25. Cali
CALI
When Mercer finally leaves, Ronan is quick to offer his opinion.
"I don't trust her," Ronan says.
"I know. Neither do I. Not all the way."
He clicks and un-clicks a pen in his hand repeatedly.
"But," I continue, "here's the thing I keep coming back to. She's worried about us right now. You and me."
"I noticed," he says sarcastically.
"So what if we aimed her at somebody else?"
He looks up.
"What if we fed her Lev?" I suggest. "She wants the person who dared to impersonate her. That's Lev's work, isn't it? If Mercer's going to be pointed at anything, I'd rather it be him than us."
Ronan is quiet for a second. Then his face breaks out into a slow, dangerous smile, full of pride. "You want to hand-feed our enemies to our enemies?"
"Killing one bird with another bird sounds way better than trying to figure out how to hit them both with the same stone. She's got resources we don't have. He's got a target on his back he earned. Seems tidy, doesn't it?"
He wags a warning finger. "Don't get too cocky. Nothing with the feds is ever tidy." But he's thinking about it. I can see him thinking about it. "It's not a bad idea, though."
"I have those sometimes."
He reaches over and covers my hand with his. "We'll have to be careful," he says. "We do it slow. We don't hand her anything that can come back on you."
"On us," I say.
He looks at me. "I like the sound of that word. 'Us.'"
For a few days, it's almost good. Almost like being partners.
Then, three days later, I run out of garlic.
I'm planning on making chicken marsala to celebrate the conclusion of the kids' first full week back at school—my world-famous chicken marsala, the one I used to make for Todd, except now, I make it for a house full of people who actually deserve it—and Ronan is running late at the office.
I go to grab the garlic and the mushrooms and discover, to my dismay, that I have neither.
"Are you kidding me?" I scold the empty fridge, as if it's the one to blame.
I text Ronan. Out of garlic and mushrooms. Running to the store. Taking Anton.
He texts back in under a minute. Straight there, straight back.
Yes, warden.
Cali.
I'm KIDDING. Straight there, straight back. I promise.
Anton is one of the men who rotates on the corner. He's big, quiet, a little sad around the eyes. He drives me the six blocks to the grocery store and parks up front where he can watch the door.
"I'll wait here," he says. He grabs a gun from under his coat and thumbs off the safety.
Jeez. Everyone's a warden.
I go in, grab a basket, and head for the produce section. I figure I'll pick up some avocados while I'm here, because after a summer-long pancake fest, Isabella has decided this week that she only eats things that are green.
The avocados on the top of the pile are all bruised to hell. The good ones are pushed to the back, on the high shelf, just out of reach even when I go up on my toes.
"Allow me," says a voice beside me.
I turn to see an old man. Seventy, maybe more. Silver hair combed neat, a soft gray cardigan, a cane he doesn't seem to actually need. He reaches past me—he's taller than he looks—and pulls down two of the perfect avocados from the very back.
"These are the ones you want," he says, and hands them to me in a faint, unrecognizable accent. "The ones in front, they bruise them handling. The good ones, they always hide in the back."
"Thank you," I say. "That's very kind."
"My wife taught me. God rest her. She would squeeze forty avocados before she chose a pair." He smiles, grandfatherly and unthreatening. "She said the produce men could not be trusted. She was usually right when it came to that sort of thing."
"Woman's intuition," I laugh as I tap my temple.
He doesn't laugh with me, though. "You are cooking something nice?" he asks.
"Chicken marsala. And guacamole, apparently, for my daughter, who is six and a tyrant."
"Six." He nods slowly. "A wonderful age. My granddaughter is six." He sets his hand on the edge of the shelf. "And your son is nine, yes, Calista?"
The avocados tumble from my hands. It's only all this time with Ronan that keeps me from freaking out completely.
Don't lose your composure. Not until you understand what's happening.
"Nine," I agree as I force myself to smile. "He's a handful, too. But I must be missing something: Have we met before?"
