33. Isolde
Isolde
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Yelena says to Elijah. Or maybe it’s Lev she’s talking to.
“Ivan?” Dimitri strokes his goatee. “As in. . .”
“My son’s guard!” Lev roars.
Yelena stands, smoothing wrinkles out of her shirt. “Ivan and I had an understanding. You needed a friend,” she tells Elijah. Then she tells her husband, “And your son needed someone to pull him from the brink of being a madman.”
Lennie continues to hold onto Elijah, whose face remains blank.
“What happened in Kyiv?” Boris asks, handing a tumbler of liquor to Lev, who knocks it back.
Yelena pushes a tendril of hair behind her ear and shrugs. “I shot him. It was a bad shot.”
This last sentence is muttered like it pains Yelena to admit.
“You got into a shooting match with a Spider,” Dimitri says. “What? On the streets of Kyiv?”
Yelena sighs, pushing her hair back again. “Something like that.”
“When?”
She walks out of the room. “There will not be any time to waste.”
Lev grabs her arm. “What happened after Kyiv?”
He speaks quietly, but the Zimins are a nosy bunch. Yelena’s children wait with bated breath.
Yelena pulls her arm from Lev. “I went home.”
Lev doesn’t let her go when she tries to walk away.
She shrugs, slipping out of his grasp. “Where my father asked me if I wanted to marry the Pakhan’s son.”
His wife meets my eyes, jerking her head. I hurry to follow, Tristan and Ren on my heels.
Tris curses under his breath. His voice is low so only I can hear when he asks, “Where did Ian go?”
No one else has noticed because they’re all too busy following Lev. And wherever Lev goes, so does the Bratva. Dimitri’s got his phone pressed to his ear. Boris is a step behind, speaking to his daughters in Russian.
Adeline tosses her hair back, shrugging. This displeases her father, who must be telling his daughters they should stay put.
“This is not the time for an army,” Yelena tells Dimitri.
The man still has his phone to his ear. “We are facing a Spider!”
“One man.” Yelena opens a gun safe, pulling out a weapon.
“Just the one. . .” Elijah murmurs, watching his stepmother cautiously.
“Despite what many men think, excess is not always a strategy worth pursuing,” Yelena says.
“Of course I’m going,” Max tells his mother.
“You have a child,” she replies. Despite her calm demeanor, she speaks tightly.
Max’s scowl deepens. “Russet asked me to help. So I’m helping.” What he means is he’s not letting his mother meet the remaining Spider without him.
Fair enough, considering his brothers are also here.
We’re outside the city, the forest thick and the air hushed. I slam the door shut, standing beside Tris as we watch the family dynamic.
“Your job is to protect your—”
Max cuts his mother off. “I know the expectations of this life, Mother. We don’t want to be late.”
Yelena lets out a deep breath.
“You know Elijah is married, right?” Max calls over his shoulder.
“Really?” Elijah lopes after his brother. He’s in a three-piece suit, but it’d be more unusual to see him frolicking through the forest in anything else.
“Excuse me?” Boris asks. He’s had his work cut out for him the past hour, fighting with Ads and Lennie to stay back. His efforts have been rewarded with a psychotic son-in-law.
“I guess Len didn’t like the cathedral?” I say to Tristan.
He holds my hand for a second, squeezing before dropping it, ever the professional. “I don't think a big wedding was ever on the cards.”
It’s so quiet I think I imagine the snort coming from Yelena. For a split second she wears an expression oddly similar to one I’ve seen on her stepson’s. I could have told you that.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Tristan snaps. Ian rounds one of the parked SUVs, blending into our small group.
He drops a used butt, and before my boyfriend can complain about fire safety, Ian’s boot ensures the cigarette won’t cause any problems.
“What?” He shrugs. “I needed a smoke.”
I push forward until I’m walking beside Yelena, leaving Tristan to deal with Ian. Max falls back, reluctantly falling into line with his dad and brothers. They murmur in Russian.
A tree branch snaps, and feet pound into the soft ground, breaking up the peace. “What happened in Kyiv?” Dimitri asks for the thirtieth time.
I’ve always liked Dimitri. He’s a good shot and keeps his cool. He is not suited to the forest, tripping over a rock for the third time. I think if Boris wasn’t scowling at the back of Elijah’s head, he’d find his friend’s struggles amusing.
“No, I want all the details,” Dimitri says when Yelena opens her mouth. Like he knows she’s about to give some watered-down version.
I suppose it’d be hard to relive that memory. I’ve only let myself think about the tarmac a few times, and each time, my chest has squeezed tight as the adrenaline and fear course over me again.
Dimitri is a man who has always appreciated the nitty-gritty details. It’s why he’s so good at his job.
“Now is hardly the time,” Max instructs his uncle. Either because he’s trying to protect his mother or because we’ve reached a clearing.
We keep walking. And then walk some more. Everyone is silent as dawn washes the open field in pale blue, hazy light. Insects hum in the summer. Yelena spent so long tracking down Christian that a new day has crested.
The field is out in the middle of nowhere. I’m not sure how she knew this patch of land, this sparse grassy field, would be the meeting spot.
“Sitting fucking ducks,” Dimitri curses under his breath.
We’re yards away from our cars. Yelena was strict about keeping the Russian party to a minimum.
Lev stands as tall as a tree, but the calm he exudes is practiced.
Surrounded by his sons, his eyes continually find Yelena.
