27. Artem
Artem
The ICU is quieter than I expect. When we arrive, I make a show of ensuring that guards are stationed throughout, to keep Viktor safe.
In reality, they are there for my wife. Viktor's demise makes Katya more vulnerable than ever, and her head is not on straight enough to know that yet.
In fact, Katya doesn't spare a glance at me as she walks into her grandfather's room.
She doesn't ask me to come inside, which I appreciate but find surprising.
I thought she would need my comfort, but I realize how silly that idea is.
She's been on her own for so long, it's her default, and she wouldn't want comfort from a man she hates anyway.
I fucking hate that, and I'm too amped up to push those thoughts aside.
This is it.
Pyotr comes to me.
"How long?"
"The attending doesn't think he'll live through the night. Apparently, his lungs look like shit." His eyes don't stray. "The second dose accelerated things, and the third, well…"
I nod. Good. I feel the satisfaction of a plan moving on schedule, the clean pleasure of precision. I've spent years putting this plan together, moving pieces into place to ensure that Viktor suffers for all he's taken.
A part of me wishes that he would suffer longer, the way my sister had, but it was not meant to be.
Besides, I like things to be clean. There is beauty in suffering, but there's also something to be said about making sure the old fucker knows his time is ending when things couldn't be worse for him.
He'll choke to death on his own blood and saliva knowing I orchestrated everything.
"The business?"
"Paperwork is ready. Once he's gone, the transition documents are in order. The Moscow council won't fight it, not with Katya's name attached."
"Good." There was a time when I considered leaving Katya be.
Right after Irina died, and I came to the city, I watched her, hoping there was something terrible about her that would make my decisions easier.
There wasn't. And so she became my target, the perfect way to get what I needed.
I upended her life for this, but really, it was always going to happen this way.
Viktor made sure of it long before I knew about her. Now, at least, I can protect her.
"Keep it quiet until I give the go-ahead. We need to ensure he's dead first."
"Understood." Pyotr pauses. "Artem?—"
"Don't."
I walk away, putting on my mask. It's time to play a part.
The room is dim and smells like antiseptic.
Viktor looks smaller in the bed than he does in any room I've ever shared with him.
That's the thing about powerful men rendered horizontal, the authority drains out of them, leaves just the body, just the age, just the fact of a person coming to the end of what they are.
It was the same way with my father. I'd feared him as a boy, and yet, as I watched him on his deathbed, I realized he was nothing but flesh and bone hosting a rotted soul.
Just like Viktor.
He doesn't deserve the kindness Katya shows him.
Katya, who, despite everything, holds his hand and rubs her thumb soothingly across his knuckles. Her eyes are filled with tears, and she whispers to him in Russian. It's the first time I hear her speak our shared tongue, and my heart twists at the melodic beauty of it.
I can't help but think about what she said in the kitchen with the marks on her throat.
You think you're better than the other men in that room. Better than Viktor. Better than the rest of them. You're not.
Alexei Morozov pretended to be a perfect husband to my sister. Even when we all knew his reputation, we thought he would treat her differently.
He didn't.
I can't help but feel the same way as I watch a young woman, one I'm supposed to take care of, grieve her only remaining family member. The one I put here.
I shake off the oily feeling of guilt slithering in my gut.
I am not Alexei. I know the difference. This is revenge, not sadism. Katya will recover, unlike my sister, and she'll be better for it. I won't let her go, but I will protect her. That is more than anyone ever did for Irina.
Katya looks up, and her hazel eyes are dry, but I see grief in there. We've been here for hours, and even on her best day, she is not getting enough sleep and food to sustain a bedside vigil.
"You should get some coffee."
"I'm fine. I don't want to leave."
"There's a machine at the end of the hall. I'll stay."
She sighs, and I can tell she doesn't trust me.
"I'll sit here and just watch."
Her brow raises, and I force out a chuckle. "He's sleeping," I say, pointing my chin toward him. "Not much fighting can happen."
She stares at me for a beat before sighing and standing. "I could use a stretch." She rolls out her shoulders. "I'll just be five minutes."
"Take your time."
She makes her way out, brushing past me softly. I wait until her footsteps fade down the corridor before I turn to Viktor.
Some people have told me that in situations like this, where someone is dying, you often feel some sort of release. I don't feel anything but the same soul-torturing anger that has existed for years.
