18
"What problem?" I ask, my voice thin as thread. My vocal cords have already called in sick. Maybe I’m allergic to wealth, who knows.
"That you and I can’t keep seeing each other, Alaska. I’m sorry, damn it."
My brain crashes, my head short-circuits, and it takes me two centuries to process that this isn’t some dumb uncle prank.
You know that feeling when you open the giant present and inside it’s toilet paper?
Same vibe, only worse. How am I supposed to react to this?
I don’t know whether to burn something down or clap like a hysteric.
"But why? What the hell are you even saying, girl?"
"That we can’t keep doing this," she hits me with, serious. She drops her gaze, then lifts it again—dead steady, hard enough to make me flinch. "Because when Irina finds out you exist, that there are two of you, and that one of you and I have been… there is no way in hell she accepts it."
I hover between giving her a metaphysical slap and ripping her shirt off with my teeth just to make the bullshit stop. Because sure, a girl can be sentimental, but letting someone kill your hard-on without a fight… that I do not do.
"Irina? The one from the legendary search? The same woman who, according to you, is going to give us a hero’s welcome with cake, a band, and a UNICEF wallpaper? The one who didn’t even know we were a buy-one-get-one deal?"
"You don’t get it. Yeah, she’ll be happy. She’ll love you. She’ll protect you. But I’m warning you, Alaska, she’s going to squeeze you hard. She’ll control you, and she’ll want me off the board."
"That’s something you’re making up, Nat!
" I shout, my voice half wrecked, half full diva performance.
"Get that trauma checked, because maybe this Irina is super modern, throws us a blowout wedding, and waves the rainbow flag. Maybe she’s into the whole lesbian thing and buys us a new set of sheets. "
"Irina isn’t a homophobe or some stodgy grandma, that’s not what I’m saying.
She’s married to a supermodel—you’re going to flip when I tell you who—and she’s spent forever preaching to her daughter to come out a lesbian and a lefty.
But with her family? That’s where she doesn’t play democracy.
You stick a hand in her henhouse, she’ll cut it off, deep-fry it, and pack it to go in Tupperware, with a little bow, so you don’t complain.
I swear to you, Alaska. If she sees me getting handsy with you, she’ll deport me to Mordor—no postcards. "
"Uh-huh, and you then, what? Are you family, or what the hell are you, Nat?"
"I’m part of the chassis. The gearing, the grease in the machine. And gears don’t mess around with the new princesses. It’s in the mafia handbook—rule number one, written in Sharpie. And you don’t know it yet, but I’ve already had to tattoo it on my forehead."
"Then get out!" I yell, jumping to my feet. "Tell her to go to hell! Come with me! Do whatever the fuck you want—you earned that right!"
"Alaska…" She looks at me with a Monday-plus-hangover face. "I can’t."
"You can’t? For crying out loud! This isn’t Orange Is the New Black!"
"Not for you," she says, head down. "For you, this is just another door to slip through. But for me it’s everything: the cage, the luxury, the steady paycheck, the debts to the mob, the family that steamrolls you. You know what that is? You don’t just walk away from it. I’m not the lead in a rom-com, Alaska. I wish."
"And what about me? What am I, then? Don’t I matter? Was this just to kill time?"
"Don’t say that," Nat says without raising her voice, but through slightly clenched teeth.
"Well you make it easy! The second it’s time to stick your neck out—poof—you bail on me. I didn’t even get notified about my own breakup."
"Easy, Lasky. Breathe before you have one of those weird episodes." Vega stands and slips between us, turned toward me with a don’t-start-shit-now face.
"She’s dumping me, Vega! She’s dumping me because some lady who doesn’t even know me is going to decide what we have is a mortal sin! It’s not fair, damn it! I am not built for Russian dramas!"
"I didn’t say that," Nat whispers, still on the couch.
"But you think it! I think it too, for fuck’s sake! You’re not choosing me! And worse, you’re treating me like I’m some naive kid for believing this could go anywhere!"
"Because you are," she answers, finally letting something crack in her voice. "You’re naive. And you are a kid. And you’re free. And you don’t know what it’s like to be trapped in something so big you can’t even think about leaving it without putting everyone at risk."
