7. Ronan
RONAN
Navi finds me in the back office of a diner in Sheepshead Bay at two in the morning.
I've been here for an hour, going over numbers. Not the Bratva's numbers—my own. The ledger of my own life, which is a thing I've never done before, because there was never a reason to.
There's a reason now.
Navi drops into the seat across from me. He looks tired. He's been looking tired for weeks. I did that to him. I did that to a lot of people.
"You want coffee?" I ask him.
"I want to sleep for a week. But coffee will do."
I signal the waitress. She's the only one working the night shift, an older woman with a bad knee, and she brings us two cups without being asked twice. I leave her a hundred on the table when she walks away.
Navi shakes his head when he sees the tip. "You keep splurging like that," he says, "you're going to run out."
"Run out of what?"
"Money. That's a thing that can happen, in case you forgot."
I have not forgotten. That's the whole point of tonight's exercise.
"Give me the rundown," I say.
Navi wraps both hands around his cup. "Payroll's short again.
That's the third time this month. Grigor's crew got half.
Anatoly's crew got nothing yet. I moved some around, borrowed against the Red Hook building, but it's a hole I can't keep filling.
The guns paid for everything, Ro. You know that.
You turn the guns off, the money stops, and the money is the only thing these men were ever actually loyal to. "
"I know."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true."
He drinks. I watch the steam come off the top of my own cup, but I don't follow suit. I'm too wired as it is; more caffeine will not solve my problems.
"How many?” I ask.
"How many what?"
"How many are a lost cause?"
Navi pretends to think, but we both know he already knows the answer.
"Six have jumped ship I know of. Maybe more that haven't told me yet.
They're not defecting, exactly. They're just...
not answering as fast. Not showing up. They see the writing on the wall, and they aren't exactly updating their LinkedIn to 'Looking for work,' but it's not far off.
" He sets the cup down with a thud. "That's how it starts.
Not with a knife, but with a phone that doesn't ring back. "
I nod. I know this shit as well as anyone.
Didn't I quote the scriptures to Pyotr, all those weeks ago?
A man doesn't leave the Bratva. That was my father's whole religion.
There is no such thing as leaving. But that was because, back in his day, leaving meant a grave in the marshes.
It never occurred to Igor that a man could leave simply because there was nothing left worth staying for.
"And Lev?" I ask.
Navi's jaw tightens. "Lev is having a very good month."
"That makes one of us."
"He's buying drinks. And with that comes sympathy.
He sits down with the fence-sitters, the old guys who miss the old days, and he cries into his vodka about poor old Igor.
About how the old man kept order. He never would've let the guns go quiet, never would've let a woman make him soft.
" Navi looks up at me, free of malice, face full of nothing but blunt honesty.
"If you were just being accused of weakness, that's survivable.
But the other accusation…" He hesitates, not sure whether my mood can tolerate it being said out loud.
But I can take it on the chest. I have no other choice, really.
"That I'm a rat," I conclude.
"Yeah. That."
"They're buying it?"
"Some of 'em, yeah." Navi rubs a hand over his face.
"It hits home because it makes sense, Ro.
You had a big interaction with Todd in front of a room full of bankers.
Everybody saw it. And now, Todd's talking to the feds, so the story writes itself.
The pakhan's client turns snitch, and drags the pakhan in with him.
Then somebody gets curious and looks at the books and sees the mess Pyotr left, all those little red discrepancies, and Lev leans in right then with that perfect timing of his and whispers, You know who leaves a trail like that?
A man cooperating. A man leaving tasty little breadcrumbs for his little federal friends. "
"And because Lev has Pyotr, he knows exactly where to point."
"Exactly," Navi agrees. "That's the bit that makes all of it work.
Lev has the man who knows where every dollar's buried.
So it's a compelling pitch. The only alternative is believing you, and why would they do that when you seem to be acting crazy?
You turned the guns off and moved a woman and her kids into your life.
You gave Lev the window yourself, Ronan. "
Well, shit. The bottom line of "Everything you know is fucked" doesn't often get stated more cleanly than that.
Though there's still more to just how shafted I am right now.
"And the mole?"
"Remains a mystery," answers Navi. He leans back into the creaking vinyl booth. "Shit is definitely still leaking out. Nothing big, but trickles lead to floods."
"Any new leads?"
"The list has shortened, but not by that much.
Grigor's clean, I'd stake my life on it.
Anatoly's too new to care about Igor. Yuri hated the old days too much to run back to them.
" Navi shakes his head. "But somebody is yapping.
I'll find him, I swear I will. I just need time.
Unfortunately, that's the scarcest resource in the business these days. "
I look at my cousin across the sticky diner table and think about how long we've been doing this. Since we were boys. Since Igor put a gun in my hand and told me a man who couldn't pull the trigger wasn't a man.
Navi was there for that. For all of it. He followed me out of my father's shadow because he believed I could build something different.
I did, just like he thought I would.
But now, here I am, dismantling it. On purpose. Fucking us all over in the process.
And why?
For her.
"Say the thing you came here to say," I tell him. "I know you want to. I won't take it personally. You've earned the right to speak your truth."
Navi studies me for a long moment. "Alright," he says. "Straight, no bullshit."
