CHAPTER 21
Sasha
As late summer turns into fall, the landscape around me changes, and everything about my life, and the world around me, feels vibrant and new.
Trees that drooped under the hot summer sun are suddenly ablaze in fiery orange and red.
The Annapolis Ballet calls to offer me a position dancing with the corps in the new year, which means I can gleefully end my tenure with Coffee Depot.
And with free time on my hands, I can help Vaughn get Fostering the Arts up and running in D.C.
By October, I find myself spending more and more time at Vaughn’s place in Arlington. I still go home at least once a week to do laundry, pack a new bag of clothes and shoes, and check in with my parents and Bubbie. But my heart beats in Virginia, not Maryland. Wherever Vaughn is, is where I want to breathe.
On a lazy Sunday morning in November, facing each other in bed, both naked and still glowing from wake-up sex, he grins at me.
“Was it that good?” I ask.
“Always,” he tells me. “It’s always that good…but I was actually thinking about something else.”
“Tell me.”
“Instead of schlepping your stuff to and from your parent’s house to my apartment, why don’t you just move in with me?” He pauses for a second. “I want you to move in with me, Sasha.”
I’m not really surprised by this suggestion—he’s lobbed the idea my way before—but this is a proper invitation, and I’m touched that he’s asking.
“Are you sure you want me for a roommate?”
He places a fingertip on my shoulder, letting it glide down my arm to my fingertips to my waist. At my hip, he flattens his hand on my scarred skin and pulls me closer.
“I want you to be a lot more than a roommate,” he says, “but I figure moving in together is a good place to start.”
“We already work together a lot on Fostering the Arts ,” I point out. “Will living together be too much?”
“I love your help with Fostering… ,” he says. “But it’s temporary. You’re starting rehearsals in Annapolis in January, and it—maybe this sounds cheesy—but it would make me really happy to know that even if we’re both busy during the day, we lay down side by side every night.”
I mean, seriously. What woman—in the history of the universe forever—could say no to that?
Since I’m not taking the furniture to his place, we don’t need movers. Vaughn helps me pack my personal items—clothes, shoes, books, toiletries—in a dozen boxes and load them in the back of his SUV.
But the most miraculous thing happens when my mother walks us out to the driveway to say goodbye.
“Vaughn,” she says, “do you have plans for Thanksgiving?”
“I was invited by the Cigno’s,” he tells her. “Friends in Alexandria.”
“What time are you headed there?”
“They invited me for noon,” he says.
“Huh. Well, I’m hosting Thanksgiving dinner here at our house,” she says. She shoots me a quick look, but I can’t read it. What is she up to? “If you can leave a little space for a second meal, we don’t get started until five.”
My eyebrows jerk up to my hairline. Liar, liar, pants on fire. My mother has served Thanksgiving at lunchtime for as long as I can remember.
“Sure!” says Vaughn, offering her a surprised, delighted, smile. “I’d love to join you, and I’ll be sure to leave some room! What can I bring?”
“You’ve been through a lot in your life.” She reaches forward impulsively to pull him into her arms. “Just bring yourself.”
They say their goodbyes, and my mother walks me around the car to the passenger door.
“That was nice,” I whisper.
“He loves you. You love him. If you can forgive him, we can, too.”
I throw my arms around her. “You’re the best, Mom.”
“Have a safe trip back to D.C.,” she says, waving at Vaughn before returning to the house.
Once I’m buckled in, Vaughn turns to me with a dopey grin. “Your mother just invited me over for Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t get cocky,” I tell him.
“I won’t! I won’t,” he promises, backing out of their driveway. “But still…they’re thawing, aren’t they?”
Yep. They’re definitely thawing.
***
With the opening of Fostering the Arts in March, and much of the initial construction finished, Vaughn spends more and more time at his office on-site before the holidays, working on requisitions, donations and programming, getting the permits needed to offer classes to foster kids, and hiring staff who will be ready to hit the ground running this spring.
Because I have more time on my hands right now, I try to have dinner waiting when he comes home in the evening, not because I feel that I have to, but because I love cooking, and he’s a willing victim of my culinary experiments. Besides, once my rehearsals start, I won’t have time to cook him dinner. I may as well enjoy his—er, um, our —beautiful kitchen now, while I can.
I’m chopping onions and peppers for chicken fajitas one evening when the buzzer for our apartment sounds. This is a little strange because Jerome usually calls up when we have a delivery or an unexpected visitor. But with no call first, it means that either Jerome left his post for a few minutes, or someone familiar to Jerome has come up to the penthouse on the elevator.
