Chapter 1 #2
“I’m glad you came home early,” she says, giving me a side hug while she smiles at Roma. “We’re about to watch a movie. I’m just finishing up the snacks.”
She grabs the un-iced cupcakes, cuts a few of them into smaller pieces for Roma and puts them in a bowl since he prefers them that way, just like his dad.
She ices the rest of them and then pours milk into a childproof cup and grabs a jar of baby food so Mira won’t feel left out.
With our hands full, we make our way to the living room.
My dad and uncles all lived here when they first came to America, so the couch can easily hold all of us.
Roma hands me the remote, and I quickly pull up his favorite streaming channel. I recognize all the logos, and picking his profile is easy because we set it up together. I click on the dinosaur image he chose and when the selection pops up, I look over at him.
“Which one do you want?”
Communicating with Roma is easy because he can’t read yet.
I feel like we do things the same way, so when he points his finger and says, “The cat one, like Pip,” I know exactly which one he wants.
He claps his hands when I click on the cat that looks just like the one his parents adopted before he was born.
I grab a cupcake and refuse to think about the day when Roma starts reading, easily surpassing me without even realizing it. I hope for his sake he does. I hope he’s the brightest kid in the whole class and that no one ever teases him about a goddamn thing. I hope he takes after his dad and not me.
When he starts to get sleepy, he crawls into my lap and gets comfortable. My mom looks over and gives me one of her sappy smiles. Her eyes dart between my dad, who’s holding a sleeping Mira, and me with Roma curled up in my lap.
“That’s the cutest thing ever,” she whispers before grabbing a blanket to tuck around Roma. She brushes back his dark hair and sighs. “He looks just like you and Luka did when you were this age.”
“Until he opens his eyes,” I say.
“Then it’s all Luka,” she agrees. Keeping her voice low, she sits in between me and my dad and grabs a cupcake. “You all packed for the trip?”
I snort out a laugh. “I haven’t even started.”
She looks appalled but then shakes her head and says, “You’re a grown man. I’m not going to treat you like a child and pack your bag for you.”
“I appreciate that,” I say.
She manages to stay silent for another few minutes, mostly because she spends it chewing, before she says, “Don’t forget your charger.”
My dad laughs. “Solnishka, he won’t forget anything, and if he does, he can just run to a store and buy what he needs. He’ll be fine.”
“It’s just a pain in the butt to have to do that,” my mom says. “And bring extra underwear. You can never have too many pairs.”
“Can’t you?” I ask. If my mom had it her way, I’d show up in Oregon with a phone charger and twenty pairs of underwear. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll pack everything I need. I’ll even remember my toothbrush.”
She smiles over at me. “I know you will. You promise you’ll call if you need anything?”
“I will,” I tell her.
“And just because they’re a Bratva,” she says, whispering the word Bratva in case the grandkids accidentally absorb that while they’re sleeping, “it doesn’t mean you need to, you know, work or anything.
In fact, you shouldn’t.” She looks at my dad, “He shouldn’t right?
Isn’t that against the rules and a definite no-no? ”
“A definite no-no,” my dad says, trying to keep a straight face and failing.
My mom points a finger at him. “Don’t you dare laugh at me. I don’t want our son getting involved in dangerous business that he doesn’t need to be involved in.”
My dad reaches out a hand to squeeze my mom’s thigh. “He’ll be fine, solnishka. I promise.” He looks past her to me. “Don’t get involved in Medvedev shit unless you have to, yeah?”
“Sounds good to me,” I say.
I hear the soft huff of air my mom gives while my dad stifles another laugh.
“Well, I guess that’s as good as I’m going to get,” she says.
My dad opens his arm and she quickly scoots over to cuddle up against him while Mira continues to sleep on his chest. He kisses my mom’s head, and I hear him whisper, “Damien will be safe. I promise. He’d never do anything stupid.”
I’ve grown used to my mom being overprotective and worrying way too much.
She and my aunts have always done it. I understand their concern, so I’ve never gotten mad about it.
I imagine it’s hard enough having a kid, but having one and then sending them out to help run the family Bratva must be terrifying.
Even holding my nephew, I wonder how in the hell my brother’s going to do it.
Roma is still so small in my arms, so innocent and vulnerable, and the thought of him doing what I do one day is hard to fathom.
Of course, we were all this innocent once.
My cousins and I had a happy, carefree childhood.
We had no idea what our dads did for a living.
It wasn’t until we were much older that we learned the truth.
We all adjusted. We all learned to do what was necessary to keep our family safe, and one day Roma will do the same.
The best thing I can do for him is make sure we have our territory on as tight of a leash as possible when it comes time for him to join the ranks.
None of us want to hand over an unsafe city.
We’ve kept ourselves safe because people fear us too much to fuck with us. We just need to keep it that way.
I help put Roma to bed before going to my own room.
I’m exhausted, and it doesn’t take long to fall asleep.
I don’t bother trying to fight it because I know my nephew is going to wake me up with the sun.
Roma and I have a system. When he stays over, I leave my door open, and as soon as he wakes up, he comes to get me so I can make him breakfast. Before it was safe for him to come and get me on his own, I used to set my alarm so I could be there when he woke up.
It’s our own little tradition, and I can’t wait until Mira is old enough to join us.
A tiny pair of hands pull me from sleep, and when I open my groggy eyes to see Roma’s smiling face, it’s impossible to be irritated about the fact that the sun has barely risen.
So, instead of scowling and pulling the sheet over my head for a few more precious moments of sleep, I ruffle my nephew’s sleep-messy hair and ask him what he wants for breakfast.
“Cereal,” he quickly says. “The one that looks like little cookies.”
“Ah, the healthy one then?” I ask while I get out of bed.
He follows me into the bathroom and watches me brush my teeth and then laughs when I tell him to turn around so I can pee.
Still in sweats and a T-shirt, I grab my phone and then walk with Roma to the kitchen.
He goes straight for the pantry, rummaging around until he finds the box he wants.
“Grab the yellow box for me,” I tell him. “The one with the old guy on the front in a blue uniform.”
“With little red and blue berries?”
“That’s the one,” I tell him while I get the milk from the fridge.