Chapter 22 Roman
ROMAN
The house is too quiet. The silence is wrong, but the choice is right.
I don’t like being home without my sons. It feels empty. Funny that. I’d thought the noise and chaos of them would be too much, that I was too set in my ways to be the father of twin infants.
Now, I yearn to hear their fussy cries and wear their spit-up like a badge of honor. They’d been here for only a few weeks before we sent them away, and now that they’re gone, I feel as though I’m missing a limb.
What I’m missing is worse than that. Bigger. More painful.
Children are like that, though. You can’t prepare for them, not in any real way. For the past year, I’d been living my life as I always have, unaware two miracles were born with my blood in them. But the moment I met them, the world narrowed to their two tiny bodies.
Two enormous possible futures for the Bratva.
I make predictions I know will be wrong in the details and right in the shape.
Alexander is heavier in the arm and louder.
He laughs first and calms. He looks at the world as if it belongs to him.
He will be the bigger one. He will take the first step into any space and make strangers feel like friends. That is how doors open in this world.
Yuri is smaller and fine edged. He watches before he moves.
He listens to the air. He notices a change in a voice and turns his head toward it.
He settles slower and deeper. When he smiles it is earned.
He will be the one who reads the table and names the danger before it stands up. That is how houses stay standing.
I hope those lines hold as they grow. The loud one and the quiet one. The hand that reaches and the hand that steadies. Together they could balance the weight I carry better than I do. Together they could keep each other honest.
Maybe that is what our people need. Not one crown on one brow. Two brothers who split the work. One to greet. One to measure. One to lead the parade and one to watch the crowd.
The need for them to grow up and have lives of their own…it’s all-consuming. Primal. I will protect them no matter what. Even if Mina would never approve of my methods.
I don’t need her approval. At the moment, I need her out of the picture, so I can handle the business of keeping my family alive. Her exhaustion is evident in the slope of her slender shoulders, the flat gaze. She’s been worn down by Vitaly, and not for the first time.
I haven’t asked about their relationship, because it’s none of my business, but also because anytime the subject is brought up, she shrinks in on herself. I will not pull at that thread until I know I can sew her back together when she comes apart.
Mina pauses in the foyer and turns toward the nursery without thinking. Her hand finds my sleeve. She does not speak. She needs a bed, not words.
“They are where they should be. This house will feel empty tonight. That is the price we pay so they live to fill it again.”
She nods, and we go upstairs. The staff withdraw without being told, though Sergei watches silently from a distance. He has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and at the moment, his old eyes fill with concern for Mina. Maybe for me too.
In the bedroom, a lamp burns low. The sheets are turned down. There is a tray with food she can eat without thinking. Sergei’s handiwork, no doubt.
“Rest for now. Tonight, there will be no rest.”
She leans on the doorframe and studies my face. “What’s tonight?”
“We go out.”
“Where to?”
“Rope.”
She chirps an incredulous laugh. “We are being hunted, and you want to take me to your kink club?”
“It is the second most secure place I own. He will come out of hiding there. I know it.”
“Why wouldn’t he attack us here?”
“Without Fyodor to help him, he will not get in here. At Rope, there are plenty of people to bribe or blackmail for access. Also, he’s already tried here—”
“And he doesn’t like to use the same tactic twice. Right.” Her smile dies, and she looks past me at the window. “I do not want the boys near any of this.”
“They will not be. They stay where they are.”
Her jaw works, but she says nothing.
“I will be here when you wake. Sleep now.”
She lies down in her clothes and pulls the blanket up. Her jaw scar is a pale thread in this light. She kisses my wrist and lets go. Her eyes close before I stand.
I hate leaving her here. I do it anyway. I also leave a code card on the nightstand. If she dials it, the inner doors lock, the cameras turn, and the gate freezes. That will keep him out.
I set in motion Marcus and Tanner’s replacements via text, and so far, so good.
The new head of security, Aldo, waits by the landing with a clipboard.
I miss the men who are gone and give no space to the ache.
There’s no time now. Aldo has been with me for years, but under Tanner.
He knows why he was promoted, and he doesn’t look scared.