Cordelia! I think. Of course!
Cordelia often drops off documents for Vaughn to sign on her way from work to school or vice versa. I throw the onions and peppers into a hot skillet, wipe my hands on a dishtowel, and head for the apartment door, swinging it open.
“Hey, Cordelia!”
My words freeze on my lips.
“Not Cordelia,” says Mikhail Stepanov, looking me up and down with a lecherous grin. “ Привет, Саша. Ты меня помнишь ?” Hello, Sasha. Do you remember me?
“Mikhail,” I say, my skin crawling at the sight of him.
“You do remember!” he says. “So! Are you going to invite me in?”
I realize I’m partially blocking the doorway, and for just a second I consider telling him to wait in the elevator foyer for Vaughn. But that’s ridiculous. This is Vaughn’s brother. His only and beloved brother. Surely I can be hospitable until Vaughn gets home.
“Of course,” I say. “Come in.”
He shrugs out of his overcoat, but doesn’t take off his shoes, as Vaughn and I normally do. It feels awkward to ask him to, so I don’t.
“I’m making dinner,” I say. “But I can pour you a glass of wine while you wait for your brother. He should be home soon.”
I walk up the half-stairs to the living room, and he follows me. I’m probably being paranoid, but I imagine Mikhail’s eyes staring at my ass as I climb, and it makes me uncomfortable.
“This is the living room,” I say, holding out my arms in an awkward gesture. “Please, sit.”
“You said you were cooking?” He glances up at the kitchen. “I’ll join you instead. We can…catch up.”
“It’s more comfortable here. We only have stools up—”
But he’s already climbing up the stairs to the kitchen, which is large for an apartment, but otherwise small. I pull my phone from my back pocket and send a quick text.
SASHA:
Mikhail is here. Did you know he was coming? Are you on your way home? Call me!
“I think your food is burning,” he calls to me.
Damn it! I race up the half-staircase to the kitchen and grab a wooden spoon, trying to unstick my vegetables from the bottom of the skillet.
When I turn around, he’s facing me, with his body so close to mine, it feels like he’s invading my personal space. I sidestep around him, placing some distance between us.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“You seem nervous,” he says, his lips tilting up in a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“I’m not!” I chirp. “I’m just…just surprised. I had no idea you were visiting.”
“As you say,” he says. “A surprise. And yes. I’ll have wine, assuming my brother has a decent bottle lying around.”
I gesture to the stools on the other side of the counter. “Do you want to sit?”
He shakes his head, leaning against the refrigerator, which, by virtue of the room’s layout, is right smack in the middle of my cooking space. “No, thanks.”
I grab a wine glass hanging on a rack over the sink. The white wine we were drinking last night is still in the fridge.
“Sorry,” I say, gesturing behind him. “The wine’s in there.”
He moves a millimeter—just enough for me to open the stainless-steel door, though I have to brush up against his hip to grab the bottle.
I quickly pour him a glass of wine and offer it to him. When he takes it, he slides his fingers over mine. My stomach turns over as I snatch my hand away. Smoke from the skillet behind me floats over my shoulder.
“Tsk. Tsk,” says Mikhail. “I think you’ve ruined your dinner.”
I whip around, yank the skillet off the burner and dump it in the sink, running cold water over the black lumps of burned onions and peppers. When I turn around, Mikhail’s blocking my way out of the kitchen. His wine glass, sitting on the counter, is empty. He licks his lips.
“You like playing house with my brother?” He scoffs. “You’re not very good at it.”
“We’re not…playing house,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Is it his money you want?” he asks me. “Is that what this is all about?”
I flinch because it’s such an insulting and outrageous suggestion. “I loved your brother long before he had a penny.”
“Ha!” chortles Mikhail. “He left America poor and didn’t hear from you for five years. You meet again, and he’s rich. Suddenly you live with him.”
“We tried to keep in touch!” I cry. “But you were plying him with coke and whores every night.”
“We like to party. Who are you to judge?”
“You were destroying him,” I hiss.
His eyes flare with anger.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve, шлюха .” Slut.
“You…you need to leave,” I say, taking a step forward.
“You have it all wrong, шлюха . You need to leave.”
I try to sidestep between him and the counter, but he throws an arm out, keeping me from leaving. His behavior, which has felt both predatory and aggressive since his arrival, is now manifesting itself physically. He’s blocking me from leaving the kitchen, and whatever anger I felt a second ago morphs quickly into fear.
