Chapter 19
Sofia
Maksim hadn’t been happy, but he needed to leave town for a little over a week. He didn’t tell me where he had to go—just said it was “business.”
While he was gone, the city felt tilted, like we were all walking slightly uphill, yet pretending we weren’t. I constantly wondered if I was imagining things or going crazy. The week had seemed to stretch on forever. By Friday night, my body was one throbbing ache from work and want and worry.
At the bar, men I didn’t know or recognize came in, taking a seat at the bar and ordering a drink they nursed for hours. That or they lingered too long in the doorway before deciding not to come in.
A black car idled on the corner two nights in a row with the lights off and the windows up. I wasn’t sure if it was the Armenians or Maksim’s friends. Boris’s name floated through my mind and the very air I breathed, like perfume—faint, expensive, sharp, yet invisible.
One afternoon, Isabella caught me on my break when she stopped by.
I’d been blowing her off a lot to be with Maksim—but for some reason, I’d not been truthful with her.
It was as if I wanted to keep Maksim to myself.
She sat next to me at the bar and studied my face like I had a third eye.
Finally, she said, “You look… not okay.”
After I sighed, I forced a smile. “Define okay.”
“Did things not work out with that guy you were seeing?”
Momentarily startled, I jolted. I’d forgotten I’d mentioned Maksim to her at all.
She nudged my shoulder with hers. “If you need to disappear for a while—my cousin in Queens—”
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“I don’t think you are. You’re always alone, baby girl. I’m worried about you.”
“It’s nothing. Just bills—you know, the usual,” I lied, because the alternative was telling her I wasn’t alone even when I was, that somewhere, somehow, he or one of his friends was always close. The lie sat heavy and familiar on my tongue. It should worry me that I was getting good at them.
“Oh, Esteban asked if you would be willing to help out at a wedding reception next weekend. I thought the extra money might be nice for you,” she said with an encouraging smile.
“That would be nice. Text me the details and I’ll see if I can swap a night with Mickey.” Even if Mickey just wanted to take over my shift, I’d make a far cry more at one of Isa’s events. “I better get back to work, though.”
“I’ll message you. We need to plan a girl’s night too,” Isa said as she got off her stool and pressed a kiss to my cheek.
“Sounds good,” I agreed.
That night, the car was idling again. I pretended not to notice it as I passed. But walking home, I could’ve sworn it followed me. I was sure I felt eyes that didn’t belong to him. Different weight. Different hunger.
When I got to my building, I hurried inside.
Then, I turned my key too fast, hands clumsy, keychain rattling against my apartment door louder than it should have.
By the time I slammed it, my breath was coming in sharp, stupid little bursts.
I leaned my forehead against the wood and counted back from ten like you do when you’re trying not to cry.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket.
Open the door, the text read.
My laugh broke on the way out and I opened it.
Maksim filled the frame, expression flat until his gaze swept my face and something tightened there.
His hands were on my shoulders before I could speak, then on my waist, then he was inside and kicking the door closed, and whatever was hunting me outside could have eaten the building brick by brick, and I would not have noticed.
“You’re back,” I finally breathed in relief.
“Tell me who,” he said into my hair.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, knowing there was no use denying anything with this man. “Car. On the corner. Watching.”
“I’ll find them.” He said it with the same certainty and finality that other men saved for “See you tomorrow.”
“How?” I asked, even though I knew the answer—however he had to.
He didn’t reply. Instead, he bent and lifted me, and my legs locked around his hips without thought. He carried me across the small space like a man carrying what was his through a burning house.
He fucked me like he’d been gone a year instead of a week. As if he’d missed me like the very air in his lungs. I got it, though, because I felt the same way.
After, as I was drifting off, I heard his voice low against my throat. “You should’ve run when I told you.”
“I didn’t run at all,” I sleepily murmured.
“I know,” he answered, and the sound was pride and despair threaded together.
Somewhere in the dark, a car engine turned over and drove away. I fell asleep with my palm flat against his chest, counting beats that felt steadier than my own.
* * *
Maksim left just before dawn, a black shape peeling away from my bed with a kiss at my ankle that had my lungs forgetting their damn job.
I lay there in the quiet after he left. Slowly, the daylight broke, and sunlight slanted through the cheap blinds in tight little ladders across the floor.
My stomach turned the way it had been doing for days, a slow roll that didn’t care if I’d eaten or not.
