26. Ronan
RONAN
The orphanage sits on a secluded block in Brooklyn, tucked mostly out of sight. You wouldn't look twice at it. That's how I like it.
The only indication of what it is comes in the form of a small sign by the front door. It reads, in plain letters, THE ANNA HOUSE.
My mother's name.
Navi parks the car across the street and cuts the engine. We sit there a moment, both of us looking at the building through the windshield.
"You could put your name on it, you know," Navi suggests. "Big letters. Gold. AKOV. Let the whole world know what a generous man you are."
"The whole world can mind its own business."
"That's the spirit."
We get out. It's a warm morning, the kind that promises to turn hot by noon. A couple of kids are already out front, a boy and a girl, chasing each other around a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. They freeze when they see us. Two large men in dark clothes. I don't blame them.
"It's alright," I tell them. "We're friends of Miss Louisa."
The word friend does its work. They shrug and go back to their game.
There's a woman at the front desk, gray-haired and round, who looks up and breaks into a smile when she sees me. "Mr. Akov!" She leaps up and comes around the desk. "We weren't expecting you today."
"I don't like to be expected, Dana."
"No, you never do."
Louisa Duffy has run this place for eleven years. She doesn't know what I am. She knows I'm a lawyer who cuts a check every quarter that keeps the lights on, the pantry full, and the roof from leaking. That's all she needs to know. That's all anyone needs to know.
"The new A/C is working," she says, leading us down the hall. "The children aren't sweating through their bedsheets anymore. Come. Come see."
Navi trails behind us, hands in his pockets, quiet for once. He knows what this place is to me. He's the only one who does.
We walk past the common room, where a handful of kids are sprawled on a rug in front of a bookshelf. Past the little dining hall with its long tables and mismatched chairs. Past the stairwell that goes up to the dormitories.
It's clean. It's warm. It's safe.
That's the whole point.
Louisa shows us the new A/C unit, and the new washing machines, and the reading nook she carved out of a closet with the last check I sent.
She talks the whole time without interruption from me.
I like listening to her talk about the kids.
This one's reading above grade level. That one finally slept through the night.
This one got adopted by a nice family in Queens.
They're small victories. But real ones.
Nobody's throwing glass here.
When Louisa gets pulled away by a crying toddler, Navi and I end up standing by a window at the end of the hall. It looks out on a scrubby little courtyard where a swing set catches the morning sun.
"You ever going to tell her?" Navi asks.
"Tell her what?"
"Where the money comes from."
"The money that keeps this place running is clean," I say. "I make sure of it. That's what all of this is for."
Navi doesn't argue. He just looks out the window with me.
"Your mother would've liked it," he says after a while. "I bet it would've made her happy knowing there was a safe, happy place with her name on it."
I think about her sometimes, standing in this hall. She didn't live long enough to do that. My mother, Anna, was a woman who got smaller and smaller, year on year, until there was nothing left of her at all. She thought if she took up less room, there'd be less of her for her husband to hurt.
She was wrong.
The last year of her life, she barely spoke above a whisper. She moved through the house like a ghost, like she was practicing for not existing. And then one day, she stopped practicing.
I was fifteen.
"He never hit her where it showed," I murmur. I don't know why I say it. It just comes out. "My father. He was smart about it. He'd break a glass against the wall right by her head and let the pieces land on her feet. Never a mark. But he knew that fear does more than fists ever could."
Navi is quiet.
"She'd sweep it up," I say. "Every single time.
On her hands and knees, picking up the glass, so I wouldn't step on it.
So he wouldn't step on it. She'd apologize to him while she did it.
For cleaning a mess he made." I press my knuckle against the window frame until it hurts.
"I built this place so that no child would ever have to see what I saw.
So no woman would ever have to sweep up glass and say sorry for it. "
"Ro…"
"I'm fine."
"I know you are." Navi puts a hand on my shoulder, briefly, and takes it away. "I'm just saying it out loud so you know I heard you."
We stand there a while longer. Out in the courtyard, a little girl climbs onto a swing and starts to pump her legs. Another kid runs over to push her. She goes higher and higher. She laughs.
Nobody tells her to make herself smaller.
Good.
We don't talk again until we're back in the car.
Navi pulls into traffic and merges toward the bridge, and for a couple of blocks, it's just the sound of the road under the tires.
Then he glances at me.
"You've got that look on your face," he says. "Thinking about her again?"
"My mother?"
"No. The Bradshaw woman.”
"Meadows," I correct before I can stop myself. "She's going back to Meadows."
Navi barks out a laugh. "Oh, my God. It's worse than I thought."
"Watch the road, asshole."
He shakes his head, delighted. "You are so far gone it's actually a little sad. It's like watching a raccoon get its paw stuck in a jar because it won't let go of what's inside."
I could deny it. I've denied worse to worse men.
But I don't.
"She's remarkable," I say instead.
Navi's grin falters, just for a second, because he expected me to fight him. When I don't, he looks almost worried.
"So it's like that," he says.
I just clench my teeth and nod once.
He blows out a weary breath. "I told you. Back in the office, remember? I told you not to build a cage that looks like a favor."
"I remember what you told me."
"Do you?"
I look out the window at the city passing us by. I do remember. I remember every word of it. Don't be surprised when she can't tell the difference between you and Todd. That little prophecy has lived in me ever since, a splinter I can't quite dig out.
"The divorce is being handled. She'll keep everything. The house, the kids, the money Todd tried to take. All of it."
"Except the company."
"Which she'll never know is gone, because it'll keep running exactly as it did, with her at the helm, with her name on the door. Nothing changes for her. Nothing at all."
