Chapter 2
TWO
Dmitry
The house glows like a cruise ship when I pull in.
Light spills from the colonnade, soft and expensive.
Aleksei picked this place for privacy and for the long view from the terrace.
Marble floors, tall windows, a grand staircase that looks like it should lead to a ballroom.
The furniture is dark wood and leather, heavy enough to survive a war.
It smells like pine cleaner and something sweet from the kitchen, vanilla and warm sugar, probably the cookies Lena bakes when she cannot sleep.
I let myself in and drop my keys in the shallow brass bowl by the door.
The foyer is quiet, then I hear it, the soft static of a baby monitor left on the console table.
A tiny sigh comes through the speaker, a little rustle, then silence.
The family wing is dark, a nightlight glowing somewhere down the hall.
Aleksei keeps the nursery at the far end so that no one can reach it without crossing three cameras and two motion sensors.
The security system hums in the walls like a heartbeat.
The living room is chaotic as usual. A single lamp throws a halo over the low table.
There is a plate of food on it, meat pies from the bakery near the Russian market, still warm.
Aleksei always pretends he is cutting back at night, then he heats these up after everyone is in bed.
He is not here. The refrigerator door thumps somewhere in the kitchen.
I stop when I notice someone sitting at the table. The shape of his nose gives him away.
Leo.
Leo Antonov, the pakhan of the Antonov bratva.
My oldest brother. My boss, if we’re being technical.
Leo sits in the corner chair, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a crystal glass resting in his hand.
He looks mellow, not soft, never soft. He sits straight even though he’s alone, unable to let his guard down even in solitude.
I feel sorry for him sometimes. The responsibilities he shoulders, the way he always maintains a facade…it reminds me of Callista.
They both wear masks, but Leo’s never cracks.
He has become the mask. I bet he doesn’t remember how to cry.
Maybe that’s why I felt so protective of Callista.
I shouldn’t have wiped away her tears, or kissed her, but I wanted to give her the space to cry, to be herself, before her true self disappears. I couldn’t help it.
Leo notices me instantly. “Dmitry. You’re home.”
“Forget about me. You’re home. It has been a while.”
“Thought I’d pay you a visit.” The lines on Leo’s forehead deepen. He must have some work for me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t bother coming. “Aleksei has been begging me to come and see his son. The boy might take my place in the future, so I had to oblige.”
“You could have waited to see him until he’s grown up,” I say.
“He might have to take over from me sooner than you think.” The cryptic statement makes me squint my eyes.
Leo never speaks of retirement and giving up his position, so I’m surprised at this suggestion.
He has never married, and has always stated that his brothers’ sons will carry his title one day, but I never understood why.
I know he’s a bit old, but men in their forties get married all the time in our world. To young, beautiful women, too.
It has been a few months since I saw Leo. We were at Mikhail’s wedding, celebrating the union of the third-oldest Antonov brother to a bride from a powerful bratva family. It was an alliance Leo forged years ago.
I notice the subtle changes in his features.
He has the kind of body that still looks like it could lift a man by the throat, but the light shows lines at the corners of his eyes, silver at his temples, a quiet heaviness around the mouth that was not there before.
He looks like a man who has carried a country on his shoulders and fears he will carry that burden to his grave.
“College,” he says, as if it is a greeting. “How is it.”
“Not well,” I say, and kick my shoes off under the table. “I never have time to study. I spend my nights laundering our money because you keep asking me to.”
Leo's mouth tilts. “I ask because you are good. I cannot wait for you to graduate and stop wasting time in classrooms. Then you will join the business and your professors will stop sending me emails about attendance.”
Aleksei strolls in with a bottle of mineral water. He is taller than both of us, broader, a wall with a face. Tattoos curl under the sleeves of his black T-shirt. There is flour on his forearm. He must have stolen a cookie on his way to the fridge. His eyes cut to the plate, then to us.
“You started without me,” he says.
“Started,” I repeat, and take a meat pie before he can blink. “You mean finished.”
He sets the bottle on the counter and walks back slow, like a man who has already accepted the loss.
I hand Leo a napkin, then reach for another pie.
We attack in silence. The crust flakes, the steam hits my face, beef and onion and peppered gravy.
I do not realize how hungry I am until the first bite cracks something open in my chest.
