Chapter 15
EVA
Something is burning in the kitchen. Marco is yelling from the dining room about the smell without going to check because he’s working on a paper.
Jordan is on the couch with his big headphones over his ears, and his hood pulled over his head, forgetting he has something cooking, now burning, in the kitchen.
The TV is on full blast for my dad, whose hearing has been going for years, although he refuses to admit it.
And Katie is upstairs, calling for me because she needs help with her homework.
I nearly burst out laughing at the look on Vasya’s face. I doubt this was what he had imagined when Evgeny ordered him to accompany me home.
“And I thought a room full of Russian gangsters was bad,” he whispered when we first arrived, taking in what passed for a typical day for me.
I flash him a grin before calling up the stairs, “Get started, Katie, and I’ll be there in a few minutes. Keep trying by yourself until I get there, okay? That’s how you learn.”
Her answer is a groan and the stomp of footsteps overhead.
“You can go hide in the car if you want,” I tell Vasya as I slip the TV remote from my dad’s hand, gone slack now that he’s fallen asleep in his favorite chair with one of his true-crime shows on.
I turn the volume down with one hand and crank open the living room windows with the other.
It doesn’t do much for the house’s stifling summer heat, but at least it won’t smell like a burned burrito.
The way Vasya watches me, one eyebrow raised, says he can tell I’m practiced in this particular art of chaos.
But even this chaos can’t hold off the inevitable anymore. It’s time to confront the real reason I’m here. The reason I didn’t share with Evgeny, burying it among all the other people and needs pulling me back to this house.
Taking a deep breath, I yank Jordan’s hood and headphones off as I pass, his outraged “Hey!” following me into the kitchen.
“You forgot your food again,” I call back in the singsong voice I know he hates. It’s petty, but it also makes me feel better.
“Shut up, Eva.” He grabs the half-burned frozen burrito as I take it out of the old toaster oven. Tendrils of white smoke follow, and Jordan curses, dropping the pan and burrito on the counter because he doesn’t have the oven mitts. They’re on my hands.
His hood is back over his head, and he’s sucking on his burned fingers. I yank it down again.
“Eva!” My brother jerks away, glaring daggers at me.
“Is that what you used the money I sent you for?”
It’s a new, vibrant tattoo on his neck. But it’s not the colors I’m looking at, it’s the part of the design I can see above his collar. I reach forward to see more, but he smacks my hand away.
“Mind your own business, Eva.”
But my kid brother’s anger doesn’t faze me. The tattoo is what scares me.
“That tattoo, Jordan? Really?”
“I said mind your own fucking business, Eva.”
It isn’t a gang tattoo. Not really. But we’d both seen it on kids in our neighborhood going down a dangerous path. And now my little brother, the one who’d had a bright grin and infectious laugh, is sporting one.
“Jordan—”
“Don’t you dare, Eva.” Jordan backs up another step. There is anger in his eyes, but it’s covering hurt and fear. “Don’t you dare. You’re the one who disappeared.”
“Oh, give me a break.” I throw my hands into the air to keep from wringing his neck. “This has been going on for much longer than the last month and a half. And I swear, if you don’t stop getting into trouble, I’m going to stop saving your ass, and you’ll have to do it on your own.”
“I don’t need you to save me, Eva. I don’t need anything. I’m fine.” He turns, hurling the burned burrito into the trash.
“You’re obviously not, Jordan.” I follow him, unwilling to let it go. To let him go. To let this conversation go when I so desperately need him to just talk to me. “You don’t understand how much I fucking worry about you. How much Dad worries about you, and Marco, and Katie.”
He picks up speed through the dining room and into the living room.
“I can’t keep saving you like this, Jordan. I can’t. You have to learn to save your own ass or, better yet, stop getting yourself into situations you need saving from.”
Desperate to have this talk with my brother, I follow him as he flees up the stairs. He’ll deflect and say he’s depressed or that he’s an adult now. He’ll say no one ever expected anything of him, so he just became what everyone figured he’d be.
They’re all lies, of course, but they’re the armor he uses to shield himself from accountability. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get through his defenses and make him see how his actions affect everyone else.
And how they affect him.
“You’re too damn smart for this. You’re a good kid. Just let me help…”
Jordan’s door slams in my face before I can get my foot in to keep it open.
“Jordan, please.” I pound the door several times, then rest my hand on the old wood, willing my little brother to listen. “I don’t understand why you’re so angry. I don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I want to help. Please let me help.”