"Smart of you to get Katya to leave." Viktor opens his eyes. He's sluggish but aware. The fucker is still in complete command of his faculties. Good. I didn't want anything that would harm the mind.
I want him aware.
"Now you can kill me without her watching."
I laugh. "If it served my purpose, I would have done it in front of her."
He gurgles, but I suppose it is his current version of a chuckle. "No, you wouldn't." He shakes his head as much as he can. "You like to think you would, but I see how you look at her. You wouldn't do it."
His eyes move over my face, that assessment he's always doing, looking for the seam, the leverage point, the thing he can use. He won't find one tonight. Tonight I have nothing to hide.
"I suspected," he tells me, his eyes narrowing, "that my illness was not entirely natural."
"Oh?"
"I was in very good health until I came to New York."
"Perhaps the city doesn't agree with you."
"Was it the vodka?" His mouth tightens. "Your father's collection. He was known to enjoy a bit of poison."
"You raised a toast to your own health," I tell him. "I thought the irony was appropriate."
He's quiet for a moment. The monitor beside him keeps its steady rhythm, measuring out the time he has left in small electronic pulses. "I didn't know it was you specifically," he tells me. "I thought Alexei's people, perhaps. Old enemies." He looks at me. "Why?"
The question lands between us and I let it sit for a moment.
"You know why."
Something moves through his expression, a calculation running, arriving somewhere. His eyes close briefly. "Irina," he shakes his head. "You never could move forward."
"She was my sister."
"She was a debt payment," he says finally. Not defensively. Just a statement of fact, the way men like Viktor speak about the things they've done, categorized, filed, made administrative. "Alexei was owed. Your father owed me. It's the way of things."
"My father was a piece of shit."
He doesn't argue that.
"She was terrified of him, and you knew that.
" My voice stays level. I've practiced this, the control of it, the way I can say the true things without the emotion showing through.
"She died in a city she didn't know, in a marriage she didn't choose, and nobody who loved her was there.
Then you let that piece of shit bury her in this hellhole. He faced no consequences?—"
"For what?" Viktor asks. "He was unkind, but I couldn't punish him for her deciding to jump. She never came to me."
"Because she knew you wouldn't help her."
Viktor is silent, and I know I'm right. Irina isn't the first girl to be tormented by a horrible husband, especially not in the Bratva.
"She jumped to escape." I lean forward slightly. "Her body was broken, but it wasn't from the fall." I swallow the bile that rises in my throat. "He raped her. Every day. The damage?—"
I look away.
"I didn't learn about it until she was dead. She was ashamed."
The monitor keeps its rhythm. Viktor's chest rises and falls with the deliberateness of a man managing pain.
"Do you expect me to apologize? Grovel? Beg for my life?" His voice is quieter now, but the words are clear. "I made the decisions I made. I would make them again. Everything was for the good of the family."
"I know." I stand. Straighten my jacket. "That's why I took your granddaughter. And your business. And your life." I look down at him. "You can die knowing I have all three. That everything you built and everyone you loved will carry my name when you're gone."
He looks at me for a long moment. His eyes are tired and old, and something in them is beyond anger now, something that has already traveled through all the stages of this and arrived somewhere else.
"You are so determined to ruin me that you'll ruin yourself.
" His voice is barely sound. "Katya is a good girl, but she's strong, and she's smart.
You see that. You can lie to me, but you can't lie to yourself.
Not forever. You didn't expect to fall in love with her, did you? " He tsks. "Makes it harder."
I ignore him.
"When she finds out what you've done, she won't forgive you." A burble of blood sprays across his lips as he laughs. "Isn't the famous saying, dig a grave for two?"
I look at him.
His eyes close.
The monitor changes its tone.
I step back. Watch the line go flat. Watch the number drop to zero with the clean efficiency of a machine doing its job.
I feel nothing.
It's done.
Years of work, over. Every move, every sacrifice, every carefully placed piece, all of it culminating in this room, this monitor, this silence.
Irina.
I finger her bracelet, watching as the last man in her terrible story takes his final breath.
Something drops, and I hear a scream.
Katya has returned.
I take my wife into my arms, cradling her as she screams for the man I hate.
It's done.
The past is nearly to rest.