Chapter 21
Adaughter. A little girl. The words echo like a drumbeat in my head as I walk down the street to the banya, head down and shoulders hunched. I turn the thoughts over and over in my mind, trying to wrestle them into a shape I can control.
“Yo, watch where you’re going, man!” I feel the weight of a body slamming into my shoulder and turn to see a skinny guy with tattoos. He’s too jittery from a night out to notice that I’m not the sort of man you shake your fists at. Even in broad daylight.
Last night’s news has made me lose my edge to the point that strung-out clubbers don’t think I’m a threat. What about the Italians or the Albanians? What about my boss?
Plunking down on the gray stone steps of the Russian baths, I cup my head in my hands. We usually meet here on Sunday, and it’s not good news that Sasha has broken our routine and asked me to come down here on a Friday.
What the fuck will I do if the Night Governor finds out I’ve fathered a kid with a celebrity? Ten years ago in Moscow, he was powerful and dangerous, but now he’s terrifying. He owns half the earth: mines, banks, shipping lines, congressmen, members of the FBI and CIA. There’s not a thread of American life the Night Governor can’t pull if he wants to. A few words in the right ears and Guelman can make anyone’s life unravel.
I tug on my hair and try to catch my breath before I go upstairs to see Sasha. The stone beneath me has been worn by the feet of a hundred years of Russians like me feeling lonely in America. When I didn’t seek refuge in the banya, I lay in bed listening to Kesera’s voice singing about that lost weekend in the woods.
Fuck. I thought she was safe. And now she’s fucking found me.
Rising wearily to my feet, I trudge up the steps to meet my best friend. Nausea swirls in my stomach. Maybe I’ll feel better after I sweat it out. You can tell what a man’s about when he’s drunk or naked. Less to hide that way.
After stripping off my clothes, I head into the steam and the silence. The first session is about to start, and Sasha is already lying on the top bench, ready to bake as the heat rises. There are only two other people on the tiered pine benches.
Lev, the old, paunchy guy from Belarus, wears a tattered bathrobe around his body and a fuzzy felt cap on his head to keep the heat off. It gives him the look of a demented goblin as he pads to the door, his flip-flops slapping against the tile.
He turns to the room. “Last call. I’m closing the door, so if you want to leave, do it now.”
I slap Sasha on the arm as I lower myself next to him.
He opens one eye with a dark glare. “I need to talk to you, fucker.”
My head falls back against the pine, and I shut my eyes. Fucking great. I need to ask for Sasha’s help with this Kesera situation, and he’s already agitated. Not that I say anything as Lev scatters eucalyptus oil across the room and the sharp tang of the trees rises from the pine benches.
The whirl of the bath towel reaches my ears. Lev stands in the center of the room, working the air. My shoulders and forehead burn as the steam rains down like fire. Let it rinse away all the bad ideas and leave me clear enough to figure out a way out of this mess. The only other sound is the heavy breathing of men alone with their thoughts in the stillness as the heat encloses us.
“Ice pool,” Sasha says as the door opens and the other two men file out.
We walk straight to the freezing water, and I hold my nose and jump straight in. A hand pushes down on my head, and I look up and see Sasha standing over me, holding me down. I try to slow my heartbeat and wait him out, but he keeps his hands on my shoulders, pushing me lower. A muffled string of curses cuts through the water.
Sasha’s mean when his temper is up, but he won’t kill me. Without me, there’s no one who actually knows the boy from the orphanage in Russia—no one to keep him real as the money, hookers, and private jets bend him out of shape. Without him, there is no one who will have my back in the Night Governor’s world.
But when you can’t breathe, the body starts to override the mind. I start by counting the seconds and focusing on the tiles lining the plunge pool. After what feels like minutes but may only be seconds, my lungs burn and I start to claw at Sasha’s arm. He pulls his hand away, and I burst out of the icy water.
“What the hell? That wasn’t funny.”