Mikhail is considerably bigger than I am. There’s no way I would win a physical altercation between us. I need to get away from him before things escalate anymore.
“ Let. Me. Go ,” I snarl at him, trying not to show him how frightened I am. “Ivan will—”
“You’re not that beautiful,” says Mikhail, his face sneering and wolf-like. “Your body is average. Your tits are small. I heard you had an accident that mangled your hip. That can’t be pretty. So what is it? What is it that makes you so fucking tempting to my brother?” He takes a step closer, his eyes wide and wild, boring into mine. I want to run, but I can’t look away. “Is it your pussy? Do you have a magical pussy, Sasha?”
My heart is beating so fast and loud in my ears it makes me dizzy. A chill races down my spine. My fingers start to shake. I want to speak, but when I part my lips, no sound comes out.
What is happening here? What is about to happen here?
Say something. Say something. Scream.
“ P-Please move,” I ask, but there’s a tremor in my voice, and he hears it.
“Tell me about your magical pussy,” he growls, taking another small step toward me. His breath is hot and smells like rotten wine. “Maybe if I fuck that magical pussy, I’ll find out what makes you so special.”
“G-Get away from me!”
I lurch back, cramming myself into a corner of the kitchen. Knives! Where are the knives? I jerk my gaze to the right. They’re out of reach, on the other side of the stove. Hot tears slide down my cheeks, and I furiously wipe them away.
“Come now, Sasha…” he says, taking another step toward me.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!”
***
Vaughn
When the elevator opens, it smells like burning onions.
I punch the code into the front door of our apartment and step inside, where I find the smell is even stronger.
“Sash?” I call.
I pick up the small pile of mail on the table in the entryway and sift through it.
“Sash, what’s burning?” I ask, a little louder, toeing off my shoes.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!”
The panic in her voice makes me run toward it. I have no idea what’s going on, but dinner is burning, and Sasha sounds frightened. Who’s here? Who’s threatening her? My adrenaline surges.
“Sasha?” I yell, racing up the half-staircase to the living room. “Are you okay?”
Standing in the center of the living room, I look up to the landing and see Mikhail— Mikhail?!— leaning against the kitchen counter.
“Brother!” he calls. “You’re finally home!”
Sasha races from the kitchen area, almost falling down the stairs in her haste to get to me. I open my arms just as she launches herself against my chest, her whole body heaving with sobs.
“What happened?” I try to lean back so I can see her face, but her arms are so tight around me, I can’t draw back. I glance up at Mikhail, who’s watching us with an amused expression. “What’s going on? What happened? How are you here?”
He shrugs, taking his time as he walks down the stairs.
“I thought I would surprise my little brother with a visit! But I get here, and you’re not home yet…so I chat with Sasha.”
“Chat?” I rub her back, which rises and falls at an almost-alarming rate. She’s breathing so fast. “Just chat?”
“Maybe she don’t like what I say…but you know me, sometimes my English is…not best.”
Sasha’s head is still buried against my chest, her arms tight around my waist.
“That’s not true,” I say. “You’re English is fine, and you know it.” I lean down so my lips are close to Sasha’s ear. “What happened? Did he—did Mikhail touch you?”
“I didn’t lay a hand on her!” cries Mikhail, looking appalled. “She just doesn’t like me!”
“I’d like to hear from her,” I tell him.
When she looks up at me, her eyes are bloodshot, and her cheeks are tear-streaked and red. She looks miserable—scared, shocked and sad. I’m worried. I’m so fucking worried.
“Sasha, I heard you scream, ‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’ Did he touch you?”
“No, but…” She cringes, biting her lower lip and looking down.
I reach up to cup her face, lifting it gently so I can see her eyes. “Tell me.”
“He said d-disgusting things. Threatening—”
“I just wanted to know what’s so special about your Sasha! Is that wrong? You left Moscow to come here, to be with her… Don’t I have a right to a little bit of curiosity?”
“He wouldn’t let me leave the kitchen. It…he scared me.”
“She told you. I never touched her! We were talking, that’s all! Now all this crying and drama.” Mikhail protests, rolling his eyes. “What a great actress!”
I can’t quite figure out what’s going on here. Mikhail says he didn’t touch her, and Sasha didn’t contradict him. He also said that she doesn’t like him, which I know is true. But he also keeps cutting her off when she tries to tell me what happened. I need to get to the bottom of this, and I know which one of them I’m going to believe, no matter what.
