50. Alexei
Alexei
“Have you seen Benny?” I give my reflection a skeptical look. “He chose these fancy suits, so he’d better be wearing one of the damn things himself.”
“Darya’s got him running pretty hard.” Mickey adjusts his bow tie. “And I like the suits.”
“You would,” I say dryly. “You always were the playboy type.”
“Ha.” His laugh is completely humorless as he turns away from the mirror, and the vodka he pours is large enough to put a lot of men on the floor.
I raise an eyebrow. “Something on your mind, Stevanovsky?”
His eyes meet mine over the glass. “Nothing I want to talk about, Petrovsky.”
“Ah.” I give him a sly smile. “It’s Naryshkin now. You should remember, since you were the one who did the honors.”
He frowns. “Have you had a chance to look over the fault list I sent you? Before we launch we’re going to need to tackle them, so it’s not going to be much of a honeymoon, even if you are gallivanting around on that yacht of yours.”
“Mickey.” I shake my head. “It will get done, but not today, of all days. Today I’m getting married.
Tonight your sister and I are sailing off into the sunset.
And for the next week at least, the launch is the last thing I’m going to be thinking about.
We don’t have a set deadline, and there’s no rush on this, so for fuck’s sake, can you just relax? For a day, at least?”
“Relax,” he says flatly. “Right.”
I stifle a smile. I know enough about the swamp to be well aware that relaxation hasn’t been high on his agenda lately—and probably won’t be in the near future.
“Hey,” I say, attempting to lighten the grim demeanor that appears to be Mickey’s new normal. “Be grateful you’ve at least been spared the full Russian carnival.”
We’ve eschewed a lot of the traditional Russian customs in favor of a more traditionally Italian-style wedding.
Not least because when the members of at least three major crime families are all in one place, playing games where people steal from each other or kidnap the bride for ransom isn’t a good idea.
I eye Mickey warily, wondering if I either should—or even want to—ask about how Miami is going.
He meets my eyes in the mirror. “Whatever you’re about to say,” he heads me off before I even have a chance to start, “for Chrissakes, don’t. Respectfully, you’re the last person in the fucking world I’m likely to take relationship advice from.”
“Relationship advice?” I stare at him in surprise.
He frowns. “What were you thinking?”
“Miami, I guess.”
“Work?” It’s his turn to look surprised. “Work’s just work, Lex. I try not to overthink it. But I’m not going to lie, I do wish it was Lars running shit down in that basement.” He grimaces. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I grip his shoulder briefly. “I wish he was running Phantom, too.”
And that he was standing at my side today.
I’ve been debating for days whether or not to go to the hospital to see him before I watch Ofelia come up the stairs of the church. But somehow I feel like I said what I needed to say to him on the day I returned to Sicily.
And I genuinely don’t know if I can face seeing him lifeless on that bed again.
Not to mention that Benny has been even more protective than usual the last couple of days, although given the grim conversation we had with Lars’s team a few days ago, I guess that isn’t surprising.
I love you, brother. I close my eyes briefly, hoping that I might find his voice again, today of all days. But he remains stubbornly silent.
I open my eyes to find Mickey staring grimly out the window, in the direction of the church far below.
“Do you know if she’s staying at the villa?” he asks abruptly, still staring down the hill. “I didn’t want to ask Ofelia, with everything going on.”
“She—? Oh.” Suddenly it all makes sense. “You mean Lourdes?”
He rolls his eyes. “Who the fuck else would I mean, Lex?”
“Lourdes isn’t here, Mickey.” I ignore the jibe. “Ofelia didn’t want her at the wedding, and neither did I.” I half smile. “Nor did Benny, if it comes to that.”
“That’s bullshit,” he says tightly, his face hard. “Lourdes is Ofelia’s best friend. She has every right to be here—”
“Best friends don’t run out when the going gets tough, Mickey. And if they hurt family, then they’re not friends at all. Not to your sister, and not to me.”
He stares at me, color slowly returning to his face. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says quietly. “Any of you. I know how close Benny and Ofelia have always been with Lourdes. I never wanted to break that up.”
“You didn’t break anything up, Mickey. Lourdes did. And when it comes to family, there’s never a choice. We choose each other, every time. No matter what.”
His eyes narrow on mine. “Family, huh?”
I nod. “That’s what we are, brother.” I raise my hip flask to him. “Like it or not. And I’m well aware you haven’t always liked it.”
“No.” His mouth twists at one edge. “I haven’t always liked it. And, obviously, if you ever hurt my sister, I will kill you.”
I nod. “Obviously.”
“That being said, I’ve never seen anyone overhaul their entire fucking personality like you seem to have done, in lightning-fast time, too.” He raises his glass in a salute. “I barely recognize you, asshole.”
“It wasn’t fast, Mickey.” I meet his eyes.
“Seven years of loving your sister gave me a lot of time to think about what kind of man I’d have to be to deserve her.
The fast part happened when I decided I could actually become that man.
” I give him a small smile. “I suppose I have you to thank for making me see that.”
