Chapter 24 Roman
ROMAN
The house is dim when I walk in. Rugs mute the steps of men who know how to walk without being noticed. The air still carries her shampoo and a ghost of mint from tea. Everything is in its place.
Nothing feels right in it.
Mina lies on the bed with her eyes open.
She’s on top of the bedspread in her black dress.
It reveals too much leg and cleavage, but that’s perfect for Rope.
She tries to smile. It does not reach the part of her face that tells the truth.
She looks past me for a second and then back like she cannot help it.
“They are safe. The same report as an hour ago.”
She nods. “Okay.”
“Sleep a little more,” I tell her. “We go out later.”
“Can’t sleep. Just staring at the ceiling, hoping this all goes right.”
“Then stare more. I need time to get ready.”
“Don’t worry about entertaining me, Roman. I’m fine on my own.”
In my bath the mirror tells one story. A man who slept when he could, and that wasn’t often enough. Lines sit deeper at the eyes and mouth. The gray in the stubble shows more than it should. I do not shave it away.
I take a hot shower long enough to loosen the muscles that stayed tight on the flight.
Old memories haunt beneath my skin. A shoulder that took a fall on a bad road.
A rib that remembers a fighter from Boston.
That bullet in Sochi. The heat makes them quiet.
I turn the dial to cold at the end. The shock is a good one.
Leon’s words rattle in my head, refusing to settle. He called me a good man. Or near enough. But do good men make their wives into bait? I don’t think so.
If, somehow, I had married Olga and we were in this situation, she would not have handled it with Mina’s grace. She would have gone catatonic, despite being raised in this world. I would have sent her away with the babies and hunted Vitaly down.
Even now, with this plan in motion, I wonder whether that would have been the better strategy. Mina is handling this better than I expected her to, but taking her with me into the lion’s den is a tall ask.
But she does not shrink from it. She hates this, and she is still here. I do not deserve a woman like her.
If we survive tonight, I will live every day trying to change that.
The closet waits with its dark hung order.
Tonight the suit is black. Shirt black. Tie black.
No shine. I button each button with hands that refuse to hurry and refuse to shake.
My holster fits skim to my body. The jacket settles right across the back.
The bigger gun sits in the case at my feet and will ride in the car.
I pocket a second magazine and a thin phone no one knows about.
On my way down I stop at the nursery and stand in the door. Two small shirts wait on a chair for a morning that belongs to us again. A toy truck sits under the dresser like it rolled there on purpose. I pick it up and place it on the shelf.
Soon they will play with that truck. Mina will pretend to rev it up, and they will laugh, and all will be right with the world. That’s all that matters.
Whether I’m alive to see that is inconsequential.
I go back upstairs and knock softly before I open our door. Mina is sitting now. Her mouth has color. Her hair is down. She looks like she’s ready for a battle no one else will know about until it’s too late.
“Ready?”
“Yeah, ready.” Her voice is steady. Her eyes are somewhere two steps behind it.
She takes my arm when I offer it. She fits at my side as if we have been doing this for years. I hope to. But I don’t count on it.
My son has a knack for getting what he wants.
Vitaly was always his mother’s creature, and his mother was trained by the best assassin I’ve ever known. He’s lethal, with a body count higher than most in that line of work.
But he’s sloppy. Prideful. When the moment comes, I will play to his flaws. I will let him think he has the upper hand, then take it from him.
That’s the only play I’ve got.
In the car she looks out the window as the gate opens.
The trees make a tunnel. The city takes us back like it did not notice we left.
There are small pieces of life in every frame.
A man smokes at a bus stop and cups the ember when the wind pushes it.
A girl runs with a bag held against her chest so it does not bump her ribs.
A dog pulls a woman toward the thing it wants to smell.
This is why I fight the way I fight. None of these people know they are under a roof I built. I do not need them to know.
I look at my own hands. They are steady and used. The lines were made by work I inherited. They will do more tonight. I think about the boy who has his mother’s eyes and my build, and what he’d do if he were ever to inherit the work I did.
Vitaly would burn this city down if it meant he could wear a crown. It’s all he’s ever wanted, the only future his ego would accept. He has a quick temper and a quicker trigger finger. Our family’s name would end in the ashes of this city.
“I thought being pakhan meant I could do whatever I wanted,” I mutter to myself. The words arrive without me thinking about it.
Mina turns fully now. “Doesn’t it?”
“On the contrary, it means doing what everyone else needs. Pakhans—the good ones—do not live for themselves. They live for their people. It means fathering those who need fathered. It means helping the helpless. It means marrying the wrong woman to protect the right one, and still failing.” Old scars.
