Chapter 34
Lighting another cigarette, I listen to the murmur of women’s voices drifting from the window. A childish giggle rings out, then a deeper, throaty laugh that comes from Kesera. They sound so happy.
I let my head fall against the wooden slats with a thunk and watch the sun filtering through the green leaves as I listen to them like a creeper. I feel like I’m climbing out of my skin. I had to get out of that house.
Footsteps sound, and the window creaks open. Kesera appears like an angel above me, her head haloed by gold-and-bronze curls.
“Do you want to come in and hang out with us? We’re going to play board games.”
I look up at the hopeful expression on her face and watch it fall as I shake my head. “Too much to do,” I say, the lie obvious since I’m leaning against the house, smoking and staring at the trees.
She waits for a moment before leaning down to touch me, her hand stilling inches from my forehead. She shakes off the notion, her lips thinning as she nods and steps back from the window, closing it softly.
I just can’t be around all those women. A little girl regarding me with eyes that look like mine as she chews on her braids. And Kesera, my fantasy made flesh. Her body under her clothes, the way she moves, makes me burn to get my hands beneath the fabric. I couldn’t stop myself in the woods earlier, and I made her cry. Like the beast I am.
This place feels like a stage set recreated for me to listen to the echo of all my mistakes. My mistakes end with people I care about dying.
I won’t start grilling shashlik in the backyard or drinking myself into oblivion, which is what I would have done back in Moscow. Without someone like Sasha to shoot the shit with, there hasn’t been much to do other than walk circles in the woods. I’ve just been looking at my phone—which hasn’t had a single message telling me what’s going on back in Brooklyn—and avoiding my newly discovered family.
Sighing, I make my way around the front of the house to where we parked the cars.
Andrei stubs out a cigarette and throws it into the bushes as he leans against the hood of the SUV and watches the sinking sun slant through the trees. He looks at the barbed-wire-topped black walls. “What she build all this for? She expecting the zombie apocalypse?”
Footsteps crunch through the gravel as Dex emerges from the house to find us both aimlessly kicking at the dirt.
Idleness like this makes me crazy. I don’t know what’s happening in town, and I’ve got a gnawing sense that Sasha and I have missed something. Something important. But I can’t think straight knowing that Kesera is so near and I can’t touch her again.
“Zombies are the least of your worries when you’re famous,” Dex drawls, kicking at our cigarette butts in the dust. “That’s a disgusting habit.”
“One of my many disgusting habits,” I reply.
“This place is tricked out almost as well as the Night Governor’s crib,” Andrei says. I don’t know why he insists on talking like he’s walked out of a hip-hop video.
“Who’s the Night Governor?” Dex asks.
Andrei grins. “Our boss. He’s a psycho, but he likes his security. He’d love this place. He had an old dacha like this out in the woods in Moscow, but he was always alert for an attack. I don’t know why you need all this security.”
Dex folds his arms and looks at Andrei like he’s a few ribs short of a barbeque. “Crazies.”
“How many crazies are there in the woods?” Andrei sucks on his cigarette, the tip glowing red as the light begins to sink below the trees.
Dex speaks slowly, spelling out each word with exaggerated patience as if Andrei were a child. “They find you if they can. Every weirdo on the internet has access to Kesera’s videos, or they can beat off to one of her songs, and I can promise you that there’s more than one who thinks she’s in love with him.”
Bile rises in my throat at the imagery. “Do you have to talk about her like that?” I ask.
I know I brutalized her in the woods this morning, but the thought of other men imagining their hands on her body makes me feel like live ants are crawling all over my skin. It’s why it was better to stay away. I can’t remain logical when she’s around.
“I’m not talking about her. I’m telling you what we’re dealing with,” Dex says. “There are some very persistent people out there, and every so often, one will get the idea in his head that he should be married to her. That’s when they try to turn up at her doorstep or scale the walls or whatever. I don’t think the fans know about this place, but we don’t take chances. There’s a panic room. Proper cameras.”
“Why the blast walls?” I look past the trees at the high concrete barriers.
“Bomb threats last year from some fucker who wanted to blow her up. All the press around the court case didn’t help. He said if they couldn’t be together, then no one else would have her.”
“And my daughter has grown up around this?”
Dex looks at the walls and then back at me. “She’s an amazingly normal kid, considering. Kesera walks her to school. She’s managed to carve out the semblance of a normal life in the midst of all this craziness,” he muses. “I admire her.”
I should have killed that slimy fucker Jimmy when I had the chance. I won’t make that mistake a second time. But random lunatics who want to marry the woman I made a child with? Christ. The mafia sounds like a picnic in comparison. At least you know who you’re dealing with.
As if he can read my mind, Dex turns to me. “And I hear you’ve got some less than salubrious friends who might want to pay us a visit.”
“If they know where we are.” I shrug. I wish I wasn’t a catalyst for more chaos.
“She doesn’t do press about this place. We could be okay. It depends on whether you were followed.” He looks around as if an assassin might leap from behind a tree trunk or drop from the branches.
“There was no one on our tail, and I’ve ensured my electronics are untraceable.” Given the enormous amounts of data on cell phones, that’s a weak link when the police are so corrupt. I pull the old Nokia out of my pocket. “I’ve only got my burner phone with me. Four people have the number, and two of them are with us. If anyone followed us last night, they’d be here already.”
“Um, boss.” Andrei kicks at the dirt and looks at the gravel like it might hold the answer to an important question.
“What?”
Andrei pulls a smartphone out of his pocket. He shrugs. “I was texting Katya. She wanted to stay in touch, and I?—”
“You stupid fuck.” I snatch the phone from his hands and throw it to the ground, grinding it under my heel. I wind my arm back as if someone has coiled a spring so tight that its forceful snap back is inevitable. “Google.” My fist hits his nose with a wet thud. “Apple.” His neck snaps back as I pound him again, raining blows down on his pretty-boy face so hard that Katya or whichever slut he was texting won’t be able to find his mouth to kiss it.
Dex approaches me from behind and holds my arms back without using much force, giving me time to catch my breath. Andrei doubles over, blood dripping from his nose to the gravel driveway.
“How could you be so fucking stupid?” I say.
“Sorry, boss,” he burbles through bloody lips. “I didn’t think.”
I hold up a hand to stop him from saying another word as I shrug out of Dex’s grasp. “Well, we’d all better start thinking. There’s a long list of people who are pissed off with me right now. The Italians. My boss.”
Dex nods. “This place is pretty easy to defend. We might be better staying put than trying to drive south when we don’t know who’s on our tail.” He strides into the house, and I hear him say, “Nadia’s not going to school tomorrow.”
Jesus. School. It’s like I’ve dropped through the looking glass into a different world.
On one hand, I’ve come here with a moron who couldn’t survive two days without texting one of our hookers. On the other, the first order of business is whether or not my ten-year-old will miss school.
My head’s spinning, but there’s no time to think of how to balance the two worlds, because my ears ring with the sound of a blast, and flames shoot from the other side of the walls.
“Kesera!” I shout her name as I run toward the house, my only thought the woman I’ve never been able to forget.