33. Fyodor
CHAPTER 33
FYODOR
I apologize to the Bouchards on behalf of my children, and I ask them for a hand in getting them into my car, seeing as how I don’t think they currently deserve to be untied.
Niko and I leave on better terms than I expected us to after I make that request, and while I don’t tell him the details, I promise him that my sons are no longer in charge.
It hurts me to admit it, but I made a mistake. Not in trusting them—they deserved more of that than I likely gave them—but in not realizing my boys need help. When we get in the car, I throw them in the back with Anatoly between them. I don’t expressly want to hurt them, but I am so fucking pissed that I’d certainly like to make them uncomfortable. Katya sits up front beside me.
“It’s best you boys don’t say a fucking word, but if you must, you will be respectful of the fact there’s a lady present.”
“A fucking lady,” Irakily spits venomously, and it takes a moment for me to quiet my rage. I will never hit him again if I can avoid it, but I find that the biggest trigger for violence in myself is her .
“I can give you back to the Bouchards.”
“My apologies,” he derisively aims toward Katya, but for a while, they’re quiet, and since I’m too angry to speak, that’s fine with me.
We’ve been driving for an hour and a half, and I haven’t found it within me to look at my sons in the rearview mirror. It’s been so many years since I’ve driven with the two of them back there. For years after they grew up, I would peek in the mirror, expecting to see their faces, forgetting they were men.
Now, I feel that I am dealing with men who I had forgotten were just boys. I don’t want to see their mother in their faces or my failures in their hatred of me, but they are so plain to anyone who looks.
My disappointment in them shakes me, but my disappointment in myself is far deeper. I admit I’m deep in my own self-hatred when a soft hand reaches out and takes mine. Gripping it back, I know I’m squeezing too tight, but I just can’t help it. I need her right now.
“Isn’t this fucking cute?” Irakily snarls.
“What it is, is none of your business,” I bite back.
“How could you be so fucking stupid, Papa? You’re sitting there holding her hand. Do you think your twenty-two-year-old whore is going to love you? You’re an old man.”
She has never been a whore to me, and I ignore the commentary from someone who doesn’t even know better than the actions he’s taken today.
“Irakily, you think I’m stupid?”
“Very.”
He’s very lucky I’ve resolved to never touch him again.
“Tell me something more stupid than selling nukes to a serial killer, and for what? Coke? Explain that to me and the plastic surgeon who repaired the hole in your septum last time.”
Irakily lurches forward, and Anatoly shoves him back.
“Come on, Papa, they weren’t even real. We’re not that stupid.” Daniil steps between us like always. What could my youngest son be capable of if he weren’t high and constantly trying to keep peace between ultimately violent men?
“What the fuck do you mean they’re not real?!” I growl.
“Daniil!” Irakily shouts, and this time, he lunges toward his brother, but Anatoly is already in his path and keeps them apart. He slaps Irakily in the head until he sits still.
“We’re not stupid enough to give Pax Bouchard nukes, Papa! They’re just C-4 stuffed into nuke-shaped cases.”
My hands tighten around the wheel, and I take the turns in the road very carefully as I control my temper.
“You thought it was a better idea to arm a lunatic with enough C-4 to level several city blocks as well as rob him, and offend our line to the port at the same time. All of this after you already robbed me? How much fucking cocaine do you boys need?”
“It’s not the drugs, Papa!” Daniil says, “We have some other debts too.”
“I said shut the fuck up, Daniil,” Irakily complains.
“With whom? With whom do you two have debts?”
“You don’t know them,” Irakily spits. “You may think you’re fucking God, Papa. You may think your word is law for everyone around you. But you are wrong.”
“The syndicate,” Daniil admits. “We owe Mason Sharp a lot of money.” He hangs his head in shame, yet for that, there is no shame heavy enough.
I shouldn’t be surprised since the syndicate has been huge in sex trafficking for years. The old head, David Sharp, was a ruthless bastard, but I haven’t followed the happenings of their organization too closely since his son took over a few years back, and we moved west.
“You wouldn’t be stupid enough to involve him. You wouldn’t be stupid enough to take out a debt you could not satisfy with Mason Sharp.”
“I could be, and I am,” Irakily says, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. I find once again it’s better to be quiet.
The final hour in the car passes mostly in silence, with the occasional jab shot in my direction. At this point, my sons seem to think better of insulting Katya, which I’m grateful for. Like I said, I never want to harm either one of my boys again, but with everything they’ve done and everything that’s happened, I find myself clenching my fists to keep myself from smacking them.
How could they be so fucking stupid, so damn reckless?
We pull into the building, and I return to my usual parking area this time. With them breaking in so recently, I never secured the apartment anyway, and I’d rather not go through whatever hassle would come with bringing them through the lobby tied up.
For the purposes of the trip upstairs, I untie their feet, and because I’m a weak bastard, I ask Anatoly to take out his gun and train it on them. I can’t point a gun at a man I have no intention of shooting, and there’s no way in hell I’ll shoot those boys. Katya is on crutches now, which makes things a lot easier.
“It doesn’t matter if Anatoly is the one to put a bullet in me, Papa. I’ll bleed out and die just the same,” Irakily taunts as we move across the parking garage.
“How did you get in?”
He shrugs. “You know the software petty thieves use to steal debit cards at the mall? Turns out your system isn’t so fancy, Papa.”
