Chapter 30 Raisa
RAISA
Lev returned to school the following week. He wasn’t as nervous about going back as I thought he might be, but then again, he wasn’t a shy or troubled child. Like me, he accepted the cards he’d been dealt so far and he made the best out of the hand he held.
With him back in school and the ongoing investigations about the Rivera threat, the possibility of my father being alive, and the worry about other odds and ends that popped up, life seemed… normal.
It was a new normal.
And it resembled the former life I’d left behind when I found out I was alone and pregnant.
I was back in the Mafia world, standing next to Ivan and handling the drama that came with being included in such violence.
The longer I stayed, living with Ivan in his room in Luka’s house, the more I shifted back into being the “Mafia princess” I once was.
When Lev was being tutored and Ivan was working, I helped Gabriella more.
Holding Andre and watching him reach more and more milestones reminded me of the happy moments when Lev was a baby.
Like two women were prone to when a baby was around, we shared pregnancy and childbirth stories as we got to know each other more.
“Yeah, you definitely have a more traumatic childbirth story,” I told her after she explained how Andre was born early. “I thought I had it bad delivering on my own, but it wasn’t among gunfire.”
She shrugged. “It was a hell of a lesson in what it’s like to be a Dubinin.”
“But Luka clearly loves you and will keep you safe. He respects you, too, which isn’t common.”
She perked at that, asking me more about what it was like to grow up as a Petrov.
I didn’t hold back, telling her all of it.
Luka sat with us sometimes, too, and I wasn’t afraid to speak freely around him.
If they wanted to grill me about my father, they were welcome to.
I prayed that they understood I was allied with them the second I realized Ivan was Ivan Dubinin, and I wanted our love to stand up strong to the test of Mafia politics.
As Gabriella and I grew closer and began to laugh and tease each other like actual friends, we talked more about doing something good for society.
Because I was a young, single mother on the run when I had Lev and because she had delivered her child literally into a scene of violence, we teamed up in brainstorming about opening a women’s shelter.
It would be protected by layers and owned by various shell companies so no one could track it back to the Dubinin name, but Luka said he would provide whatever funds she wanted or needed for it.
Ivan was also excited to see me interested in a project like that.
Before I could get too excited and plan many things about my new and shiny future since I’d run back to Ivan and his family, I received what felt like a ticking bomb, rattling and hissing and ready to explode.
One afternoon when Ivan came home after picking up Lev from school, I told them I’d be right down.
“Just a minute!” I only wanted to quickly check my emails. Any day now, that charity organizer would get back to me.
I opened the laptop Ivan had given me when he had a shopping spree day to spoil me and Lev with things we’d been needing for a while. No email was waiting for me from the woman I hoped to get in touch with, the one I’d cold-called for a meeting.
But one stood out.
It was from an address that didn’t seem to match the criteria of spam.
And the fact that it had my father’s name in it made my blood ice in my veins.
“What’s this?” I whispered to myself, nervous but also figuring it had to be spam or some phishing nonsense. That was what I got for browsing charity management services. Filling out all kinds of forms led to the inevitable influx of being spammed in the inbox.
I clicked on it, praying it wouldn’t be a virus.
It wasn’t.
It was much worse.
The video player opened a new box. It played immediately, showing me the face of one person I had never, ever wanted to see again.
“Hello, Raisa.”
I shuddered.
Hearing my father’s voice would never fail to disturb me. When I was a child, he’d scream and scold. Then when I was older, he lectured and nagged. Strict parents were always a drag, but a Puritan freak like my father was something else.
How did he find me?
Why is he contacting me in a damn email?
Why does he have to be alive?
A flurry of negative emotions kept me in a chokehold as he glared at me through the recording.
One eye was missing. The lids were sewn shut, and it looked like pieces of skin had been grafted to make up a continuous layer over his face.
Some parts were stretched too thin with white scar tissue, and others were bulky and bumpy, pinkish and not in agreement with the surgeries he must have had to go through.
He looked grotesque, frightening, even. He’d never loved me and I wouldn’t ever wish him well.
But seeing the evidence of his having suffered from that fight or war he’d instigated years ago, whatever it was that he’d done with the Cartel to have started the rumors that he was dead, I was glad.
I was secretly gloating at the fact that he’d suffered.
If only he’d died, too.
I ground my teeth together, physically reacting to the news that he was alive. Unless this was some AI rendition or a deep fake, it was him.
Back to haunt me.
Rooted in place, immobile and frozen in shock, I could only stare as his summons played.
“I am contacting you with no other message than to let you know that you are nothing but a pathetic waste of a daughter.”
