THREE
Nastasya
“ W hat did they say?” Papa roars for the fifth time since Dmitry escorted me into the house. “Are you certain they were Gennaro’s men?”
“I think so,” I answer yet again. “I didn’t catch all the words, Papa, but they didn’t have the same sound as the cartels.” I wince as our housekeeper, Mimi, tends to the cut above my eye.
“What did they look like?” My father widens his eyes and shakes his head. “Come on, Nastasya! Details.”
To anybody else, he’d seem cold and uncaring. The way he presses me could be classed as borderline abuse when I’ve just witnessed the death of my friend. But I know why he does it: the longer I take to confirm the details, the more they grow hazy.
The longer his adversary has to plan their next move.
A strike against our family calls for retaliation. To save face and regain the power, Papa needs to strike back before dawn, and I need to tell him where to hit.
“It was too dark to see them properly.” I curl my legs to my chest and tuck my body into a ball on the high-sided armchair.
Dmitry stands to Papa’s left, listening as keenly as my father. His men will be poised and ready to act on his instruction. An instruction that’ll become clear once Papa gives his directive.
“Where’s Caroline?” My voice is small in the grand den. That of a frightened child, not the twenty-five-year-old woman I am.
“She’s taken care of,” Papa states simply, hand to the top of his gray head. He wears his mane in a fashionable cut, the lengths on top slightly longer and swept to one side.
He’d be handsome if it weren’t for the look of unhinged madness that occupies his eye more often than not these days. He lost his grip on civility when Mama died, all his anger and frustration spilling out on those around him. He’s yet to rein it back in.
“Can I see her?”
“No.” Papa sighs. “I need you to focus, my love. What kind of car did they drive?”
“A sedan.” I frown, chewing the inside of my cheek. “I think it was an Audi.”
“Think? Or know?”
My back still aches from the final impact. I gingerly press the cuts on my knees and allow my mind’s eye to drift back to when I first saw the car take pursuit. “I can’t be sure. Their headlights made it hard to see the emblem.”
“With all due respect, Boss, our Latino associates have never passed on a message this way.” Dmitry stands straight, shoulders back and chest pushed out. “She may be right.”
He braces for the onslaught.
“What would you have me do?” Papa seethes, spinning on his most trusted soldier. “Gun down every Spanish and Italian-speaking man in the city until I find the ones I need?”
Mimi flinches beside me, her focus square on the gauze in her hand.
Dmitry’s throat bobs. “No, Sir.”
“Then shut the fuck up until I ask for your opinion.” Papa stands a whole head shorter than his sovietnik spy, but that doesn’t stop him from fronting up to the man toe-to-toe. “I don’t understand why they’d bother to go after you, Nastasya. You mean nothing to the business.”
I know he intends to say it factually, but the observation hurts all the same. I’m my father’s only child, and yet he treats me like one of the lesser in the organizational hierarchy. I may be a woman, but I’m not useless. I’m far from it.
As fucked as it is, it’s nice to think that our enemies see my worth, even if my father consistently fails to.
“What would I have seen?” I ask, alluding to the message blown through Caroline’s skull. “I don’t know why they’d do that.”
“Don’t be na?ve, you stupid girl.” Papa gets comfortable perched on the front of his desk. “The message was for me, not you.”
His unwavering sense of self-importance in the moment has me rear my head back.
“Perhaps I should call the doctor in for Miss Stasya?” Dmitry offers.
Papa waves the suggestion away, frowning while seemingly trying to decode who would feel he knows too much. “Mimi has done a fine job.” Knows too much about what is my main question. What has my father involved us in now? “We need to do what they least expect.” Papa waves his index finger as though to agree with himself. “Those fuckers will want me to cower and hide until the messenger makes himself known. But I’ll call their bluff.”
“ Vor —”
“No, Dmitry.” Papa whirls around his desk, dropping into the squeaky seat. “I need to think. Take my daughter upstairs and have her change into something suitable for guests.” He dismisses us with the back of his hand. “You may go home for the night, Mimi.”
I hate when he talks about me as though I can’t comprehend words or gestures. As though I need guidance like an animal. I’m a fucking person, living, breathing, and feeling. But I become’ the daughter’ when Papa gets stuck in his head. Another asset in his empire.
“Come.” Dmitry offers me his arm as Mimi packs away her first aid.
I set my palm on his muscled forearm and rise from the chair. I’ve known Papa’s sovietnik since I was a little girl. He was young and had fewer lines around his eyes back then, but his smile is as genuine as ever, his gaze as soft. He cares for me in a way my father couldn’t, even when Mama was still alive.