“You!” I say, pointing at Mikhail. “Take a seat. I’ll be back in a minute.” I look down at Sasha and speak to her gently, “Come with me.”
I take her hand and pull her up the two sets of stairs to our bedroom, closing the door behind us. She crosses the room on shaky legs and sits down on the edge of the bed, her head down. I cross the room and squat down in front of her, so we’re at eye-level. When she looks up, her cheeks are still wet from tears, but some of her fear has been replaced by anger. I can see it. Hell, I can feel it.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her, holding her eyes with mine. There can be no misunderstanding between us on this point. “No matter what, now and forever, I’m on your side, okay? No question. No caveat. I’ve got you, Sasha. Okay?”
She musters a tiny smile and nods at me.
“Now, tell me exactly what happened so I can go deal with him.”
With halted speech at first, and then with more and more confidence and conviction as she continues, she tells me about Mikhail unexpectedly appearing at our door, joining her in the kitchen, and chugging a glass of wine. She tells me he accused her of being with me only for my fortune, and when that didn’t rattle her sufficiently, he called her a slut. She asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t, blocking her into a corner of the kitchen and repeatedly asking about her “magical pussy.”
“He was talking about my…m-my…body, so, um, so disrespectfully…and I c-couldn’t get away from him. No, he didn’t touch me, but it was still…m-menacing. He—he said that if he had—” She pauses, mewling a soft sob before continuing. “—sex with me, he might understand why we’re t-together. I c-couldn’t get away. And…and I guess I was s-scared he was g-going to r-rape me. I was—oh, god—Vaughn, I was really, r-really scared.”
She bows her head, crying into her hands as I kneel down on the floor, putting my palms gently but firmly on her knees.
“Sasha,” I say, “Sasha, котенок, listen to me.”
She peeks at me through her fingers.
“I will never let anyone hurt you, okay? Never. I’m going to deal with this right now. He will not be welcome back here. Not ever. I’ll make sure he knows that.”
“But he’s—he’s your b-brother.”
“And you’re my life.”
More tears start to fall. “Vaughn…”
“I’m so sorry this happened.”
She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them. “Do you think he would’ve…would’ve actually…”
I don’t know. I can’t answer her, which scares the shit out of me and makes me so angry, I’m afraid of what I might do to him when I get back downstairs.
“Right this second,” I tell her, “I can’t imagine a day when I will actually want to see his fucking face again. But if that day ever comes, it’ll be between me and him. And I promise it’ll happen far away from you, котенок .”
She sniffles, nodding her head. “Okay.”
I lean forward and press my lips to her forehead. “I love you. I love you so much.”
“Thank you for believing me,” she says, looking up at me with watery eyes. “I got worried when he started saying he didn’t touch me. It’s true…he didn’t. But I felt threatened all the same.”
“I know,” I say. “The way he was behaving and what he said to you was threatening.” And unfortunately, I have witnessed this behavior from my brother on more than one occasion. I lean away from Sasha, looking into her eyes. “You’re the most important person in my life, in my world. You’re my family. You’re my future. You’re my everything, Sasha. I will always take your side. I will always stand up for you. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says, managing a tiny smile for me. “I’m sorry you have to go have this conversation with him.”
I stand up and crack my knuckles, heading for the bedroom door.
“I’m not.”
***
With Sasha safe in our bedroom, I climb back down the stairs to the living room, pausing at the foot of the stairs to stare at Mikhail, who’s standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the lights of Washington.
For just a second— just a split second —I have a flash of memory. I’m swinging over a beautiful bed in an ornate bedroom, and Mikhail is looking up at me with pride and love. He claps for me to keep going, to keep swinging. There’s wind in my hair, and my little heart feels close to bursting because I’m impressing my big brother…
Mikhail turns around and smiles at me.
I don’t remember much of my early childhood in Russia, but I know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that I loved my brother. And if I hadn’t been kidnapped all those years ago, maybe I would love him still.
But if I am forced to choose between Mikhail and Sasha—between the family I was born into, and the one I hope to build for myself—Sasha is my choice. Every minute, every hour, every day. She is my choice. But I’m furious Mikhail has forced my hand. It didn’t need to be like this. There could have been room in my life for both of them.
My anger, churning and white-hot, demands an outlet.
I advance on Mikhail, drawing back my fist and smashing it into his smug fucking face. He reels back, hitting his head on the glass, then bouncing forward to crash into me. I put one hand on his shoulder to steady him, and punch his face again, the sickening crack of his nose breaking followed by a wail of pain.