I exhaled a shaky breath through my nose, too livid, too stunned to react.
“I am ashamed to have ever called you my daughter. A wanton, slutty whore of a girl who spread her legs for the filth of the Dubinins.”
I shook, letting the anger vibrate through me.
He was wrong. I knew he was wrong. I never flirted with anyone. I never even spoke to a boy or man. He kept me sequestered under his surveillance. I was never able to even look at a person of the opposite gender without the fear that he’d accuse me of being an embarrassment.
Because I was a thing to him. A piece of chattel, like Gabriella had ended up being for her father.
I had been a virgin when I met Ivan that summer, and it was with a rebellious spirit of knowing that one summer would be my only chance to live without my father watching, before he told me to come back home after the one single semester he’d allowed me to have in university.
I’d chosen a college overseas to get as far away from him as possible. I plied the one Petrov guard with so much booze and so many hookers that he left me alone and never watched me. And I lived. For the first time, I allowed myself to live. And to love.
This horrible monster was wrong.
And I would never let anything he said matter.
I knew better now.
“If you can manage to spare yourself a second away from the depravity you insist on living with, listen to me now. Hear me well, you stupid whore, and understand that this ultimatum is a favor for you.”
I shook my head, needing to react even though he couldn’t see.
“You will have one message from me, bitch. One ultimatum you must heed. If you don’t, your Dubinin filth will suffer.”
That settled it. He was alive. And he thought he had a score to settle with Ivan’s family.
With the people I was coming to see as my family.
This wretched man had fallen out of power from his own mistakes and affinity for stirring trouble he couldn’t survive.
All this time, he had to have been hiding and aligning with any enemy of the Dubinins that he could find.
He’d probably contacted the Riveras to attack me, seeing me or my son as a weak link to the Dubinins.
He was likely behind those moles who’d tried to kidnap and harm Lev at school.
“With this ultimatum, I intend to reclaim the Bratva power that should be mine.” He scowled, but the expression was contorted with the numerous scars.
I shook my head again, refusing to believe him. He was owed no power. He’d lost it himself from all the fighting he’d caused.
“I intend to punish Ivan Dubinin for ever daring to take my daughter.”
I’m not your daughter anymore!
I am not yours at all!
I am my own woman. And I’ll be damned if you try to act like you will ever be my father again.
“I order you to bring Ivan to me. With your bastard spawn. I order you to bring that pathetic Dubinin with the child he put in you when he had no right to even look your way. And if you don’t, I will expose your adultery and sins for the world to see.
I will ensure your bastard child will be the star in the middle of a full-scale war among all the Bratva families. ”
“Fuck you,” I whispered hotly. Tears gathered at my lids, but they collected there from anger, not fear or sadness.
He spoke of such cruelty, but I knew better than to dismiss it as insanity.
He was capable of it. He was despicable enough to want to pull this off.
I was fully aware of how manipulative and evil he was.
All this time people wondered if he had been killed or not was the time he’d used to build his effort and seek out a strategy to make Luka Dubinin suffer.
To make Ivan pay for ever claiming me as his.
But he won’t win.
He can’t.
Ivan would protect Lev with his life. I was secure here, and our son would never be lost. I’d seen firsthand how true to his word he was—about everything he promised. Ivan wouldn’t let this happen, and I frantically tried to see a way that I could prevent this hell too.
“Raisa?” Ivan entered the room, frowning as he noticed my attention. He’d jarred me, coming in here as I was stuck watching this ultimatum from the father I’d wished dead so many times that I’d lost count of those morbid thoughts.
“What’s—” He hurried toward me, clearly seeing how upset and distraught I was. “What’s going on? Lev is sick and asking for you. I think he ate something at school that didn’t agree with him and…” He furrowed his brow some more as he approached.
“Oh, God.” I stood, staggering from the chair.
Lev needed me and I would always be there for him.
As I stumbled to leave the room and go to our son, I pointed a shaky finger at the monitor.
“Help. I’ll help. I mean I’ll help. Not him.
Lev. I’ll go help Lev, but help me with—it just came in and I saw and— Tell Luka.
Send that to him. Have your cyber team track that thing right now and—”
“Raisa.” He grabbed my arm, bewildered. I never stuttered, never lost my cool. But seeing my father in that video was like encountering a terrible ghost from the past I’d run away from eight years ago. “Whatever it is, it will be all right.”
I wasn’t sure how.
“Help Lev,” he said gently but sternly, taking charge. “And while you help him, I’ll handle this.”
I nodded jerkily, almost running from the room before I would join my son in being sick. Nausea hit me as I hurried out of the room, desperate with the wish that Ivan really could just fix this situation.