I consider Dmitry more like an uncle than one of Papa’s employees.
He waits until we’re in the foyer and out of earshot to ask Mimi, “Do you think she needs the Doctor?”
The short, flaxen-haired woman shakes her head. “Boss asked that she be ready for guests.” She lifts a gentle hand to my head, thumb brushing the tender skin around the cut. “The injury is minor, Miss Stas. But you may have a concussion. You must rest your head and avoid any physical exertion.”
I nod slowly, the action making my skull ache.
“And no alcohol for the rest of the week.”
Dmitry snorts. “You don’t play fair, Mimi.” He smiles down at her like one would to their grandma.
Our housekeeper has been with the family since my parents were married. She was part of my mother’s dowry—with Mama since she was a little girl. Age marks lines in Mimi’s round face, but I suspect the grays in her dull blonde hair result from life within these walls. She’s seen a lot. Heard more than she should have. And no doubt carries the burden of a thousand secrets never told.
“Let me get Miss Stasya ready,” she tells Dmitry. “I’ll have her down here in fifteen minutes.”
“No.” I rest my hand on her forearm. “It’s late. You go home.”
“I want to.” The smile reaches her eyes.
Dmitry nods to indicate he feels it’s a good idea I have help and promptly leaves, headed for the security room behind the grand staircase. His off-sider, Aleksy, will be in there, awaiting news from the boss—my father.
Vor Arseni Kuznetsov.
The man nobody thought would ever make a name for himself.
“Are you dizzy?” Mimi asks as we head up the stairs.
I shake my head slowly. “No. I only have a headache.”
“No sickness? Lethargy?” She ushers me left at the landing, toward my bedroom.
I smile softly at the older woman. “Are you asking me if I’m tired when it’s near midnight?”
Her eyes light. “Of course.” With her palm on my elbow, she lets me enter the room first. “What would you like to wear?”
My ass hits the side of my bed, and I tuck my clasped hands between my knees as she disappears into my walk-in. “I don’t know what the occasion is.” What guests would he want me dressed for? My only guess is that Papa calls in help—men to track down those responsible for Caroline’s death.
I swallow the rock in my throat and focus on Mimi’s soft voice from the closet. “A blouse and slacks, perhaps?”
“That sounds fine.” My gaze fixes to the slate gray color of my walls.
I don’t care what she picks out. I’d wear my goddamn pajamas to receive whoever my father summons for all I care. My stomach has refused to unknot since I lifted my head on my best friend’s demise, my legs perpetually tired. I want nothing more than to wake up and find this has all been a bad dream.
Mimi emerges with a cream blouse and sand-colored slacks over her arm. She lays them gently on the foot of my bed and then gestures for me to stand. I do as I have hundreds of times before, rising to my feet and extending my arms like I did when she dressed me as a child. Her gentle hands sweep my blonde locks behind me, securing them in a loose ponytail. I shut my eyes—hard—to force the recent memories into the black of my closed lids so that all I see are the dancing colors of the pressure on my eyeballs.
Mimi removes my torn black blouse and sucks a breath between her teeth. “Child. You have been in the wars tonight.” Her warmth briefly leaves before she returns and gently applies something cold and slightly stinging to the back of my shoulder. “You will have quite the bruise for the next week or two.”
She hasn’t reached the worst.
I relax my features, allowing my eyes to remain closed while I focus on finding my center. Papa will want me to be gracious and courteous as always, and my shock has yet to wear off. If I intend to make it through the rest of the night without collapsing into an inconsolable mess, I need to find calm within the storm.
Thoughts rage through my mind as Mimi removes my stained and torn clothing. Images mix with words. Phrases that lambaste me for not doing more to save my girl. For not protecting her from the perils of my world. I brought her into this and failed to save her from the consequences. What sort of friend does that make me?
“Oh, child.” Mimi’s lament comes from low in front of me. Her fingertips graze the cuts on my leg. “I’ll need to dress this.”
Finally, I open my eyes and take in the truth of where I’ve been and what has happened. A gash lies just above my left knee, three smaller cuts crisscrossing it toward my shin. The injury still weeps, blood springing forth each time the barely formed scab is disturbed.
“Perhaps we’ll find something more concealing than pale colors in case it should bleed while you’re with company.” Mimi lays one hand on her chest as she rises. “May I suggest something black?”
I huff a distressed laugh, tears burning at the back of my eyes. “Why the fuck not, right?”
I am in mourning, after all.