Vadim
No windows or natural light. Flickering fluorescent strip lighting. Stale, some might say musky, air. The constant low drone of cooling fans from the server equipment. Gray carpet tiles.
This is my happy place.
The control room at the casino.
When I was a kid, my father used to bring me up here and let me sit in front of the monitors while he worked. Sometimes he'd bring kielbasa and pickle rye bread sandwiches from home, and we'd eat them together. I don't have many good memories of my father. That's one of the rare ones.
We now have forty screens, way more than we had when I was a kid, covering every angle of the floor. I could watch them for hours.
Actually, I still do.
A woman at the slots with her hair piled high in a bouffant, hitting a small win, pumping both fists in the air.
Bar on the east side, a bald, middle-aged man nursing his fourth drink alone.
Table six, a man wearing a fedora, with an open Hawaiian shirt and heavily tattooed chest, on a hot streak and making sure everyone knows it, a small crowd forming around him.
This casino is in my blood, my bones. I know it better than anything else in my life. My chest settles, and I feel calm but alert and focused, the way I always do when I'm up here. Like I said, my happy place.
W?adek appears at my shoulder with a tablet, pulling up last night's incident log and handing it over.
"Anything worth my time?" I take it without looking away from the monitors.
"Drunk on table nine got aggressive around midnight. Security handled it before it escalated. We removed a card counter at around two a.m." W?adek pauses. "Nothing else."
Standard night then. I hand the tablet back without comment. He stands there, saying nothing.
Does he want anything else? "Co? jeszcze?"
He side-eyes me with his usual disdain. "Nie."
My silence is my invitation for him to piss off.
He finally gets the hint and grunts something about checking on a delivery coming in through the back.
He's my number two, and let's just say, there's no love lost between us.
He's had it in for me ever since I was a teenager, and when I took over as head of security three years ago, he went ballistic.
He was under the incorrect assumption that my father would hand the reins of one of the most crucial aspects of our family business to him.
W?adek has been loyal to my father for almost as long as I've been alive.
But to his wife? Not so much.
I know for a fact he's blown north of 50K on prostitutes in the last year alone, paying them extra to choke him when he finishes. That tells me two things. One, he's a sick fuck, and two, my father pays him too much.
I'm keeping that little tidbit in my back pocket and playing nice for now, pretending not to know about any of his proclivities. Useful information should he even think about betraying me or my family.
I pull up the east bar feed and watch it for a minute. Nothing. I switch to the main entrance then the parking lot. It's a quiet day. I grab my jacket off the back of the chair and catch the attention of the nearest operative. "I'm stepping out for an hour. Anything comes up, it goes to W?adek."
"Sure thing, boss."
The control room door swings shut behind me as I leave and descend the back stairs, stepping out onto the main floor.
It's like a slap to the face, the noise, the light, the movement, a technicolor contrast to the dreary control room I've been in since breakfast. I cut through the main pit, past the roulette tables and the low murmur of the blackjack dealers, and take the corridor that runs along the back of the building.
It's quieter back here, the casino noise dropping away behind a set of heavy doors. The carpet changes from the dark-green-and-black Art Deco patterning of the main floor to a no-frills charcoal gray, the lighting cooler and more functional. A few staff members pass me without making eye contact.
The corridor opens out into a small reception area at the far end of the east wing.
Marek's secretary, Helena, is sitting behind a mahogany desk that probably costs more than most people's cars.
She's in her early thirties like me, with dark-red hair pulled back tight and amber tortoiseshell frames perched on a face that looks on the verge of giving resting bitch face.
More importantly though, she's got the temperament to put up with my brother's moods, which lately, have been firmly stuck on divorced dad mess.
When she sees me, she takes out her earbuds and gives one firm shake of her head. Great. He's in a bad mood.
"Agnieszka?" I hedge as I walk past her.
That's the ex.
"Who else? He's on the phone with her now."
"Got it." His office door is ajar. "I'll just eavesdrop then."
She rolls her eyes but says nothing, going back to whatever she was listening to to drown out the shouting coming from Marek's office. I've heard him yelling angrily plenty of times, often directed at me, but Jesus, this is a whole other level. The man is unraveling.
"You can't fucking do that… We have an arrangement… Absolutely no way am I letting you take the kids out of the country. No fucking way… Fine. See you in court again." He hurls his phone across the office. "Fucking psychotic bitch!"
When he turns and our eyes meet, there's nothing but pure, unfiltered rage in his, the type I normally see in our youngest brother, Kamil.
I suppose I should check in on Marek, offer some brotherly support, but I don't have that kind of relationship with either of my two brothers.
We all share the same father but have different mothers.
A complicated family dynamic to say the least, especially since two out of the three women have been murdered.
A tragic bond I share with Marek that brought us a little closer for a while but has faded over time.