"I swear to you, I wish I did! But the one thing I don’t let anyone program is who I fuck. And if your boss Irina has a problem with that, she can write it down in her diary. I’ll show up and recite it to her in Russian if I have to."
"She’ll smile at you. She’ll hug you. She’ll invite you to lunch. And then she’ll ship me off to patrol Siberia, scarf and all, as punishment. You think things get fixed here with a tearjerker movie speech? No, Alaska. Here, what you lose, you really lose."
Silence. Vega takes my hand. She looks at me but has no idea how to calm me down. I let myself fall onto the couch. My ass hurts, yeah, but compared to the pain in my pride, my chest, and that disgusting little thing they call a heart… the ass thing is a minor sprain.
The thing is simple: she’s dumping me without dumping me, the legendary ghosting. And the worst part: I’m sure she showed up with the little “I’m leaving you because, I don’t know, the stars” speech preprinted in her head, stamped and certified, in case there was any doubt.
And on top of that, the twisted fantasy I’ve got rattling around my skull: part of me wants to bite her ear just to see if she bleeds like I do; the other is this close to dropping to my knees and begging her not to bail.
Or going full final scene: throw myself dramatically out the window—onto a crash pad, obviously, because I’m not trying to actually die and miss the dramatic reunion scene next season of my life.
But no. Here I am, still. Stone-still. Because I don’t even know if I hate her or if I love her. Maybe both at once.
"Why did Irina get mad at you?" Vega asks, voice tight, because she knows changing the subject is the only thing that might save this crap conversation.
I don’t even look at her. If I make eye contact with anyone right now, I will definitely cry. Nat resets her face to concrete-block mode, strikes a pose on the couch, and looks like she’s about to spit out an uncomfortable truth.
"Come on, spill it—what did you do to the boss?" my sister presses, a pit bull with a mouth full of questions.
Nat huffs. She runs a hand through her hair, clears her head a little before she says whatever it is.
"So I spent the whole fucking day on routines. Train. Learn to write in Russian. Escort whatever lady-of-the-week to make sure she’s breathing fine and no one’s poisoned her tea…
And, sure, while they were off doing serious-business mafia stuff…
I kept myself entertained. Guards, cooks, the plant lady… anyone bangable and legal."
"Are you aware of the mental porn flick you just unleashed in my brain?" Vega snaps at her.
"It’s a big place. Remote. Lots of people. And I… was young. Between this one and that one, I built a pretty hefty romantic résumé. I had a reputation, and I didn’t even bother to hide it."
"You were just screwing people like that, no shame, no nothing?" my sister asks. "What are you all over there, some kind of twisted family sitcom?"
She doesn’t even blink. "A lot, yeah, though a couple turned out to be too clever and I had to clap from the bleachers. But there were affairs, tears. Angry husbands threatening to break my face. And me, smiling, with my VIP pass as Boris’s sister.
At most, Irina and Rashel would tell me to rein it in. "
Vega opens her mouth to ask, but I cut her off, because by then my head has already storyboarded the whole spin-off: Nat in a bathrobe, cigarette dangling, and a harem of cooks waiting their turn behind the door…
"So then what? Did you fuck the boss’s wife or something?" I press, because my curiosity won’t rest, even if I’d love to send it to do squats for being a smartass.
Nat swallows so hard it sounds like the trauma’s getting stuck between her molars. I can even see the sheen of sweat on her forehead. A joy to watch her suffer, swear to God.
"Not her wife. Her friend, Sabina Rey. Which might be even worse."
"Sabina Rey?" Vega blurts, eyes going wide as saucers, only missing a bib. "No way—the badass doctor? The ex-model with the adamantium jawline, the one on magazine covers who gives talks on ‘how to crush it without messing up your hair’?"
"That one, yeah," Nat says, and I’m about two seconds from reciting Sabina’s entire bio and asking for her horoscope.
Vega and I are openly freaking out, like two gossip queens binging a Russian Real Housewives marathon. Next up, Sabina, the doctor-queen, is wearing a feather boa and a smoking gun tucked into her lab coat.
"Sabina and Irina…" Nat explains, slipping into documentary voice. "They’re best friends. They’re in love, they’re pissed, they’re married to other people, they ignore each other, they look for each other—I don’t know, it’s a level only they get.