“It means trying to do the best for your people at all times, even when it feels like the wrong thing. And sometimes, it means killing your own blood because they live only for themselves. That is my son’s failing. ”
Mina sits silently for a beat. “I would have thought all the killing was his failing.”
“That’s the result of his shortcomings. A symptom of his sickness. He’d rather kill than negotiate. He’d burn a building down to collect the insurance instead of refurbishing it. If he can eliminate an obstacle, he will do so, because it’s easier than not getting exactly what he wants.”
“That’s why you think he’d be a bad pakhan.”
“Even if my son were to take the title, he would rule briefly. The others would not tolerate the chaos he would bring. It would be a year at most before he was taken out. Or the law caught up to him. He is too rambunctious and hateful to rule quietly.”
She studies my face. “You mean to kill him tonight, don’t you?”
I nod once. It is a small movement. It feels like more than I want to carry. “I wish it could be different. I do not want to kill him. But he has not given me a choice.”
The truth sits heavy when it is said aloud. I watch her breathe and see the small catch in it.
“You were young,” she says after a while. “When you thought the title meant freedom. Did age change your perspective?”
“Yes. I was young and angry about Olga. I thought the chair would make me taller. It made me a wall. I did not like it until I learned what it held up. A legacy of men through the years, working to keep their families and this city safe. I run guns, and I don’t pretend to be innocent about any of that.
But I keep the guns out of the wrong hands. It’s not easy—”
“I never thought it was.”
I lace my fingers with hers. “I do my best to protect innocent people. I don’t always succeed, but I try.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am. Not the kind a bed fixes.”
She nods. She knows that kind.
I watch our reflection slide along dark windows and vanish.
The city lifts and dips. The bridge climbs.
The river passes under us, black and simple.
For a second I imagine stepping over the rail and letting the cold water take everything it can take from me.
The thought arrives and leaves. It is not the first time I have thought about that.
But I have work to do. The river can have me when the world does not need me.
Mina shifts. “Do you ever wish you had chosen something else?”
“Every man wishes that at three in the morning. Then he wakes up and does the thing he said he would do. Or he is not a man I would ever trust.”
She looks back out the window. “I do not like that your answer makes sense.”
“I do not like it either.”
I flex my hand and feel the small ache in the knuckles where winter lives now. I roll my shoulders once under the jacket to set the weight the way I want it. The mask I use for this place is an old one. It fits. It takes work to put it on and more work to take it off.
“You should not worry about the boys tonight. Worry is wasted energy, and you’ll need all the energy you can muster in this place.” It is the advice I give and can never heed.
She breathes out through her nose. “I am their mother. Worry is my job.”
“You are more than that.”
She seems to consider it as she stares out the window.
“Once we are inside, you stay with me. If a hand you do not know reaches for you, you do not pull away. You step into it and put your heel on their foot, and then I will break their face, and security will handle the rest.”
She nods. “Understood.”
“No, I’m not sure you do. In Rope, I am the dominant everyone else takes their lead from. I set the tone. Those there will see you as my submissive—”
“But I’m not.”
“Perception is reality at Rope. My point is, they will see you that way, and some dominants like to believe they can cow any submissive, even one that belongs to someone else. If they touch you or approach you, it is to challenge my claim on you.”
She blinks. “I am your wife, the wife of a pakhan.”
“And yet, there are those with too much ego and not enough sense. My illegal activities are a well-founded rumor here. One I never confirm, nor deny. It gives them plausible deniability. They do not know for certain who I am outside of here. They only know the rumors of it.”
“Why would they come here, if they’re normies who think you’re tied to the Bratva?”
“People like a taste of danger now and then, and attending the BDSM club of a suspected pakhan is its own kink.”
She settles in her seat, taking it all in. “So, they might come at me because they want to challenge you?”
“Weak dominants love to throw their weight around. It’s the behavior of a novice, and a good way to know who is on their game and who is merely a pretender.”
“Then, we’re being bait in two ways tonight.”
I huff a laugh at that. “That’s one way to look at it.” I see the distraction still walking in her face. It is small and precise. It creeps behind her eyes and hides when I try to catch it.
I do not press. I do not need to. She will tell me what she can when she can.
Until then I carry what I must and let her carry the rest. She is a worried mother.
Tonight would be stressful on its own without that factor adding pressure to the festivities.
Dragging it out of her would only rile her up more.
Vitaly will come. There is no cleaner chance for him than this room and this night. He will bring too much heat and not enough sense.
I will use that and any other tools at my disposal to eliminate the threat. If I die tonight, she will live. If he dies tonight, she will live.
Either way, my family survives. That’s all anyone can ask for in this life.