"We have a meeting," I say, hovering by the door in case he'd prefer to reschedule.
He drags a hand through his hair.
"I can come back?"
"No, it's fine. You're another problem I need to deal with."
I approach his desk but don't sit down. Given his foul mood, I don't anticipate staying long. "What have I done?"
"You've fucked up with Lev Farkas, that's what."
"I only roughed him up a little. I held back because of…
" He glares at me, knowing full well where I was going.
Because he married and subsequently divorced our family's enemy's daughter, and we're now at this murky impasse where I don't know who I can and can't kill anymore.
Man, I miss the good ol' days. "This isn't all on me. "
"Oh, really." He straightens, tugging roughly on his cuff. "You sure there's nothing you want to tell me?"
"Like what?"
He stares at me, breathing through his nose, his chest rising and falling deeply, still simmering from his explosive argument with Agnieszka. I guess this convo isn't helping settle him down. He snaps open the top drawer of his desk and flicks a yellow envelope across to my side.
"What's this?"
"See for yourself."
I open the envelope and pull out a series of photographs. Of me. And Preston. Taken outside The Butterfly Lounge. A visual montage capturing us talking. Then me stepping in closer. Putting my hands on the sides of his face. Moving closer again. Then us kissi—
"How did you get these?" I snap.
"They arrived yesterday. W?adek gave them to me."
"Of course he did," I mutter angrily. "This is a security matter. He should have brought it to my attention."
"Maybe he felt you were…compromised."
"No, no. More like a clear-cut case of homophobia."
Marek's lips part slightly.
Technically, I haven't come out to anyone in my family yet. They've all attributed my chronic singlehood to my sparkling personality and lack of emotion.
"Does this mean you're…?"
I fold my arms across my chest and sneer at my brother. "You can't even say the word."
"Gay."
I'm well-versed at warding off the intensity of his stare because it's never about anything this personal, this raw. This deeply embedded part of who I am is something I've always kept hidden.
But now my shirt collar feels like it's tightening around my neck. As much as I like to say I don't care what my family will say or think or do if they were to find out my truth, I hate that a small part of me actually does.
"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to." Marek offers a grace I wasn't expecting. Didn't think he was capable of, to be honest. "You just need to resolve this Farkas issue before it gets out of hand."
"I'm on it. Don't worry."
A beat passes.
"Who's the other guy in the photos?"
"Preston Miller."
"That doesn't tell me anything. How do you know him?"
"I don't, really. We met at The Butterfly Lounge the night those photos were taken."
"How? Through friends? An app?"
"He approached me with an offer of two hundred bucks to pretend to be dating him so his mom would get off his back."
"Damn it, Vadim. Be serious."
I don't even bother saying that I am because I already know it'll be a waste of breath. It is a completely ridiculous story, so it's not like I can blame him for not believing me.
"Is he connected to anyone we know?"
"Absolutely not."
"You're sure?"
"Positive."
"Does he know who you are?"
"A little."
"What does he want from you?" He flinches slightly and brushes his chin with the backs of his fingers. "Keep it PG."
"Why? Will your balls explode if I use the word anal?"
He glares at me, and it's not entirely dissimilar to the way Preston has when I've attempted to make a joke.
Noted. Humor isn't my thing. Don't bother trying.
"He doesn't want anything from me."
He won't even give me his damn phone number, and he's got a roomie who seems to be hellbent on turning him against me.
"Shut whatever this is with Farkas down, and make sure this Preston guy keeps his mouth shut."
"That's not the problem here."
"Then what is?"
"Farkas tracked him down."
Marek tips his head to one side, something shifting behind his eyes. "How?"
"Still figuring that out."
"And what did Farkas want from him?"
"To pass on a message. To me. That I'm not as smart as I think I am."
"Well, that much is glaringly obvious."
I bristle but don't fight back. I deserve that one.
"Did Miller say anything to Farkas?"
"Can't say much if he doesn't know anything."
That's not, strictly speaking, true since I overshared and answered a few of Preston's questions a little too honestly in his bedroom. But that was right after his encounter with Farkas, and I wanted him to feel safe with me, so I opened up more than I probably should have.
Besides, it's not like it's a secret that I've killed. To law enforcement, sure, but not to the Baranovs or anyone else who moves in the same world I do.
"Just take care of it, okay?"
"I will."
And with that, I turn and leave.
When I reach the door, Marek says, "Vadim?"
I do a one-eighty. "Yeah?"
He clears his throat. "If you are gay." He overemphasizes the word to prove he can in fact say it. "It's…not a problem. Can't speak for Dad, Iza, or Kamil. But it's okay with me."
"Thanks. And listen, if you ever want to talk about what's going on with you and Agnie—"
He raises his hand to block me. "No."
"Okay, great chat. Thanks. Bye."