After clambering out of the pool, I stagger to a bench outside the sauna, bent double and coughing like an old man. I let the heat from the open door fan my aching and icy muscles, and I keep my eyes on the floor until I can gather myself together to face whatever Sasha is ready to dish up.
“What makes you think I’m trying to be funny? Did that look like stand-up comedy to you?” Sasha glowers at me. I’ve known him too long not to engage when he’s spoiling for a fight like this.
“Clearly not.” I raise my head to meet his eyes, which are bright with anger. “I didn’t think you’d be so pissed off about her finding me. It’s not ideal timing, I’ll admit, and there are some complications you should know about.”
Sasha grasps the towel slung around his waist as he looks at the murals above us. “God, give me strength. Are you in even more shit than I thought? Who the hell found you?”
I balance my forearms on my thighs and scrub my face. I’ll have to tell Sasha there’s a kid, and he’s not going to like it. “The pop star. The one I banged in the old dacha in Moscow.”
“You motherfucking idiot. You mean that we have to deal with not one, but two women that you’ve dragged into our business right as I was about to pull us out of drugs and into tax fraud where the real money is?”
Shocked, I look up at him. “How did you know about the kid?”
“What kid?” Sasha spreads his hands. “The girl you rescued from the brothel? This savior complex of yours is going to get us all killed or torpedo the business.”
Sasha still thinks he can go solo and pull away from the Night Governor, but I’m doubtful. Guelman has eyes and ears everywhere.
“I haven’t rescued any kid.” I meet his narrowed eyes with a blank look.
“Sure you did, Prince Charming. You went into one of that psycho Spataro’s brothels to talk with the Italians and picked up a red-haired teenager who asked you sweetly for help.”
“Oh, her.” I’d been so focused on the fact that I’m a father that I haven’t been thinking about all the other pieces on the chessboard.
“Yes, her, asswipe. That pretty little thing is Spataro’s daughter. He was going to marry her off to the Night Governor. Daddy sent her to the brothel so she’d know that there are worse things than an arranged marriage.”
Then it clicks. “Spataro? The ”Ndrangheta don?”
“The very one. So now the boss is pissed off and the Italians will be baying for your blood.”
“She looked like...” I stumble over the name.
“I know who she looked like, okay? Polina was my sister, but picking up teenagers in brothels and taking them home won’t bring her back. Do you think I don’t know that? Who knows that better than me?” Sasha’s fists clench and he’s pawing the wet tiles as if he wants to charge at me.
“No one. Which is why I was going to ask you for help with the other kid before you tried to drown me.” I throw the words back at him. Sasha might be angry with me, but he’s my brother in other ways than blood.
He throws his hands in the air. “What other damn kid?
“My daughter.”
Sasha stands for a moment and looks at me like I’ve stunned him with a blow to the head before turning his back on me and walking toward the door. Slinging a towel around his waist, he heads for the stairs to the rooftop restaurant.
“My god. How big is this clusterfuck, and what have you dragged us into? We’re going to need beer for this,” he mumbles as he walks away.
By the time I’ve pulled on a robe and staggered up to the rooftop, Sasha is eyeing me warily over a steaming plate of Russian dumplings, a bowl of pickles, and a couple of pints.
“Ten years.” He shakes his head. “Ten years of work and just as I’m pulling the threads together, you decide to pick up a teenager who looks like my dead sister and kick off a mafia war.”
I pick up my beer and take a sip as my gaze wanders over the rooftops. “It might not be that bad,” I say, sticking my fork in a dumpling.
“No?” His black brows rise. “You planning to drop her back over there and say you made a mistake?”
I grin crookedly. “Would it work?”
“No, you fucker.” He punches me in the arm. “It wouldn’t. And that’s before we’ve even gotten started with the fact that you fathered a kid with a pop star—one who’s all over the papers because she’s in court every other week.”
He gulps down half his beer and swipes a hand over his mouth. He picks up two dumplings and stuffs them into his mouth, his cheeks bulging as he watches me.
“What part of ‘let’s lie low for a while and let the money start rolling in’ didn’t you get? When did you find out about your daughter?”