Stress, I’d said. Bad coffee, I’d rationalized.
Maybe it was the flu that had taken out two bartenders the night of the Halloween party.
Exhausted, I padded to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and stared at the twelve-month paper calendar stuck to the fridge.
Edges torn and curled, it was lucky the year was almost over because it was on its last leg.
The little X’s I’d made through the days looked like stitches trying to hold the paper together.
Then, I frowned. I counted backward. Counted again. Counted a third time because my brain refused to process the math.
Late. Too late to be stress. Too late to be anything “ordinary.”
I counted again.
“Oh no,” I softly cried. “No, no, no, no, no.” I pressed a hand to my lower belly. Ridiculous, as if I could possibly feel anything there yet. Heat rose behind my eyes. Burning. Not tears, not exactly. Something fragile and impossible breaking inside me.
Hope for my future.
I thought of my mother’s tired eyes and worn hands. I remembered textbooks I’d once highlighted in four different colors because I believed it could organize my way into a future I didn’t get a chance at. Then in my mind, I saw piles of bills with bold red writing.
My mind raced with images of men in black coats. Of a knife glinting and then disappearing like a fish under dark water.
I thought of Maksim. The way he had looked sitting in that stupid chair across the small room, watching me like he could keep vigil against the world. I thought of his mouth when he smiled for real—rare, quick, surprised, like joy was a language he barely recognized.
The nausea came back, sharp and vicious. Closing my eyes, I breathed through it, palms on the counter, the laminate cool under my skin.
“Okay,” I whispered to the empty kitchen. It didn’t sound like me. “Okay.”
The word didn’t make anything easier. Nope. If anything, it put a freaking spotlight on it.
Because nothing was okay.
A child. His child. Our child.
There was no question about whose it was.
The blood in that alley seemed to splash across my vision before it slowly receded. Then the future rushed in—messy and terrible and heavy. If the brotherhood knew—Konstantin, Boris, Dima. God, if the Armenians knew.
But Maksim—if he knew. Not if… he would know. I had to tell him. The thought left a cold, pressing weight in my chest. It also made something fierce rise there, a wild, hot protectiveness that took me by surprise.
Once you step into my world, there is no leaving, he’d said.
Maybe he’d said that because he knew there wasn’t any leaving for him either. Maybe this was the door that swung shut behind us both—trapping us in a world that most people didn’t understand or know existed.
I slid down the cabinet until I sat on the kitchen floor, knees tucked to my chest, forehead on my arms. Then, I laughed once, a soft, broken sound, because of course this was my life. Why had I expected anything different?
A cracked tile pressed into my heel, a tattered calendar watching and waiting, and a tiny secret inside me that would not stay small for long.
Outside, the city moved like it always did. Sirens. Voices. A bus heaving and sighing. Somewhere, a man sold roses from a bucket in front of the bodega. Somewhere, Maksim was probably following a shadow into another alley.
I pressed my palm to my belly again, half prayer, half promise.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I promised. “I don’t know how yet. But I will.”
It was one thing to fall in love with the romanticized idea of morally gray men like him. It was another to love the actual man himself—scars, violence, and all. It was another to face the future I knew damn well he couldn’t keep clean for me.
But it would appear the future had already arrived—small, silent, and stubborn.
I got to my feet, showered, and ran down to the little corner store. On my way home with a small box in my pocket, I knew. Still, in my bathroom, I opened it with trembling hands. It wasn’t rocket science, yet I read every single word of the directions.
Five minutes later, holding that little white stick in my hand, I swallowed hard.
Heat pressed at my eyes and finally spilled over, a few quiet tears falling to dot the sink and the floor. For a few short minutes, I let them. Then I wiped my face and reached for my phone with hands that surprisingly didn’t shake as much as they had earlier.
When his name lit the screen and the call started to ring, the fear in my throat loosened.
When his voice sounded on the other end of the line, my heart soared. And for the first time since the alley, I didn’t feel like I was stumbling and falling. For the first time since meeting the handsome Russian, I felt like maybe… just maybe… I was holding on.
“Hey. Can you come by?”
In the background, I could hear his footsteps, then the sounds of the city around him. “You’re at home?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way.” The call went dead. He never was one for small talk.
I heaved a heavy sigh. “Now if only he feels the same way.”
To be continued this December in Snowflakes and Bloodstains…