Chapter 9 – Ivan
Mancini: This is unforgivable.
Me: I don’t need your forgiveness, don.
Mancini: If you attack the Poles, I’m not offering you aid.
Me: I don’t need your fucking aid, don.
I crept through the back door. The hinges creaked, a precaution so that my enemies couldn’t sneak up on me.
I never conceived of a situation where I would be the one sneaking into my own house.
It was ungodly early, though, and after the excitement of yesterday, I didn’t want to wake the newest members of my household.
My son—Hristo.
I breathed a deep gulp of air, satisfaction filling me as I passed his room.
The single-level craftsman house buzzed with an excitement that mirrored my own energy.
I hadn’t been here yesterday for very long after dropping my prizes off.
I showed Poppy where things where, warned her that my men lived in the houses to the right, left, and across the street, and I told her that she could do whatever she wanted with the place.
Whatever she wanted looked a hell of a lot like cleaning.
I stood in the open, small kitchen, marveling at the spick-and-span floor. Huh. I had no idea the backsplash was peachy-pink. And the counters had little flecks of sparkles in them.
Upon opening the cupboards, my smile of astonishment turned to a frown.
Everything was rearranged. Or missing completely.
The red plastic cups that I reused weren’t on the second shelf.
The coffee mugs were up one higher. The one with the particularly deep chip in the ceramic was missing from the motley stash.
I let out an angry huff. I was too tired after the business of yesterday and the long night at the clubs to care that my cup was gone. Everything was a mess. Without Mancini’s aid, the city council was actively working against me. The developer wouldn’t return my calls.
Turning the electric burner to red-hot, I filled the percolator with water and wrinkled my nose when I realized the grounds had not only been cleaned out, but the damn thing was polished. She’d used soap in my coffee maker.
Grumbling, I slammed the thing on the burner a little too loudly.
A doorknob popped, hinges whined, and then bare feet slapped across the floor. The boy—my boy, stopped at the end of the back hall, where the two spare bedrooms were.
“Mr. Ivan! You’re home,” he breathed, excitement lighting his face.
Just like that, the exhaustion sloughed off.
“Good morning, Hristo,” I said without thinking.
The boy wrinkled his nose. “My name’s Brady!” He slammed his thumb against his chest.
Mine pulsed with a small pain. The normal sounding American word was how he saw himself. He knew nothing of his heritage.
“Alright, Brady, if I’m going to call you that, you’re going to call me tatko,” I bargained.
The child tipped his head to the side. “What is tatko?”
I smiled. “My name. A special one, just for you.”
“Mama calls you Mr. Ivan—and other funny names in Italian that I’m not allowed to use.
” The boy padded over. He climbed on a chair, legs sticking out straight as he wiggled his butt back in the seat.
“But my cousins use those words all the time. They mouth off when Auntie Rosa isn’t around.
Otherwise, auntie washes their mouths with soap! ”
My coffee began to bubble and sing. I moved it off the burner to let it finish. Going back to the cupboard, I frowned again at the limited selection of too-small mugs.
“Mama couldn’t get the big, stained mug clean. She tried soaking it in white powder on the back porch,” the child said as if he could read my thoughts.
Sure enough, through the kitchen window that looked out on the fenced-in back yard, there was my mug. I missed it as I came in in the morning.
“I’ll get it!” the boy called, launching off the seat and running to the back door.
I winced as he tore it open. It was directly across from the room where he’d been sleeping. Where his mother was still sleeping.
When he came back inside, I was there to catch the door and shut it as softly as possible. I also closed the door to the small back bedroom, noting the thin blanket falling off the bare shoulder.
Something dark and possessive stirred at the sight.
Her skin was lush and olive, warmed by the summer sun. I bet it tasted as good as it looked.
But the child stood in the hall, holding the cup up expectantly for me.
“Here you go, Mr. Ivan—I mean tatko! Here’s your cup!”
“Thank you,” I rumbled in a low voice.
We stepped back into the kitchen, and I rinsed the powder, which I was pretty sure was baking soda, from the cup. A squirt of soap and the remnants washed clean.
It wasn’t going to taste like my cup. There was a reason I only put coffee in it.
Only ever rinsed it and never tainted it with soap.
I liked the aged musk that stained the ceramic.
Not everything had to be polished and new.
My house guest could clean all she wanted—the saints only knew how much of a bachelor pad this place was.
But my things, my personal things, I liked them exactly how they were.
I poured the black liquid into the bottom and sank into the chair opposite the boy.