He spins, then falls to the floor, landing on his knees. I kick him in his lower back, and he topples forward with a huff as the air is knocked from his lungs.
On all fours, groaning with pain, with blood streaming from his nostrils, he looks up at me, locking his eyes with mine. And what I see there makes my heart twist with unexpected pain.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m angry at him—I even hate him right now. But the expression on his face—of shock and confusion and betrayal— hurts . No matter what he did to Sasha, he thought that I would choose him over her. He’s shocked that I didn’t. He’s devastated that I didn’t. He doesn’t understand.
Despite the messy relationship he has always had with my mother, despite losing each other for twenty years, despite the fact he introduced me to a life of debauchery that I had to abandon to save my soul, and despite the fact that Mikhail is—on many levels—a bad fucking person, he’s also my brother. I loved him once, and as misguided and fucked up as he is, I think Mikhail has always, in his own fucked-up way, loved me, too.
And now there is no place for him in my life.
It’s sad. It’s fucking tragic.
My eyes fill with hot tears, and his image before me blurs.
“Ivan,” he groans. “ Младший брат.” Little brother.
My heart hurts.
My brain overrules the pain.
“ Why ?” I hear myself choke out. “Why the fuck would you do that to her?”
“Do WHAT ?” he demands. “I didn’t actually do anything.”
“You threatened her. You scared her. You knew exactly what you were doing!”
“She’s a fucking drama queen,” he says, reaching for a couch arm with his bloody hand, and struggling to stand up. “She’ll get over it.”
I reach down for his elbow and help him up, and he falls back onto the sofa with a loud sigh. “You broke my fucking nose, bro.”
“You fucking deserved it,” I say, hopping up the stairs to the kitchen and taking a package of frozen peas from the freezer. I return to the living room and toss it to him.
“I’m not hungry.”
“They’re for your nose.”
He presses the bag to his nose with a howl. “Fuck! You need to drive me to the hospital to get this set!”
“Take an Uber.”
“You want me to go kneel down before her highness and apologize? Tell her I was just kidding? Request her pardon because she didn’t like my words? Because I was resting my arm on the kitchen counter? What the fuck, Ivan?”
“You know what you did,” I say softly.
He rolls his eyes at me, adjusting the peas.
“So, what? What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything,” I say, the words heavy on my lips, though I know they must be said, “except for you to leave and not come back. Ever.”
He stares at me, slowly lowering the peas to his lap, his eyes wide, despite some initial swelling around them.
“What?”
“You’re not welcome here,” I say, enunciating my words.
His face contorts. “You choose her? That dancer—that шлюха ? Over me? Your own brother? Your flesh and blood?”
“Last time!” I thunder. “That’s the last time you call her that word without having my fist back in your face!”
He gulps softly, staring up at me in shock, which makes him look younger.
For the first time, I try to see the little boy who watched his parents’ divorce, his father moving a newer, younger, prettier model into their once happy home. I see him wanting to hate me and Sofia, fighting against his love for us…then setting that hate to the side and letting love win. But it was always going to be a twisted, mangled, misguided love. It was always going to be polluted by the circumstances that had made us siblings in the first place.
“You need to go,” I repeat, quickly swiping at the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Calm down, little Ivan,” he says, blinking his eyes rapidly. He looks down at his bloody hands, at the package of frozen peas, then back up at me. “You choose her.”
“I choose her.”
“But…”
“But nothing,” I say. “You need to go.”
He puts a hand on the arm of the couch, swaying slightly as he stands up.
“But you’re my brother,” he says. “You’re my little brother.” Младший брат.
“Nothing can change that,” I tell him. “But there’s no room for this version of you in my life.” I gesture to the stairs that lead to the foyer. “I’ll walk you out.”
He trudges across the room like a broken man and follows me down the stairs.
I take his overcoat from the closet and hold it for him as he shrugs it on. When he looks up at me through watery eyes, he doesn’t look like “Manic Mikey,” the international restaurateur and playboy. His eyes are world-weary and sad. His nose is purple, with blood drying under the nostrils. He looks shattered and small.
“I loved you,” he says softly, scanning my face like he’s finally seeing it for the first—or last—time.
“I know you did,” I whisper, opening the apartment door. “ Πрощай, Михаил.” Farewell, Mikhail.
He walks through it without looking back.
I close and lock it behind him.