Chapter 27
Kirill
Russian summers are brief but intense, offering long daylight, warm air scented with pine trees and wildflowers, and a sun that refuses to set until the last possible moment.
But like all good things, they vanish almost as quickly as they come.
Just another fleeting moment that we’ll never get back.
That’s how they feel to me, anyway.
But I seem to be outvoted on the matter, because everyone else in the Petrov family is convinced this glorious summer will never end.
Partly because my niece and nephew are here from the States, and partly because Elena’s pregnancy has brought a hope into this home we haven’t felt in years.
Kira and Darius have taken to Russia as if they were made for it, spending their days racing across the compound, swimming in the pool, riding bikes, wandering the nearby woods, picking flowers for Elena, and ending their evenings around the small bonfires they insist on building themselves.
Together they’ve turned this place into their own summer playground, pulling joy out of every corner they explore.
They even convinced Sasha to teach them how to ride a horse, and to everyone’s amazement, our usual grump of a brother has been smiling nonstop since the summer began.
As for Misha, he’s been soaking up the summer warmth and the beautiful glow Elena seems to carry with her these days. Which is saying something, considering how against this pregnancy my brother had been in the beginning.
I wasn’t here for Elena’s first two trimesters, but from everything I’ve been told, those six months were the hardest this home has ever weathered.
Her health was declining day by day, and it didn’t help that Misha kept urging her to reconsider carrying the baby to term.
When the doctors finally warned him that ending the pregnancy so late would be just as dangerous, given her condition, he lost what little hope he had left.
Then something miraculous happened.
Elena entered her final trimester, and with it came a surge of optimism that spread throughout the entire house.
Her face grew fuller, her energy returned, and she began to glow in that way all expectant mothers do when the finish line is near.
Not once have I heard her complain about anything pertaining to her pregnancy.
Not about her morning sickness, or about how swollen her feet had become.
Nothing. Whatever this pregnancy throws at her, she seems to treat it as a blessing.
And for the past couple of months that I’ve been here, I’ve watched Misha begin to treat it like one too.
His worries have slowly dissolved, replaced by something I never thought my brother would have again—faith.
A genuine faith that everything was going to work out in his favor.
For someone like Misha to relinquish his control and let himself believe that some invisible higher power was watching over his wife and unborn child was a miracle in itself.
Maybe my brother will get lucky.
Maybe he’ll get to keep both his wife and his child.
Maybe these are the thoughts running wild in his head now that Elena is starting to look like the woman he fell in love with again, rather than the fragile shadow she became in the wake of her cancer.
Even in my own depressive haze, I cling to the hope that at least one of us Petrovs gets everything they’ve ever dreamed of. Misha has sacrificed so much. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s him.
Me, on the other hand…well. I don’t have much left to hope for. Not without Stella.
And with that thought weighing on me, I head to the fridge, pull out another bottle of vodka, and step outside toward the pool, where my family is laughing, living, and pretending, for a moment, that this magnificent summer might actually last forever.
If I had it my way, I would take this bottle of vodka and a few of her brothers and sisters and hide away in my bedroom.
But to my bitter chagrin, I was ordered by my Pakhan to fix my reclusive attitude because it had cast a dark cloud over this home’s newfound happiness.
And if I didn’t want my summer vacation to be cut short and be sent back to Chicago, I needed to make an effort and take part in family time.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I’m participating in all this family bonding by getting shitfaced on a lounge chair, poolside.
Misha ordered me to be more present. He didn’t say anything about having to do it sober.
“Here I come!” Darius shouts, sprinting toward the pool before launching himself into a cannonball.
Kira’s and Elena’s laughter echoes across the yard, light and bright, the contagious melody wrapping itself around us. My brothers take it all in with wide smiles, their faces softened by joy.
I force a smile of my own. I have to. I don’t want Misha biting my head off again.
But even surrounded by all this happiness, I still feel hollow.
I wonder if that feeling will ever go away… or if this is the man I’m destined to be now.
Fuck it.
As long as there’s a bottle of vodka in my hand and a cigarette in the other, then I’m content. Or close enough to content I’ll ever be.