He looked at me.
I watched him with a powerful, all-consuming satisfaction.
Except…what happened now?
He was here. I had plans for his future. But in this moment, I was just existing. Waiting for the next thing to happen.
And it did quickly.
“Tatko?”
“Yes, my boy?” My Hristo. My little heir.
“Can I have some food? I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
I rose, feeling something else that was new. It was funny and warm in my chest. I seemed to hurry to the pantry, not feeling tired. Not hurting from the sparring session in the pits. My body wanted to serve the little human and make him comfortable.
“Here we go, Captain Crunch. You like Captain Crunch?” I was already going for the bowls—which weren’t where they were supposed to be—with the box in my hand. I doubted we had fresh milk. I made a mental note to send someone to the store with a grocery list as soon as I sat back down.
“Tatko! Nnooo!” Brady gasped. “Not cereal!”
I rounded on him, confusion drawing my brows together. “What’s wrong with cereal?”
The child stared at me, eyes the size of saucers and mouth forming a perfect O.
“It’s just cereal?” His shock made me uneasy.
Shit. Was this one of the allergy things? Did my son have those? Fuck, that was something I should know.
“Tatko, that’s poison,” Brady whispered, as if he were revealing a secret that I should know.
I frowned at the box. “Captain Crunch?”
It was sweet, I’d give him that. And if there wasn’t milk to make it soggy, the damn pieces cut the roof of my mouth. But…poison?
“They use glyphosate on the wheat. They add folic B, which is synthetic, and we can’t process it.” The boy ticked off the responses on his fingers, well-rehearsed and ready. “There are other fake, processed ingredients. Too much sugar. And red dye forty!”
He gasped out the last one.
I blinked.
The fuck? Was this for real?
I glanced at the list on ingredients, not that I could read them.
“It’s not poison, I eat it all the time,” I dismissed him and set it on the table with a bowl.
The boy squirmed uncomfortably. “I can’t eat that.”
“Yeah, you can, watch this.” I grabbed a handful and popped it in my mouth. I chewed the crunchy shit and then gave him a smile with cereal stuck to my teeth. “See!”
The boy looked between me and the box.
Then he leaned over, peering behind his chair—looking toward where his mother slept.
“Mama won’t like it. She’ll cry.” He nodded solemnly. “She does it when Theo gives me things I shouldn’t eat.”
Well, fuck me.
Ebasi! It was just cereal. And yet the boy was in the middle of a moral dilemma about it.
“Okay, toast and jam?” I said, my tongue poking at the globs of sugar caked on my molars.
“Is it organic sourdough and clean jam from the farm?” he asked hopefully.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. “Eggs? That’s all I’ve got.”
“Did you pick them from your chickens?” he piped up. “I love eggs. I go to the coop, grab them right from under the cheeky hen’s butts!”
“Yeah, from our chickens.” If I didn’t tell a little white lie, this kid wasn’t going to eat. And…I was probably going to have to buy some damn chickens. “How do you like ‘em?”
“Scrambled. No cheese.” Brady rose on his knees, watching as I plucked two eggs from the cardboard carton, cracked them in a skillet, and waited for them to cook. “Mama likes hers runny—” he made a face “—with toast to soak the yoke.”
I didn’t know what to do with that piece of information. So, I changed the subject.
“You’re five, how do you know all this?” I waved my hand at the box of cereal. “You sure know a lot about food.”
“I’m gonna be a rancher like Uncle and Cousin Mikey!” he beamed.
Over my dead body.
“And this is the stuff they teach you in the country? That cereal is poison?” I grumbled.
“You have to know where your food comes from,” he countered.
Damn. That wasn’t a bad response.
I slid the plastic plate in front of the boy, who launched into the eggs with fervor. I popped another handful of dry ass cereal into my mouth in defiance. It scraped the roof of my mouth, and I knew I would hate myself later. But I couldn’t be bothered to care right now.
Yet as I scanned the ingredients again, not knowing the names of any of them, most of them were too difficult to sound out. But…there were a lot.
Well, must be why it tasted good.
“Mama makes the best jam with my cousins and Auntie Rosa,” the boy said, popping his head up as if coming up for air. He’d woofed down most of the food.
It was probably good he liked eggs. That was probably why he was strong and fit. I let my gaze trail over him.
Healthy. My boy was healthy.
And happy.
“And you have chickens?” I shot a glance to the backyard. We’d grown up with chickens, hadn’t we? We lived off eggs some of the time when there was no money for meat. It wasn’t a bad thing….