But you get within a couple of meters and your eyebrows start sparking from the sexual tension. "
"No way—did you fuck Sabina Rey, Nat?" I ask, already knowing where this train wreck is headed.
"Yeah," she admits. "I was driving Sabina, we stopped by Irina’s place to drop off some papers. And there—silence, tinted windows, white dress, and that look she’s got that says she couldn’t care less about you, except she could. And, well, I’m flesh, not marble."
I picture the scene: Sabina in a punk-bride dress, me—I mean, Nat—as the sexy chauffeur. And of course, the dress flies, they go at it, I spray them with a hose to cool them off.
"Sabina looked at me," Nat goes on, "and I didn’t hold back. I went for her."
Vega and I go dead silent. So silent that in my head I’ve already lit a cigarette, filmed the sequence, and uploaded it to TikTok with the Game of Thrones soundtrack.
"You hooked up with your omnipotent boss’s untouchable ex? The friend, the married one?" I blurt, my voice coming out weird—a mix of dumb jealousy, nervous laughter, and a craving for a signed headshot.
"Yeah."
"You’re an idiot," Vega snarks. "And you got caught, right?"
"Mmm… define caught," Nat mutters, looking like she’s sitting on needles.
"Spit it out already," Vega insists, eyes sparkling.
"Sabina was in the back and I was up front playing tough, but shaking because she’s intimidating.
She started with her little jokes, dropping those boss-bitch lines of hers…
the tension climbed until the bitch actually blushed and boom, that was it, we hooked up.
We climbed into the back seat. Sweat, delirium, the drama, the spectacle—me thinking no one had seen a thing.
HA. Sabina gets out first, and there’s Irina, full boss stance. "
I don’t breathe; Vega lets out a whistle.
"And?"
"She looked at me. I repeat: she looked at ME. She didn’t say anything. She just left. But that night she called and asked me point-blank if I’d slept with Sabina."
In my imagination: please, someone catch me like that just so I can tell it in an interview.
"And you?" Vega, sadistic as always.
"I was a mess. I lied badly. She nailed me."
"And then what? Did she throw you in a cell with chihuahua-sized roaches? Ship you off to Ukraine to peel potatoes in the snow?"
"She put me on ice, basically. Months with silence as the daily special, permission to breathe but not to touch real life. Until one day she told me that if I wanted to earn my place back, I should go find her sister."
"And that was the whole punishment?"
"That… and an express ban on sleeping with anyone on the estate. Prohibition. I’ve taken a vow of chastity. That’s it. Libido sky-high and the convent closing up shop."
You can’t imagine the fantasy that hits me: Nat in cassock and rosary, rehearsing Laudamus Te with the choir and whipping herself every time a woman pops into her head.
I choke back a laugh because I don’t know if this scene needs a joke, a hug, or an offering of Kleenex.
Or hell, invite her to cry in the shower and, if it flies, into bed, where things tend to sort themselves out.
"And what did you do, witch? Take a tour of the international market to see if anything came your way?" Vega is thriving in her gossip element, obviously.
"I brushed up against a few temptations, don’t you worry. But fear got in all the way to my liver. Risk getting disinherited for a fuck? Hard pass. So I started looking for the famous Popova sister."
Here I should be applauding her misfortune or subscribing to her podcast, but what actually happens is my anger comes roaring back.
"So what does that mean for me? You going to ditch me because I’m the cartel queen’s secret sister? Do I have to gargle holy water and take a vow of lesbian silence for life?"
"Alaska," she says softly, and I swear a weird cold runs through me. "This can’t happen. You’ll understand."
Right there, my stomach just drops. Because she doesn’t yell, doesn’t make a scene. She just drops it and leaves me gutted.
"And what am I supposed to do, huh? Unplug? Get the urge out with chamomile tea and meditation YouTube? Or what—cut out my tongue to stop thinking about you every time I try to touch myself?"
"Alaska…" And she says it like that, sad, which messes with me even more. She drops her gaze, like everything weighs a ton, and I see it. That crack. That wound tough girls try to cover, but it still reeks of drama. End.