“I thought I told you no smoking in the house,” Misha says accusingly in Russian, glancing at me over his shoulder instead of paying attention to the T-bone steaks on the grill.
“You did,” I answer back in our native tongue. “And as you can see, I’m not inside the house. I’m outside.”
“Just don’t smoke around Elena. It’s bad for the baby.” He levels me with a look before turning back to the grill, only to start chuckling when Elena sings out that the cook looks even better than the steaks he’s preparing.
My lips instantly dip into a frown.
Fuck Misha and his stupid happiness.
And fuck him for rubbing it in our faces.
Does he realize that what he has is something the rest of us can only dream of?
Yeah. Fuck Misha.
I sink further back onto the lounge chair and slip on my Oakleys since the sun is stabbing at my eyes and I’m still nursing the hangover from last night.
That’s all I do now, apparently.
Endure family time for as long as I’m forced to, then head into the city, hop from one bar to the next, drink myself stupid until one of my brothers—usually Kostya—has to carry me out and bring me home so I can sleep it off.
It’s the only method I’ve found that keeps my brain from thinking.
The only way to keep her face from rising in my mind.
But the dreams… they always come.
In them, Stella appears to me.
She tells me she loves me.
She tells me she needs me.
She tells me she’ll never leave me.
And in my dreams, I claim every promise she whispers, every vow she breathes against my mouth.
But morning always comes, and with it the nightmare that is my life.
The life that I’m forced to live without her.
“You’ve got to chill the fuck out, bro. Your whole face is a fucking downer right now,” Kostya says before slipping into the empty lounge chair beside me, turning to stare me down.
“Don’t like the way I look, don’t look at me. There. Problem solved,” I grunt, taking another pull of vodka, not even caring when some of it spills down my chest.
“Jesus, Kill, but you’re a hot mess. The kids are here, for fuck’s sake,” he hisses. “What kind of example do you think you’re setting right now? Especially to Darius. That kid is a sponge. Do you really want him to think it’s cool to get drunk before noon?”
“Kira will keep him in check. Don’t worry,” I mumble, taking a drag from my cigarette.
“She wouldn’t have to if you acted like a normal fucking person.
” Kostya scowls, eyeing Darius to make sure he’s too busy having fun to pay me any mind.
When he sees Sasha with him on his shoulders, prancing around the pool, Kostya’s frown deepens.
“I feel like I just stepped into an old Twilight Zone episode. Here you are acting like a sour grump, and there’s Sasha having the time of his life.
I don’t like it. This role reversal is too fucking creepy. ” He shudders.
“I’m busy, Kostya. Can you take whatever this is somewhere else?” I draw a circle over his face with my cigarette to drive the point home, making sure the smoke pollutes the air between us.
“Fuck you,” he mutters, swatting the cloud of smoke away. But when it clears and I see that godforsaken pitting look in his gaze, my skin starts to crawl.
Fuck, how I hate that look.
I hate it even more than his accusing scowls.
He’s been looking at me like that since Kira’s high school graduation.
Since the day he told me he had given my letter to Stella, and that she’d been just as heartbroken reading it as I’d been writing it.
I think he expected me to go to her instead of boarding our plane the next day and coming home.
I thought about it. God, how I thought about it. But what would’ve been the point? It would’ve only hurt more to see her.
Things hadn’t changed between us. She still had a destiny to fulfill, and me being in her life would only keep her from becoming the woman she always wanted to be.
I couldn’t do that to my Stella. I couldn’t be the weight that dragged her down.
She needs a clear head to face the Capos who attended her ceremony and prove—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that she deserves her place among them.
I heard the words she spoke when she took the omertà. The Outfit would come before God, family, and everything else. There was never any room for me. It just took me a minute to accept that.
No. The best gift I could give her was to walk away. Even if it killed me.
Unable to just lie there and witness that crestfallen expression on my brother’s face, I snuff out my cigarette and force myself up from the chair.
“Where are you going?” Kostya asks, wide-eyed.
“To get some more. I’m out,” I say, wiggling the empty vodka bottle.
“That shit isn’t water, you know.”
“It is today,” I fire back, already halfway out of the yard.