“No gate for anyone but me. If I say winter, you evacuate the rooms to the sublevel and you burn the driveway where it crosses the stream.”
He repeats it back without a single note wrong.
I change and leave by the side stairs. The car waits. My new driver, Peter, watches the clock and my face. He trained with Marcus, worked as his third shift relief. He knows better than to offer comfort.
“Route Five. The old Valivov place.”
The city is half-awake. We cross the river. Smoke from last week’s fire still stains the sky. Downtown is a vague blur on the way to the other side of the city. I used to love this drive.
Thirty-five years ago, there was less city to pass on my way to my meetup point with Olga.
It was near her family property, but just far away enough that their guards never saw us meet up.
She’d sneak out in the middle of the night, and I’d pick her up, and we’d steal away to some remote location.
The woods. A park. Another town where we’d see a late-night movie and feel like a real couple for a few hours.
Sneaking her back in was always perilous. We never knew if her family knew she had been missing, so when she snuck back inside, she might have been caught. It never happened, though.
Well, there was one time.
The morning after a midnight escapade, her brother told her to be quieter when she snuck out, because he had to cover for her and say he’d fallen out of bed, because she had closed the window too loudly.
She was terrified Leon would rat her out, but he swore he wouldn’t, and he never did.
He told her that out of all their family’s enemies, I was the one he liked the most for her, because he knew I’d never hurt her.
If only that had been true…
The past clears away with the sighting of their grand driveway. Trees loom like sentries, and the ornate iron gate stands in front of the car. The buzzer sounds like a throat clearing.
I press it. “Roman Ekimov to see Leon Valivov.”
The lock whines before the massive gate opens. It is always a risk to visit another pakhan, particularly when unannounced. But this is a face-to-face discussion and not one I want Vitaly to catch wind of.
Leon stands at the doorway to his mansion looking somber. He has gone gray the right way. His hands are steady, and his clothes are perfectly pressed and tailored. I have never seen him look anything other than sharp.
On my approach, he calls out, “Roman, what are you doing here?” He does not offer his hand.
“I have come to ask a favor. Might we speak?”
He nods once, and I follow him inside. His men are wary, and I don’t blame them. But Peter waits in the car, and that seems to put them at ease a fraction.
We sit in his den. The room is small and a fireplace warms the space well. Books line the shelves, and we take to two overstuffed leather chairs.
“It’s been a long time,” he notes.
“Indeed.” Two years? Four, since our last conversation? I’m not sure.
His brow lines with what some might interpret as concern. For Leon, it’s calculation. He’s questioning whether I can still be trusted. “I am sorry about your men in the islands.”
I should not be surprised he knows about Tanner and Marcus, and yet, I am. “Thank you. Unfortunately, it has been an eventful few days.”
“I am sorry to have missed it, but I did not receive an invitation to your wedding.”
I had wondered whether to invited him. “Considering our past, I worried it might bring up old wounds.”
He nods and sighs. “Ah. Fair enough. And where is your new wife? I’d like to meet her.”
“Apologies. She is resting after our travels.” I lay an envelope on the table and turn it so the name faces him. It has his on the outside. “You know Vitaly is coming for me.”
He acts surprised, but it is only an act. “Is he?”
“You have your ear to the wind as much as I do. You knew about my men. Don’t act surprised.”
A slight lift in his shoulders. “You have your corner of our world, and I have mine. I don’t interfere with your family squabbles anymore. It cost me too much the first time.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” I swallow my pride to speak the words that will protect my family. “If Vitaly kills me, you protect my wife and sons. Half of what I own becomes yours if the condition is met.”
He lifts the flap and reads the first page. He does not touch the second. He looks up. “The condition?”
“Vitaly. You kill him. Fast. Clean. You end this, and you keep them alive.”
“And if you live?”
“That is the outcome I am planning around. You’re my plan B.”
He sits back and pauses to stare into the fire. The light deepens the shadowed lines of his face. “Why me?”
“Of all the pakhans in this city, you’re the only one I trust to do right by them. None of us are good men—”
He laughs once. Sharp. Not a denial. An acknowledgment.
“But you’re the closest thing to a good man that I know.”
“This could have been avoided. If you had married Olga in secret. The way she wanted you to.”