I’d been afraid for Jordan before, it was the reason I kept bailing him out. But that was before. Now, I’m knee-deep in bratva business. Now I’ve seen the files, the correspondence, the trails that show just how many illegal dealings they’re into. I’ve been among frightening men with their guns.
I’ve been backed against a wall with a bratva leader’s hand around my throat and believed every promise in his eyes that screamed he was going to kill me.
And that makes me genuinely terrified for my brother. I can see the path Jordan is going down, and I have no idea how to stop him. I feel entirely helpless, like I’m watching two cars barreling toward each other, knowing the results will be catastrophic yet unable to stop it.
“Jordan, please?” I let my forehead rest against the closed door, willing Jordan to open. “Please. Can’t we just talk? I just want to talk. I want to help.”
The only answer is silence.
Heaving a sigh, I turn and rest my back against the door, listening to the sounds of the house that have always meant home to me. Except now they are more of an echo of home, as though there’s a strange kind of time warp between here and Palos Verdes.
Quiet voices reach my ears, and I pad over to Katie’s room. I peek through the open door and am surprised to see Vasya sitting beside my little sister at the desk. Both are bent over her math book.
“You see? If you treat it as a whole number and round it, you can get an idea of the width and go from there.” Vasya’s finger is on a point in the book, and Katie nods vigorously. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes!”
Normally reticent with strangers, Katie turns a beaming smile on Vasya. He ruffles the kid’s hair and looks over his shoulder at me.
“Problem taken care of,” he says with a wink.
“Thanks,” I say, hoping my tone shows how grateful I am for his help. “You sure you’ve got this?”
“He has this, Eva,” Katie replies, voice thick with preteen annoyance.
Vasya chuckles and gives me a nod, then checks his watch. “I’ll finish this and be down in fifteen minutes. We should get going soon. Miss the worst of the traffic.”
My stomach clenches at the thought of leaving my family to their own devices again without me to keep everything together. But another part of me jumps with excitement, anticipation shivering at the thought of returning to Evgeny’s quiet, calm, clean estate.
And maybe, just maybe, to Evgeny.
Marco is my next target, as he keeps mentioning an issue with his professor, and I want more information. My “oldest” youngest brother is too apt to keep everything in so he doesn’t cause Dad and me more trouble.
But Dad waylays me in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. “Evushka.”
His eyes are always gray, always serious, but something in them stops me in my tracks.
“Papa?”
“You need to come home, Evushka. Whatever you are doing, it’s not worth it. You need to come home.”
“Papa.” I try a reassuring smile and put my hand on his arm. “I’m fine. Everything is fine. I know what I’m doing.”
My father’s gray gaze shifts up the stairs and back to me. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, Evushka. Already, Jordan is finding trouble. You are not here taking care of us. This is not a good decision you’re making.”
I see the worry in his eyes, the concern he won’t speak, but I can hear it at the edges of his words.
“Papa, please. I’m doing this for us. To make sure we can keep our house and the bookstore and Marco in school.”
There won’t be any money at the end, but what’s that compared to their safety? He might seem to be thawing, but Evgeny has never taken back his unspoken promises, and I’m not about to test the Kucherov pakhan’s mettle when it comes to my family.
“End this now, Eva. I know that man upstairs.”
“You do?” My stomach flops.
“I know men like him. I know what he is. I know those tattoos. Do you forget I’m from Russia, too?”
He doesn’t know. Not exactly. But my father knows something. He knows my story isn’t the entire story.
“Papa, I have to do this. You don’t understand.”
I’m done with the conversation and try to push past him, afraid of where it will lead. Fearful of what will happen if I break one of Evgeny’s rules.
Dad’s hand wraps around my wrist, preventing me from leaving. “Whatever you’re trying to do for us, Eva, it is not worth it. Nothing is worth this.”
You are, I want to say. You all are. Keeping you safe is worth it.
But I don’t because I can’t.
Dad’s eyes harden. “You keep doing this, Eva, and bad things will happen. Terrible things.”
Fear stabs at my heart at the words. “Papa, I—”
“Everything okay?”
Dad’s hand drops like a stone from my arm as we both look up the stairs to see Vasya. He watches us with narrowed eyes, one hand on the banister, the other resting lightly on the outside of his leather jacket.
The place where his gun must be hidden.