“I don’t know. About six years ago, when they moved to New York.”
“You’ve known about them that long and now you suddenly have an urge to pretend you’re The Brady Bunch?”
“No, she found me at a nightclub. With the Polina look-alike, as a matter of fact, and I’d have been able to keep a lid on the whole thing if this angry little fucker in her band hadn’t started shouting in front of the boys about what a shitty father I am. I got one of the guys to kick him out of the club.” I sigh, closing my eyes and tipping my head against the seat before adding, “But not before he made a lot of noise and I had to tell her I might need her to disappear.”
He laughs darkly. “Oh, and how did she take that? Ready to give you a father-of-the-year award?”
“She didn’t say much, actually.”
I remember how she looked at me with her heart in her eyes. The way her face lit up when she saw me, her voice all breathy as she caressed the word Vadim. It hurt to see her like that. I had a minute to imagine what it would be like to have a woman who looked at me like that all the time before I shut it down. I wouldn’t be so stupid.
Looking at Sasha, I take a sip of my beer and blow out a long breath. “I gave her a burner phone and told her I’m not a good man.”
“Hmmm.” He regards me over the rim of his drink. “You’re one of the best, actually, you sentimental fool.”
“Well, with the company we keep, it’s a pretty low bar.” I roll my shoulders and dig my fingers into the knotted muscles of my neck. “You’re right. This is a clusterfuck. I knew I’d want the singer and my daughter out of town.”
Sasha puts down his drink and just watches me, waiting to see how I’ll explain the mess I’m in.
“I didn’t realize the redhead was anything more than a pretty girl who needed help. I thought it would be easy to do her a favor.” I look at the handful of people sunning themselves on the roof as Sasha waves over the waitress and orders more beer.
“Well, it won’t be easy. You kicked a wasp nest, and we might have a mafia war on our hands if we’re not careful.” The waitress drops off fresh drinks, and Sasha draws a pattern in the rings the beer mugs have left on the table. “Even if we’re careful, it’s going to be a mess.”
“Don’t you ever think about your sister?” I ask, unable to meet his eyes as I ask the question. “If you’d seen someone who looked like her, are you certain you wouldn’t have reacted?”
Sasha reaches over and turns my head toward him. “You are the only family I’ve got left. You and the other guys from the orphanage. Polina is gone.” Taking a swig of beer, he downs what’s left in his glass and stares into the bottom, avoiding my eyes. “Love killed my mother. She was a fool who took in her husband’s bastard, and other than proving my dad preferred fucking white women, raising Polina gained her nothing.”
I’ve heard this speech before, but Polina was his sister. Somewhere under all that bluster, I know he feels the pain of our failure to save her, so I let him jab the table knife in the air like it’s a weapon.
He slams the knife on the table and spears a dumpling with his fork. “Remember that. Remember who we are and what we’ve built. Love is a liability.”
“So, you won’t help me if I need to save my daughter?”
Sasha sighs. “Of course I’ll help you. What choice do I have?”
“There’s always a choice, brother.”
He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but I know it will cost him. “We always choose each other. Nothing has changed. I’m just pissed off.” He spreads his hands wide, as if he doesn’t have words for the mess I’ve created, and then adds, “They aren’t your family, though. You’ve just met them.”
“You know the Night Governor will never see it that way. I’ll have to protect them like they’ve always been mine. How safe are our safe houses?”
Sasha twists his mouth as he thinks about it. “Not as safe as they were last week, no thanks to you, but I can think of a couple of places you can use.”
My best friend’s temper is as violent as a summer storm but passes just as fast. Our boss is another matter. And now that I’ve ruffled the Spataro family’s feathers by spiriting away the don’s daughter, we’re in deeper shit than I could have realized.
Which also means Kesera and our daughter are in there with me.
If the Night Governor figures out who they are, he’ll use them against me. Keeping everyone safe seems nearly impossible, but I have no choice. If Sasha won’t help, I’ll take matters into my own hands, but I pray to god he’ll come through for me like he has in the past.