There’s no way that’s true.
“How did you really?”
The door closes on us, and Katya stays toward the back of the elevator. I’m at least three times her size, so when I stand in front of her, she’s protected from sight.
We arrive on the top floor, and Anatoly orders the boys out and into the destroyed house. I’m about to make a couple of barbs, asking if they like how I’ve redecorated. Don’t they think their father’s home looks lovely?
But before I can start, the sound of someone sifting through the broken stuff reaches us. Somebody is already here, riffling through the mess they’ve made of my possessions.
“Boys, you come with me. Anatoly, keep her safe.”
I gesture with my face instead of my gun, and the two of them walk with me.
“Sure you trust him, Papa? Who’s to say we didn’t flip him too?”
I don’t believe Irakily anyway, but Daniil speaks.
“She’s safe as far as I know. You seem to like her?”
My youngest son has always wanted to be accepted on all sides and to be loved and favored by his whole family. Losing his mother so young affected him in different ways than his older brother. Irakily is so angry, partly because he remembers how much he lost.
His memories of his mother are complete. He understood what happened as she died. He wished he could help her as much as I did.
Daniil was spared much of the worst of it, just young and innocent enough not to see how sick his mother was. He didn’t even realize how she was fading until she was almost dead. It’s left him with an empty hole in his life, but to his benefit, he’s not as angry as his older brother.
We come upon the dining room where I gave Katya Scott’s head, and that’s where I find the traitorous bitch Marta stuffing my fine silver into a large leather bag she grabbed from my closet. A necklace that belonged to my late mother hangs around her neck, and if I were thinking about being charitable, that would be my final straw.
Incidentally, I had no intentions of being charitable. I don’t care what my sons promised her or how much they paid. This bitch died the moment she made a move against Katya.
I point my gun at her head, much like I did with Franco the very first night I met Katya.
She stares up at me, the drawer still open. Painting on an expression of someone scared, maybe even a victim, but how much of a victim can you be when you enable a woman to kill herself and then rob your employer?
“Pakhan.” She holds up her hands in surrender. “ I’m so sorry.” She drops to her knees. “Please, I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to kill her,” a feminine voice says from the doorway, and I turn to find Katya and Anatoly.
“She wouldn’t listen,” says Anatoly, who’s holding his gun and looking like he might die of a heart attack trying to deal with her. “I would have had to hold her down and…”
“I told him you don’t like other people touching me.” Something she noticed at her doctor’s appointments and loves to tease me about, but now is not the time. I don’t want her anywhere near this fucking woman or what I’m about to do to her.
“Stand behind him before I lose my mind!” I shout at Katya. I’m going to smack her ass black and blue for this later. She finally decides to take me seriously and at least allows him to stand in front of her.
I turn back to Marta.
“You worked for me for a long time. I was generous with you, kind to you. You’ve disrespected me and my home. You’ve robbed me. Worst of all, you tried to take what I value most.” I don’t tell her it’s a tie between the relationship my sons and I should have and Katya. She tried to fuck with both. “It’s time now you pay for it.”
“I’m sorry, Pakhan. I’m sorry,” she begs, tears rolling down her eyes, but I’m not moved. My gun is already trained on her with every intention to fire. I aim right between her eyes like I did to Franco, and for the second time in my life, I kill a woman.
There’s a shout as she dies, but it belongs to Daniil. Katya stands behind Anatoly as still and quiet as a rock.
“I can’t believe you killed her,” Daniil says, but Irakily knows better. He was there when I killed my second wife. I did it for him.
“It’s your fault you were stupid enough to fuck her,” Irakily says to his brother, and I’m surprised to hear that he speaks to him with similar disdain. My son is even angrier than I realized.
“Get it over with, Papa,” Irakily taunts me.
“Get what over with?” I ask my bigmouth eldest son with genuine confusion. I’ll clean my house in my own time.
His lip wobbles, for the first time showing a true hint of something other than anger. “Kill us. I don’t want to deal with you dragging it out.”
I look at my son like I’m seeing him for the very first time. “That’s an even dumber idea than when you decided to sell a serial killer bombs. Why the fuck do you think I’m gonna kill you?”
He stares me in the eyes as he says, “I betrayed you, and you don’t tolerate disloyalty.”
His words sink in as the cool blue of his mother’s eyes crushes me. She’s carved in his face, her hands molded around his heart. He’s the product of true love. He’s my heart as much as he is my son.
“You betrayed me, but you’re my eldest son. I couldn’t kill you for anything.”
He stares at me like he doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Get it over with! Lie to someone who believes your shit.”
“I love you, my son, and I am so sorry.”
His face turns bright red, but Daniil’s mouth falls open.
“I was too hard on you. I wasn’t there enough for you. I have failed you. No matter what you have done, you are my son. I love you. I am sorry.”
I look at Daniil, who’s giving me a similar expression to the one he did the night I bought Katya. It’s like a fish flying in front of his face, and he doesn’t know what to do.
“I’m sorry, son. I should’ve done better.”
For all the things I’ve done wrong, this is my worst failing as a father. Killing my sons would be tantamount to killing my own soul. I would die for them. I would kill for them. Of all the things I’ve done, I’ve made my sons distrust my love, and I’ll work the rest of my life to fix it.