"That's the only way you know how to do things."
He sighs. "You're bleeding out. It's fuckin' ugly to watch, too. Because at any moment, you could stop it. One word to the right people and this whole thing turns around inside a week."
I shake my head. "No."
"Ro—"
"I said I'd hear you out, Navi. I never said I'd agree."
He exhales through his nose. "I'm not saying all this because I want the guns back up and running.
I hated that business from the start, you know I did.
I'm saying it because I don't want to bury you in the marshes like your father buried men who pissed him off.
Just prove to me that you understand what you're doing, man. "
That's the problem—I'm not sure I do understand myself anymore.
I only know what my heart is telling me.
"Answer me this," I say. "If we re-launch the business, what happens?"
"The money comes back," he deadpans. "Which is kinda the whole point. 'Crime pays,' you know?"
"But what comes with money?" I press. I scoot closer to him.
"Danger. Not for me—fuck knows I can handle the risk.
It goes everywhere with no rhyme or reason, and anyone standing in the splash zone might get hit.
We are in this mess in the first place because we couldn't handle the overflow.
I've got more to lose now than ever before. I won't risk it. Not her. Not them.”
I finally pick up the coffee and take what I believe to be a triumphant sip.
But I should've known Navi would never let me get away with congratulating myself that easily. No champagne toasts here. Not in this diner, not tonight.
"You know she's not there with you, right?
" my cousin says in a soft, deadly voice.
"She's tolerating you, but she doesn't want you.
You're just clinging to the dead corpse of something you thought you'd get to keep for good.
You know better than that, man. I'm actually kind of disappointed that you don't see what a charade you're living. "
That, finally, is enough to piss me off. I snarl, "I know exactly what I have and don't have."
"Do you?" It's his turn to press forward.
"Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're whistling to your grave for the sake of a woman who hates your guts.
If tomorrow's New York Times said Ronan Akov Found Violently Murdered, she'd read it over her morning waffles and say, Well, that's what happens to men like that. "
I don't think I want this coffee anymore.
It's been a couple weeks now of playing house with Cali and her children. Nights of dinners and bathtimes, of normalcy I never dared to dream of.
"That's the point," I whisper.
Navi frowns. "What?"
"That she doesn't know. That's the point of it."
Navi frowns. "Explain that to me like I'm stupid. Because either I am or you are; that shit doesn't make any sense."
I set the cup down. I look at my hands. These are my father's hands, more or less.
Big and scarred and good at exactly one kind of work.
I spent my whole life trying to make them do a different kind, and mostly, I failed.
The one time I did something with them that was clean—dropping off money at an orphanage in the dark, no name, no gold letters—I made sure nobody knew.
Anna would have liked it. I never told a soul but Navi.
"Everything I ever did for anyone came with my name on it," I say.
"The firm. The foundation. The Bratva. Even when I gave, I gave so that someone would know I'd given.
Igor was the same. Everything was a transaction.
You do a thing, you get the credit. He never once did something for the sake of it being a good thing to do. "
"Okay. So what?"
"So here's a thing I can do without needing a favor in return.
" I look up at him. "I can keep her safe.
Even if it costs me everything and she never once sees a drop of that sweat or blood price.
I don't want her thanks, Navi. I just want her alive.
As long as I know that she's okay, that's enough. "
Navi looks at me for a long time. Then he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and squints at me again like he's hoping everything I just said was a mirage. When he takes them away, he looks older than I've ever seen him.
"You're not dying for the Bratva," he says slowly, like he's working it out as he says it. "I keep thinking you're too proud to save yourself, or you've got a death wish, or you really have gone soft in the head over a woman. But that's not it, is it? You're dying out of it. For her."
"For whatever's left of me by the time it's over.
" I finally answer him honestly, which I owe him, because he's the only man alive I owe anything to.
"I'm not going to walk out of this a whole man, Navi.
I'm not that lucky and I haven't earned it.
But maybe there's a piece of me at the end of it that's clean enough.
" I shrug. "Probably not. Most likely, I bleed out first and Lev takes the crown and she reads about it in the paper, just like you said. But maybe not. Maybe not.”
Navi is thoughtful for a long, long moment.
Then he nods.
"Okay," he says.
"Okay?"
"You're my cousin. You're my pakhan, or you were, or you're becoming something else, I don't know what to call you anymore.
But you're mine. So if this is what you're doing, then I'll help you do it right.
I'm not going to spend the next month trying to talk you back into the marshes.
" He picks his coffee back up. "I'll dig on the mole.
I'll keep the payroll limping as long as I can.
I'll watch Lev. And when it's time, when all the shit hits the fan like it inevitably will, I'll be at your side, no matter what. "
He drains the dregs his coffee and stands. At the door, he pauses.
"For what it's worth," he says, "your old man never could've done what you're doing. He didn't have the balls or the heart.”
He's gone before I can answer, out through the diner and into the dark of Sheepshead Bay.
I linger for a little longer before I make my own exit.
I go home to a house that isn't mine, to a guest room and a quietly sleeping woman upstairs and the two children down the hall dreaming of squids and volcanoes and happily meandering butterflies, floating somewhere above a lake where the sun never quite sets.