Chapter 11 Natalia
NATALIA
I have thirty minutes to erase a man from my house.
Johnny’s coffee mug goes into the cabinet, not the drying rack.
His toothbrush disappears under the bathroom sink.
His clothes go to the back of the closet behind a suitcase I haven’t opened since I got here.
The sketch he drew of me tucked flat under my mattress where no one will ever think to look.
I’m thorough. I’m careful. I move through the rooms with the focus of a woman who grew up watching her father’s men clean up after worse, and by the time I’m done, there’s not a single visible trace of Johnny left in this house.
I stand at the sink and scrub my hands even though they’re already clean. Somewhere out there, Johnny is walking toward Ronnie’s. No phone. No way to reach me.
We argued about it again before he left, his mouth a hard line, hands white-knuckled on the counter, looking at me like I was asking him to walk off a cliff. I told him Nikolai would kill a stranger in my house without blinking.
Johnny’s eyes went dark. For a second, he looked like someone who could match that violence.
Then he grabbed his jacket and walked out, and the house went cold.
I told him to come back after dark. Not because Nikolai will be here that long. Because my brother is the kind of person who doubles back. Who forgets something on purpose so he can catch you off guard.
I check my watch. He’s late. Of course he’s late. I straighten the throw pillows on the couch for the third time and stop myself before I start on a fourth.
I wonder what he was doing in Miami. Could be anything. With my family, business covers everything from real estate to body disposal.
Three hard knocks on the front door.
My shoulders climb toward my ears before I can stop them.
I smooth my face the way I’ve been smoothing it since I was a child. Pleasant. Unbothered. A little bored, maybe. The Kozlov daughter who never gives you anything you can use against her.
I open the door, and my brother fills the frame. Cropped dark hair. Our father’s jaw. Eyes the same shade of blue as mine, which I’ve always hated. The one thing I can’t separate from him.
“Nikolai.”
He doesn’t greet me. Walks straight past, his shoulder catching mine hard enough that my hip hits the doorframe, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke and expensive cologne trails behind him like a warning. He’s across the living room before I’ve recovered my balance.
He drops his jacket on the arm of my couch, pulls open my fridge, and stares into it like it personally offended him.
“You don’t have shit in here.” He shuts it and moves to the bar cart. Pours himself three fingers of the good vodka without asking. “How long have you been here? Two months? And you’re living like a college dropout?”
“I keep it simple.”
“You keep it pathetic. There’s a difference.”
He drops onto the couch, knees spread, arm thrown wide. Taking up every inch of space his body will allow, the way he has in every room he’s walked into since he was old enough to realize it made people uncomfortable.
I sit in the chair across from him. Six feet of distance. Not enough.
I’ve spent my whole life reading Nikolai’s moods the way other people read weather reports.
Partly cloudy with a chance of violence.
He doesn’t want to be here. He’s here because my father told him to come, and that resentment is radiating off him like heat. And when my brother doesn’t like what he’s doing, everyone around him pays for it.
“So.” He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling with his thumb. Not looking at me. “Dad wanted to make sure you’re still where he put you.”
“Yep, still here.”
He doesn’t respond. Just scrolls. The silence stretches, and I can feel it pressing against my skin, that particular Nikolai silence that dares you to fill it. I know better. I’ve always known better.
I fill it anyway.
“How was Miami?”
“Productive.” He sips his vodka. Eyes still on the screen. “Wrapped up with Restrepo’s people this morning.”
My fingers go still in my lap.
“Your future husband sends his regards.” A beat. The corner of his mouth lifts. “I’m kidding. He didn’t mention you. He cares about the pipeline and the laundering infrastructure, not the gift wrap.”
The gift wrap.
That’s me. The pretty bow on a deal made by men who’ve never once asked what I think about any of it.
“His people want the wedding within sixty days of the deal closing.” He shrugs. “So start thinking about what you want to wear, I guess.”
Two months.
My nails press crescents into my palms where he can’t see.
I knew the marriage was coming. I didn’t know it would be this soon. Didn’t know they’d already sat across from Restrepo’s people and mapped out the rest of my life over whatever they eat at cartel negotiations. Steak, probably. Cigars after.
“I’ll be ready,” I say, because that’s what’s expected of me.
“You don’t really have a choice, so yeah.” He sets the glass on the coffee table, still half full. Vodka sloshes over the rim onto the wood. He doesn’t wipe it up.
I watch the puddle spread into the grain.
His phone buzzes. He takes the call without excusing himself, swiveling away from me on the couch, and for two full minutes I sit there and listen to him talk logistics with someone in a voice that’s warmer than anything he’s used with me since he walked through my door.
I’m furniture. I’m the throw pillow he shoved aside to sit down.
When he hangs up, he pockets the phone and stretches, rolling his neck until it pops. He’s almost smiling, which is rare enough to notice.