“Not me.” He answers instantly. “Lars. I just passed on the message.”
I nod, swallowing hard, and unscrew the cap on my flask.
It’s Mickey’s turn to grip my shoulder. “To Lars,” he says quietly, raising his vodka.
I raise my flask to the ether. “Motherfucker,” I say, not trusting myself to say his name without losing my shit.
We drink.
Mickey’s phone rings. “Hell,” he says in way of answering. “I almost forgot.” Grinning, he hands me his phone.
“Yo.” Dima’s voice comes through the speaker.
“Brother.”
“Sorry I’m not there.”
“I’m not. You can’t wear a tux to save your life.”
“At least my head isn’t mangled like yours, you one-eyed bastard. Besides, someone has to stay here and kick this useless pack of geeks into shape.” He doesn’t sound remotely unhappy. In fact, for Dima, he sounds positively cheerful.
“I take it you’ve been doing a little training, then,” I say, grinning.
“Believe it or not, they all know how to throw a punch. And shoot, for the most part. They also speak Spanish, which is a definite bonus.”
“Sounds like you’re on vacation, you slack prick.”
“Oh, they’ve still got a lot to learn, believe me.” He gives a dark laugh. “Should have seen their faces the first time we fed the gators.”
“Ha. I can imagine.”
“I’ll keep this short.” I hear him light a cigarette on the other end. “I’m happy for you, brother. Truly. And don’t give any thought to our swamp. The kid’s got a brain like yours, and some balls to match. By the time I’m through with him, he’ll be running a half-decent operation.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“He was a good call for pakhan, Lex. Even if I wasn’t convinced at first.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that on—”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Dima says warningly. “Until I say otherwise, he’s in training.”
I grin. “Copy that.”
“Go and get married, you ugly prick. And don’t send me any photos. The last thing I want is your fucked-up face on my wall.” He covers the phone for a moment, then comes back on. “The boys say they’re all raising a glass to you.”
“Thanks, brother.”
“Fuck off,” he says cheerfully and ends the call.
I hand the phone back to Mickey, still grinning. He raises his eyebrows. “Anything I need to know?”
I shrug. “Dima says you’re useless, but he’s working on it.”
“Fucker,” Mickey mutters as he turns away. I’m still smiling when a knock comes on the door.
“Boys.” We turn to find Sergei at the door. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”
“Not at all.” Mickey puts his glass down and heads for the door.
“Since I no longer have to dread coming face-to-face with my ex-girlfriend, I’d probably better go and eat something to soak up all the vodka.
” He shakes my hand as he passes, shooting me something that could almost pass for a grin. “See you out there, brother.”
Papa waits until the door has closed behind him before pouring himself a vodka from the same bottle of Graf and lighting a cigarette.
“Don’t tell—”
“Rosa,” I finish for him, grinning. “I know.”
“If a man cannot enjoy a smoke in his nineties,” Papa says, drawing on the cigarette with relish, “then why bother living that long in the first place?”
“Some fine Russian logic there, Papa.”
“Ha.” He smiles. “Perhaps. But Rosa is Colombian, so my Russian logic has never impressed her at all.”
That makes me laugh.
“It is such a sight,” he says, regarding me affectionately, “to see you laugh, syn moy. To see such happiness inside you, and the happiness you bring to others.” He meets my eye. “I have never been more proud of you, Alexei.”
His words mean more for being so simple.
I embrace him, savoring the old, almost forgotten comfort of his rangy strength.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I say as we step back. I take the hip flask back out of my breast pocket. “Who was it that engraved the words on the bottom of this flask? You or Aleksander?”
“Ha!” He gives a cough of laughter. “You found that. I thought perhaps it was too faded to notice.”
“I noticed, Papa. On the plane on the way to Miami.”
“Well, how about that.” He looks both surprised and pleased.
“It was Aleksander,” he says. “He inscribed the words there on one of our first nights in Paris. We were two men raised in a gulag who knew nothing about the world except what we’d learned from the stories of other men.
It was cold, we had very little money, and no idea, really, how to begin making a new life, so we did the only thing men do at such times and got blisteringly drunk. ”
I laugh aloud at that, and Papa smiles, a proper, wide smile that touches my heart.
“Aleksander somehow carved those words perfectly, despite being barely able to hold the graver, and even less able to see straight. The next morning he was utterly mortified and spent hours examining every letter for any trace of a fault. He always said it was the best work he ever did, because technically he was working blind.”
“I love that story.” I turn the hip flask over in my hands. “There are so many dents and marks on it. While I was in Miami, I realized that I can’t properly tell the story of this flask, Papa, because it holds not just one, but hundreds of stories.”
I stop turning the flask and meet his eyes. “I was hoping,” I say quietly, “that after our honeymoon, you and Rosa might come and join Ofelia and me on the Quantum Drift for a while. I should like very much to hear the stories the flask has to tell.”
His eyes widen in surprise, then deepen to a rich, sparkling blue. “It would be my honor, syn moy,” he says quietly. “And my greatest pleasure.”