and the pan on the stove.
When Mama’s movements stop, I turn back to her.
“I want you to imagine…” she begins, her voice low. “You’re taken to new country where you barely speak language… You live in new house with new parents and spouse allowed to treat you however they choose… You cook food, you dust house, you live your life as servant, all so you can give life to spoiled boy who believes learning your work is beneath him… Imagine, for moment, what that feels like.”
“Mama…” My hand hovers inches from her arm as I let my mouth hang, unsure of what to say.
I’m sorry .
I’m sorry they did that to you. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me.
She gives a wave of her hand to dismiss whatever I’m about to say then continues with the dough.
“Mama, when I’m Pakhan, you’ll be no one’s servant. You don’t even have to stay here anymore if you really don’t want to. I?—”
“I’m not saying this so you’ll have sympathy for me , synok ,” she says with a heavy sigh, like she’s spent years teaching me a lesson I’ll never learn. “I’m saying this so you’ll have sympathy for your wife .”
“Nina.”
Mama startles at my grandfather, Vova, coming to a standstill in the entryway. His disapproving stare aims her way.
“What are you doing with my grandson?”
When she doesn’t answer, I answer for her.
“Teaching me to cook kushnick.”
Dark shadows occupy his eyes as he stares at Mama. “You’re teaching him to be a woman ?”
“Go, Vitaly,” she tells me, throwing me a glance while continuing to roll the dough. “See if your father needs help with something.”
I look between her and Vova, sweat sticking to my forehead as anxiety rolls down my spine.
“ Now ,” Mama hisses.
I duck my head as I leave, not stopping until I make it to my room.
That night at dinner, I don’t take a bite of my kushnick. My mother’s black eye turns my stomach.
And it’s years later, when I’m sitting in a prison cell, this memory playing through my head, that I realize my mother didn’t want me to find my father so I could help him. She wanted me to find him so he could help her .
Present day
My eyes open as I come out of the memory, shame enveloping me as it has every other time I’ve thought of it. Only now, there’s another piece. Another source nagging at my conscience.
Mila.
She was a girl who came to a new house to be given to a new man to treat her as he pleased. She was supposed to be given the life my mother had. Worse since she was supposed to be married to me.
I could’ve made it better for her. I could’ve protected her. I could’ve raised a son to be better than me, to respect his mother and all she offered.
Instead, I made her life unimaginably worse. She’s right… I destroyed her value, at least what men like my grandfather would give her credit for.
Nikita isn’t the only one who made her a servant, a whore.
I did too.
I became everything my parents feared I’d become.
My eyes clench shut at the pain in my gut, and I lean my forehead against the stone. A long time passes before it feels like I can speak the words I came here to speak. But finally, I sniff, blinking away the sting in my eyes as I open them.
“Forgive me, Mama,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss the stone, my hands gripping the top.
With one last shaky breath, I stand, straighten my hoodie, then head for the gate.
There’s nothing I want from my family’s empire. Nothing I feel entitled to.
But Mila Alekseev was wrong. I’m not a coward. I don’t run. And I still have work to do. Because whether she walks away with me today, tomorrow, or a year from now, I won’t leave Las Vegas with the woman on my conscience. Not again.
I climb in my Jeep and pull out of the cemetery lot.
Home my destination.