“Sounds like Lorenzo Andretti’s youngest went missing.” He says it to the room more than to me, still riding whatever high the phone call gave him. “Luca always was a piece of shit. Good riddance.”
I nod like I care. I don’t. The Andrettis are my father’s obsession, not mine.
Nikolai checks his watch and stands. “Alright. I’ve got a flight to catch.” He grabs his jacket off the couch and cuts through the kitchen toward the door.
I let myself exhale for the first time since he walked in.
That’s when he stops. His hand lands on my anatomy textbook, the one I left on the counter, bristling with colored tabs and sticky notes.
Every muscle in my body locks at once.
Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes spent scrubbing every trace of Johnny from this house, and I left myself sitting right there on the counter.
He turns it over in his hand. Reads the spine. Flips to a page I had bookmarked. His mouth twitches.
“What’s this?”
“Just some reading.” I keep my voice light. Bored, even. “Keeping my brain busy.”
He looks at the cover again. Then at me. Then back at the book, and his expression shifts into something worse than anger.
Amusement.
“This isn’t light reading, Natalia. This is a textbook.” He holds it up like evidence. “What, you think you’re going to be a doctor or some shit?”
“It’s just to pass the time, Nikolai.” I reach for the book.
The amusement drops off his face like a light going out.
His fingers lock around my wrist before I’ve closed half the distance.
His grip tightens until the bones shift against each other, and my vision narrows to the space between his eyes.
My breath goes flat and controlled, the kind of breathing you learn without anyone teaching you.
The kind that says I’m small. I’m still. There’s nothing here worth hurting.
“Did I say you could take it?”
The vodka is still on his breath. This close, I can see the broken capillary at the corner of his left eye.
Somewhere deep in my body, a very old alarm is sounding, the one that learned a long time ago what comes after this if I give the wrong answer.
“No,” I whisper.
He holds on for one more second. Then he lets go and drops the textbook on the counter. It lands hard enough that a few tabs fall out. He pulls his jacket on and opens the door, easy as anything, like the last ten seconds didn’t happen.
“Oh, and a word of advice. Restrepo’s been married before, you know. Couple of times. Neither one’s around anymore.” He glances back at the textbook on the counter. “So maybe brush up on something actually useful, like keeping your legs open and your mouth shut.”
The door swings shut behind him. A few seconds later the engine starts, tires grinding over the shell drive, and the sound shrinks until there’s nothing left but the wind pushing through the screens and the low, steady shush of the ocean beyond the dunes.
I lock the door and stand there with my hand on the deadbolt, waiting for my body to get the message that he’s gone. It takes longer than it should. My wrist throbs where his fingers were.
I cross to the kitchen and press both palms flat on the counter. The stone is cold and real and I focus on that: the temperature, the grit of dried salt air that coats every surface in this house no matter how often I wipe things down.
I stare at the textbook where he dropped it. It landed splayed open, pages bent under its own weight. My fallen tabs lie next to it on the counter. I smooth the pages flat and tuck the tabs back in.
My fingers aren’t steady, and the tab won’t line up right, and I’m angry at myself for caring this much about a bent page when there are bigger things to be angry about.
But this book is mine. I bought it with money I scraped together from the grocery budget my father deposits into an account he monitors. I highlighted every page myself. And Nikolai held it up like a joke.
I shouldn’t have left it out. Maybe Nikolai won’t mention it to my father. Maybe it wasn’t worth remembering by the time he started the car.
My vision blurs. I grip the counter and breathe the way I taught Johnny the night of his panic attack. Slow. Through the nose. Let the diaphragm do the work.
It helps. A little.
Maybe brush up on something useful. Like staying alive inside a marriage to a man who’s buried two wives is a skill you can cram for.
I pick up Nikolai’s glass from the coffee table. Wash it. Dry it. Put it away. Then I wipe the vodka ring off the table with a damp cloth until the wood is clean and there’s no trace of him left in my house. Just like Johnny. Erased. The only difference is that I wanted to keep one of them.
Heat builds behind my eyes. Not tears. I’m past tears. This is the thing that comes after. I hear Johnny’s voice from last night.
He doesn’t get to come into your space and make you feel like that.
I wanted to believe that. I still want to believe it. But wanting doesn’t change the math.
Two months.
That’s what I have. Two months until I belong to a man who goes through wives the way my brother goes through vodka. And whatever this thing is with Johnny, this stupid, reckless, warm thing that makes me feel like an actual person, it now has an expiration date.
I remember Johnny doesn’t have a key, so I leave the back door cracked so he’ll know it’s safe to come back. The afternoon light is flat and gray through the doorway, the sky hanging low over the water like it can’t decide if it wants to rain or just threaten.
In a few hours, Johnny will walk back through that door and this house will feel warm again. But I know how this ends. Either his memory comes back and I lose him, or it doesn’t and in two months I’m on a plane to marry a man who’s already buried two wives.
There’s no version of this where I get to keep him.