"No," the man says. "But I've been dying to make your acquaintance for quite some time, Ms. Meadows."
"You have me at a disadvantage," I say. "You know my name. I don't know yours."
"You know it," he says gently. "You are a smart woman. Smarter than any of them give you credit for. I think you already know."
Yeah. He's right about that.
"You're Lev."
He inclines his head like I've paid him a compliment. "At your service."
I look toward the front of the store. I can't see Anton. There's a display of cereal blocking the window.
"He can't see you from there," Lev says, following my eyes.
"I would not have come to say hello if he could.
I am an old man. I do not want any trouble in a grocery store.
I only want to talk to you for a moment, and then I will go, and you will finish your shopping, and you will make your chicken for your children. Happy as could be."
I keep my face calm. "So talk."
"I will make this simple, because I respect you, and because you deserve to hear it plain and not wrapped in pretty paper." He picks up an avocado, rotates it in his old hand, sets it down. "You are a very smart woman with a very powerful—and very useful—tool at your disposal."
"I'm just a housewife," I try to lie. "I don't know—"
"Calista, please," he tuts. "Don't disrespect me like that."
I gulp and nod.
Satisfied, he continues. "You built the thing that found your husband.
It found me, I think, in a manner of speaking.
And as far as I have been able to discern, you are the only person who can run it properly.
This makes you very valuable. And a valuable thing that stands out in the open, alone—" He spreads his old hands—"it gets taken.
Like a ripe avocado. This is simply the way of the world. You know this."
"And you want to be the one who takes it?"
"I want to offer you something better than being taken.
" He leans on the cane now. "You come and work for me.
You run the machine. I am an old man; I do not need forever, I need a few good years for my house to stand strong again.
And in exchange, your children never have to be afraid.
Not of me. Not of anyone. No more men sneaking up your stairs or knocking at your door with false badges.
You have my word, and my word is worth more than these young ones with their guns and their theater.
Your Hayden and your Isabella grow up safe. This is my guarantee."
"And my husband?"
A shadow passes across his face.
"Your husband is already finished," he says sympathetically.
"I am sorry to say it to you, because I think you have come to care for him, which surprises me, but the heart is a foolish thing, I know this.
But it is true. He shut off the money. He is bleeding, and everyone who used to stand near him is walking away, one and two at a time.
The feds are at his door. The story is out that he turned rat, and it does not matter that it is not true—the story is enough.
He is a dead man walking, Calista. This is not a threat.
It is only what I see, and I have seen it many times.
I am never wrong about it." He looks at me with those soft grandfather eyes.
"The only question left is whether you go down with him, or whether you and your babies come out intact on the other side. "
I don't say anything. I can't.
"You do not need to answer today," Lev says.
"I would not respect you if you did. You are a careful woman.
You collect your—what do you call them? Your receipts.
So." He straightens his cardigan. "I'll give you seven days.
One week. You think, you look at your children, you look at your soon-to-be-dead husband, and you decide what course you will take.
If you say yes, you will know how to reach me.
If you say no…" A small, sad shrug. "… then I am sorry for what comes, but it will not be my doing. It will be the way of the world."
He reaches into his cardigan pocket and takes out a folded bill. A hundred. He presses it into my hand, closing my fingers around it with both of his, warm and dry and papery.
"For your groceries," he explains. He picks up his cane. "It was very nice to finally meet you, Calista. I hope very much you make the right choice, because I would hate to see the smart one go to waste."
And then he just saunters away. An old man in a gray cardigan, past the endcaps, past the cereal, out the automatic doors and into the afternoon, gone.
I stand in the produce aisle for a long time with two perfect avocados and a hundred-dollar bill crushed in my fist.
I don't remember paying. I must have. I have bags.
I don't remember Anton driving me home, but here we are, pulling into the garage, and Ronan is already there. His car's in the garage; he beat me home after all. He's standing by the door into the house with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled, and the second he sees my face, he knows.
"What happened?"
I get out of the car. My legs work. That's good, at least.
"Calista. What the fuck happened?"