Whether he’s checking on her safety or trying to analyze who his wife is up to interpretation.
“This is it?” I murmur.
Yelena tilts her head in answer.
The Spider appears, and instead of fear, a question lodges itself in my brain. How long has Yelena waited for this moment?
I thought I was the only one in this city worrying about a creeping Spider coming my way.
I know to some degree Yelena is cautious otherwise she wouldn’t have fought her sons coming.
But another part of me thinks she’s waited for this moment not because it’s hung over her head. She wants this to end.
The Spider is smarmy, a little smirk flickering to life when he spots us. Like his brother, he is unremarkable. Tall, broad, not bad looking but not swoon worthy. This is a man used to blending in with the crowd. No one is supposed to know that he is a killer.
He holds no weapons in his hands, but I suspect he’s got at least one firearm tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
His smirk is met with blank faces.
No one dares approach Lev Zimin with this much cocky attitude. The meeting has nothing to do with him, though.
“Lenusha.” He spreads his arms out wide. “Not quite Kyiv.”
His gaze lands on Tristan. “This is the man who will kill my Mazen?”
Tristan keeps his hands clasped in front of him, his stance wide. This is his bodyguard pose. Cool, collected, and professional.
I love him dearly.
“As if he really could.” Christian spits on the ground. It’s not the grossest thing I’ve ever seen, but I can’t help but frown. His eyes are bitter as he turns back to Yelena. “All this time, I’ve waited—”
“You should have kept waiting.”
She’s not done speaking before there’s a crack of gunfire.
Blood drips from the single hole in the Spider's forehead. Eyes wide, mouth open. He’s dead before his knees hit the ground, his body crumpling forward.
“Well, that was fucking anticlimactic,” Elijah says after a minute of ringing silence.
His uncle, weapon drawn, shoves him. “Where the fuck did that come from? We cleared the area, nobody should—”
Yelena, slowly and stiffly, lowers herself over the dead body, staring into his unseeing eyes. She grabs a chain around his neck, tearing it off.
When she stands, she hands it to Elijah. “Give that to Ivan’s brother.”
Elijah rocks back on his heels.
Yelena tucks an errant strand behind her ear and walks around him.
“Maz didn’t pick up when I called,” he gruffly says.
It was clear earlier Elijah didn’t know about Ivan’s familial connections, but he must at least know of this brother.
“There’s no fucking way—” Dimitri continues to stare out at the tree line. “That shot would have come from three thousand yards. Where the fuck did the sniper come from?”
Yelena’s blue eyes meet mine. “It was never my kill. I hope you understand.”
Tristan toes the dead Spider, his hands curled into fists, no doubt thinking about what his brother tried to do to me on the tarmac.
I don’t feel anger. At all. I’m surrounded by the highest ranking members of the New York Bratva. My best friend Ren is here. Tristan grabs my hand, squeezing tight. Off to the side is an Irish guy who’s pulled out another cigarette.
Boris grabs it from his hand. “Are you trying to start a forest fire?”
Elijah inspects Ian. “That’s where you wandered off to earlier? You gave Maz a message.” He glances at his stepmum.
“He was a weird fucking lad,” Ian says under his breath while pouting because Boris won’t give him back the carton of cigarettes.
Yelena smiles softly and speaks to Ren. “I think this one might take after his mother. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to give him a chance.”
There is only the crunch of grass as we walk back to our cars.
“What was he like?” I ask Yelena. “Your Peter.”
Her hands are in the pockets of her utility jacket. She is strong and sturdy despite her frail frame.
I wonder if she’s thinking about the photo I gave her earlier. If that’s how she remembers him, or if there are other moments that flit through her mind more often.
“He liked poetry.”
Elijah’s fingers curl protectively around the necklace in his hand, his head cocking to the side as he listens.
“And classical music,” Yelena adds in her soft tone. “We would go to the symphony.”
It’s not until she talks about this activity that I realize how perfect it is for a woman like Yelena. There is something dreamy buried deep beneath her unyielding strength.
“How did he die?”
The words slip out, a vomit of sorts. But I have been wondering since I heard her speak to Christian.
Her gaze remains on her boots as she strides forward. I don’t think she’ll respond, but I think she appreciates a direct question.
“A bullet between his eyes. He did not see it coming.”
Her own eyes are pained with an unspoken truth. She had seen it coming.
“I’m sorry.” Two boring, sad words. “That had to have been someone pretty awful who could take out a Spider like that.”
Yelena laughs, the noise bitter. “Oh, Matheson. You are the first non-Karamazov to have taken out a Spider in decades.”
We’re almost to the cars when she stops and faces me. “I like you and Hallow’s style.”
Dimitri wheezes, one hand clutching his chest.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“No? So the Cosa Nostra, Stuarts, and all those Liverpool gangs aren’t lining up waiting for their turn in Cade’s jailcell.”
I shrug.
Maybe in a year Cade will be dead. Perhaps in two years. All I know for sure is until that time comes, his life will be a living hell.
Yelena smiles and nods at Tristan. “Take care of her.”
Tristan grabs my hand. “I will.
Ren grabs my other hand. “We will.”
Yelena heads to her car with her husband in tow. Max and Elijah trail after their uncle and Boris. Already a new car approaches. The clean-up crew.
Behind us is a dead Spider. Before us, in the distance, is the New York City skyline, hazy in the summer morning.
Ian rubs his hands together and shoots Ren a look. “Anyone feeling like some ramen?”