Navi doesn't say anything for a long moment.
"You keep saying that," he says. "Nothing changes. You've said it so many times I think you're trying to convince yourself."
I don't answer.
Because he's not wrong, and we both know it. There's just no point in saying so.
The rest of the drive is business.
"How about Pyotr?" I say to change the subject. "Any word?"
Navi shakes his head. "Nada." He signals, changes lanes. "He landed in Istanbul like he was supposed to, right on schedule. And then—" He makes a little poof gesture with one hand off the wheel. "Gone. Off the grid."
"That was the arrangement."
"Right. Sure. Except I didn't love that arrangement, so I put a man on him. Quiet. Just to keep eyes."
I turn to look at him. "You put a tail on Pyotr?"
"Just to keep tabs." Navi lifts a shoulder. "I wanted eyes on a loose end. Sue me."
"And?"
"And my guy lost him, temporarily." Navi doesn't sound too troubled by it. "Somewhere between the airport and wherever he's laying low. Old man's better at disappearing than I gave him credit for. Twenty years of making money vanish, I guess he figured out how to do it to himself, too."
I consider this. Maybe I ought to be concerned, but I can't bring myself to give a damn about a retired bastard half a world away.
"He's a frightened old man with a bad heart and a dream of a happy ending," I say. "He got exactly what he wanted. He's going to keep his head down and die peacefully somewhere with grandchildren on his knee."
"Probably," Navi agrees. "I'm sure it'll all be fine. But I'm gonna keep my tail out there just in case."
"Do what you want, man."
"There's one more thing," Navi adds. "Might be nothing. Just chatter."
"Say it."
"Lev."
I keep my face still. I've had a lifetime of practice, but the shock of hearing that name again out of nowhere tests me.
"What about Lev?" I ask.
"Word is he's been making the rounds. Talking to people. The kind of people who miss the old days." Navi's jaw works from side to side. "People who think you've gone soft. No offense."
I shrug, unbothered. "None taken."
"He's not doing anything yet. Just talking.
Buying drinks. Reminding everyone he was there when Igor ran things, back when the Bratva was the Bratva, none of this law-firm, wash-your-hands, don't-touch-the-family business.
" Navi shakes his head. "You know how it is.
Every few years, some dinosaur crawls out of the tar and decides he liked things better when there were more dead bodies. "
Lev.
I can see him if I close my eyes. My father's lieutenant, once.
A big man, though not as big as Igor, with a scar through one eyebrow and a menacing aura.
He used to come to the house, and if he happened to be there on one of the bad nights, he had no problem watching my mother sweeping up the glass without saying a word.
He never lifted a finger to stop any of it.
"Lev is an old man clinging to a dead man's shadow," I snarl. "Igor's been in the ground a long time. The world he wants back doesn't exist anymore. I made sure of that."
"Sure. Yeah. Of course. We all know that."
"Buying drinks and telling stories isn't a threat, Navi," I insist, even though he's agreeing with me. "Let him talk."
"You want me to keep an ear on it?"
"Keep an ear on it," I say. "But don't spend real resources. He's irrelevant."
I mean what I'm saying. Lev. Who gives a fuck?
I have more important things to think about.
By the time we're back in the city, the mood in the car has lightened. "You're on call tomorrow if anything comes up," I tell Navi. "I'll be out on the boat."
Navi glances at me. "Which boat?"
"The Other Yacht. It's more intimate."
"Intimate? Why would you— oh. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. You're planning a thing."
"I'm planning a date. You'd know that if you could ever find a female who'd tolerate your lopsided face."
He jabs a finger at me. "Don't try to distract me with petty insults. You're planning a big thing. Look at your face. You've got the moon face again, but worse. It's a whole harvest moon now."
I can't help my face, but I'm not embarrassed. I should be, maybe, a man my age, a man of my reputation, grinning like a schoolboy over a woman.
But I'm not. I'm too pleased with myself to be embarrassed.
"Dinner on the water," I confirm. "Out past the harbor. I've got a chef coming. A friend from Chicago who owes me a favor. I want the lights kept low so the stars come through."
Navi is staring at me at a red light. "It's like I don't even know who you are anymore. Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"
"You're butchering that quote," I mutter.
"How the hell would you know?"
"Because I have culture," I say. "Unlike others in this car."
Navi laughs. "I think you're just dragging this poor woman out onto a boat in the middle of the ocean so she can't say no when you try to stick your tongue down her throat.
" He sighs, almost mournful. "You used to be scary.
Grown men used to cry in your office. Now, you're hand-weaving blankies so the woman you're smitten with feels cozy. "
"I'm still scary," I mutter. "Ask Todd."
That shuts him up for half a block. Then he grins again, because he can't help himself.
"Fine," he says. "Fine. Take her out on your little intimate boat, harvest-moon face and all. But when she asks you the hard question—and she will, Ro, she's not stupid—you'd better have a damn good answer ready."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
He pulls to the curb outside the building and puts the car in park. When he turns to look at me, there's none of the ribbing left in his face now. Just my cousin. My right hand. The one man who'd take a bullet for me and the one man who'll tell me the truth when everyone else has learned better.
"I'm going to say it one more time and then I'll shut up about it forever."
"Feel free to skip the first part," I growl.
He ignores me. "She's the thing you can't afford to lose," he says.
"I've watched you my whole life, and I've never seen you like this over anything.
Just her." He taps the wheel once. "Which is exactly why you should be scared.
Because when she learns what you truly are, she will not be in a forgiving mood.
She's going to see the man who lied. And you know what she does to men who lie to her. You watched her do it."
I don't even bother responding.
Why would I?
He's right.