"Lev," I say. "He found me in the grocery store."
I have never in my life seen a person go so still and so violent at the same time. Ronan doesn't move a muscle, but the whole garage fills up with something toxic that makes the air hard to breathe.
"Anton," he hisses, and his voice is the warehouse voice, the Mikhail voice, the voice that made a man wet his pants in a bar. "You were supposed to be with her."
"He waited up front," I interrupt. "I told him to. It's a grocery store, Ronan, it was—"
"It was not just a grocery store." He rounds on Anton, who has gone pale, and I get between them before I even decide to.
"Hey. Look at me. Me." I put a hand flat on his chest. His heart is pounding like a war drum. "I'm fine. He didn't touch me. We talked and he walked out. I'm fine."
"You are not fine, you're shaking—"
"So are you!"
"Anton, get out," Ronan snarls. "Now."
Anton gets out. The door slams. And then it's just us in the garage under the fluorescent light. Ronan grabs me by both shoulders and looks me over head to toe like he's checking for bullet holes.
"You are never," he growls, "going anywhere alone again. Not the store, not the corner, not the fucking mailbox. Someone is with you at all times, inside the building, arm's length—"
"No."
He stops. "What?"
"No." I step back out of his hands. "I'm not doing that. I am not going back into a box because a scary old man bought me avocados."
"He got within reach of you, Calista! In a public place! With Anton forty feet away!"
"Because I told Anton to stay up front!"
"Then you were wrong!"
"So were you, three days ago, when your man wasn't even on the corner and two fake cops walked right up my stairs!
" That rips out of me loud and shrill, surprising us both.
"You want to talk about who keeps getting it wrong?
I'm the one who caught the fake badge! I'm the one who called Mercer!
I'm the one who just stood in a produce aisle and kept my cool while the man who wants to own me told me my husband was a dead man walking!
And I didn't flinch, I didn't cry, I got the mushrooms and I came home.
So do not stand there and tell me I need to be locked in a box. "
"I am not putting you in a box!" he roars. It's the first time he's ever raised his voice at me, really raised it, but instead of scaring me, all it does is piss me off. "I am trying to keep you alive! Do you understand what he is? What he's done? What he wants to do!"
"Actually, yeah, I do!" I'm crying now, furious and shaking, smacking him repeatedly in the chest with the flat of my hand. "He told me you're finished, Ronan. And I thought to myself… What if he's right? What if I lose you?"
His face breaks. All of it, all at once. The pakhan and the warehouse voice and the iron control, all of it just comes apart in front of me, and his eyes go wet and red-rimmed right there in the garage.
"You are not going to lose me, and I am not going to lose you, Cali.
Do you hear me? I'd give Lev everything I've ever earned before I let him touch you or the kids.
" He pulls me in by the back of the neck, forehead to forehead.
I can feel him shaking now too, both of us coming to pieces.
"I made myself into a robot so I would never feel like this.
I almost finished the job. And then you walked into a bar in a black dress and ruined all of it.
But you know what? I would ruin it a thousand more times.
I would shred every single thing I have before I would let that old man have you.
I can't do it, Cali. I can't. I won't. So don't ask me to be calm when it comes to you. That ship sailed a long time ago."
Just like that, I stop fighting.
Because he's right and I'm right, too. We're not on opposite sides of a war. It's us versus the world.
"Okay," I whisper. "Okay."
"This is the hardest thing in the world for me to do, so understand me please. Please. I'm asking. I'm not deciding it. I'm asking you: Stay safe with me."
I answer with a kiss. It rapidly turns fierce and hard in the space of a breath.
He lifts me clean off my feet against the car, and I wrap around him, and there in the garage under the buzzing light, with the groceries still in the back seat, we come apart into each other in a way that has nothing left in it to hide behind.
"I'm not going anywhere," I tell him, when I can breathe again. "I chose you. I chose you."
"I know," he says, holding me like I might dissolve if he lets go for even a moment. "I know, kotyonok. I'll never stop being grateful for that."