Aleksei sits, watches us work, then laughs under his breath. “I leave for one minute and two wolves climb on the table.”
“You should guard your food better,” I say.
“You should fear for your life,” he says, but he is smiling.
Leo wipes his fingers, then leans back, glass on his knee, eyes on me again. He looks different tonight. There is something else under the calm. I see it now that I am not moving. A shadow that clings to him like a second coat.
“Did something happen?” I ask. “You look different.”
“Something is always happening in our world.” Leo frowns. The lines around his mouth dig deep into his skin. “Why do you ask?”
“You look sad,” I say, and then it sounds like an accusation, so I soften it. “Older.”
Leo watches the lamp for a second, the way the light settles in the shade. “It is nothing,” he says. “I was remembering a thing that is not worth speaking of.”
He is evasive, which means it is not nothing. He turns the conversation before I can press.
“Your mouth,” he says, switching to Russian. “Why is it red, bratishka?”
Aleksei tilts his head. He sees it too now, the raw look at the edges, the heat in my face that is not from the food.
“I kissed a girl,” I say.
The room goes very quiet. Somewhere, the baby monitor pops and then settles.
Aleksei stares like I have announced the moon has fallen into the pool. “You kissed a girl.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were a virgin,” he says. “I thought Leo would have to chain you to an altar and marry you to some poor bratva princess, and that’s the only way you’ll ever get laid.”
Leo sips and does not deny it. “Do you want that,” he asks. “Arranged marriage. Easy alliance. Little work.”
“I want whatever makes money,” I say.
Aleksei snorts. “On his wedding night he will be making love to his laptop. Spare some poor girl that nightmare, Leonid.”
The words ‘wedding night’ and ‘making love’ slam into my brain, creating a strange visual.
Callista, under me on a bed I have never seen, silk sliding off her shoulders as she pulls at her wedding gown.
Her mouth flushed from my kiss. Her eyes glassy and wet and angry, not because she is afraid, because she is drowning in the same fire that is curling through my blood right now.
I feel hot. My body has been feeling tense since I kissed her.
I have kissed other girls before. Fucked them, too.
But it never made me feel anything. It was cold, transactional.
And I forgot about it soon after. But Callista’s tear-streaked face, soft voice, and trusting eyes are imprinted into my brain like a tattoo.
My kiss with Callista was meant to be a transaction, too.
But it was a revelation. A revelation that I can feel more than I thought I was capable of feeling.
Her beauty softened something inside me. She made me ache for an emotion I cannot even name.
All I need is leverage. A tool. Most women I sleep with are shallow. What you see is what you get. But Callista is complex. She’s like an onion. The more layers you peel, the more layers she has. And seeing a part of her she doesn’t show other people felt like intimacy.
For one second, I felt alive in a way I never feel in classrooms, never feel even when the numbers hit the exact shape I planned.
Her lie is better than other people's truths.
She thinks she is pretending to be someone else, but the version she is concealing is louder, brighter, more interesting than any of the girls who orbit these parties.
I breathe. I keep my voice flat. “It was nothing.”
Aleksei narrows his eyes. “You are red like a teenager.”
“Eat your pie,” I say.
He grins, then sits forward, elbows on knees. “What is her name.”
I let the silence do the work. He will feel me lock down and leave it. He always does when it matters.
Leo sets his glass aside. The mellow look shifts and the room tilts toward business.
“Since we are confessing, there is a thing you should hear. We have trouble on the east side. The laundromat on Blackstone. People in suits have taken an interest. Two visits in a week. One of the cashiers is talking too much to the wrong men.”
The warmth drops out of my stomach. The buzz of the kiss is gone, just like that. The dull math of risk calculation returns, fast and clean.
“Feds,” I say.
Leo nods. “They look like it.”
Aleksei goes still. The silly big brother who mourned his late night snack is gone. The enforcer is here now, quiet and sharp, eyes like ice water. “Names.”
“Not yet,” Leo says. “They are careful. I want you to look at the cameras and the alley route. Go tonight if you can, tomorrow at the latest. Do not spook the clerk. We switch him out after you are done. Dmitry will reroute cash until then.”
“I will go,” Aleksei says. He is already somewhere else in his head, walking a hallway, counting steps.