Chapter 12 - Viktor
“Privet, mama,” I murmur, bumping our temples together.
This has been our custom since I was a little boy; a tether for us, after long spurts of time apart. She used to have to bend down to accomplish this. Now, I do, though not by much.
It is evident which parent I get my height from.
If Nadya thought Maxim and I shared physical similarities, this would truly knock her fucking socks off.
“Vitya,” the woman in front of me says, slurring the syllables slightly.
I meet the gaze I inherited my eyes from. Ever-so-briefly, I do wonder what she must see shining in mine. “Nadya, meet Milena Belova. My mother.”
There isn’t a soul in this world—or the underworld, probably—who’d deem me easily impressed. Therefore, it carries weight when I am undoubtedly blown away by how Nadya takes my bombastic revelation in stride. Her passive expression doesn’t appear remotely performative.
That said, I’ve no doubt her composure is powered by spite. I spot it in the passing collision of our eyes. But spitefulness isn’t all I witness. Oh no, there’s another, even more intriguing emotion: the gleam of competition.
That fuck you flashing like a neon sign in her grey-blue irises is as multi-faceted as the rest of her.
This. This is how I know she’s fucking it for me.
I swallow my vainglory and press a kiss to my mother’s papery cheek. I barely get a chance to smile at her after extricating myself from her sudden, squeezing embrace before my phone goes off. From the ringer alone, I know it’s the New York burner.
Only for the briefest moment do I consider walking away. It would be easy to entrust my wife to my mother’s care and take this call out in the hallway. Yet I find myself greedy for the sight of Nadya’s astonishment. Her awe, even, if I can coax it from that fiery, tenacious mind.
There’s nothing to lose by answering the call in front of either of them, I decide.
Nudging both women ahead, I follow right behind them.
“Da?” I answer on the way inside.
It greatly fulfills me to watch the outline of Nadya’s body and know where she is holding herself rigidly. No words can faithfully capture what it is to know where her pride chips away. Any—and ever—tidbit of information I manage to square away about her tastes like a triumph.
My mother wanders toward her kitchen. She’s too used to this by now, both the abrupt phone calls and my needing to often leave at a moment’s notice. She pays it no heed anymore, if she ever honestly did.
Conspicuously, Nadya remains idling. She doesn’t even try to be subtle about it. And I’ve no doubt my pathetic fondness is all over my fucking face.
“They’ve confirmed the next shipment Thursday night,” Grekov reports in my ear. “Kozlov wants to meet before then. He has some concerns about the Boston end of things.”
I bite back a scoff and bravely steal an arm around Nadya’s shoulders. I reel her in, resting the phone between my ear and the top of her head. Every muscle in her body must be bunched with the tension she’s holding onto—but she doesn’t shove me away.
I’d be happier if I didn’t know her priorities, in this moment, are the Yuris. Whatever curiosity I can manage to pique is still going to fall unequivocally short of her loyalty to them. It bothers me.
“Kozlov always has concerns. How many times are we going to measure our dicks? His is longer. Mine is thicker. Call it fucking even.”
Nadya thinks she’s well-hidden like this. As it turns out, the bird’s eye view is perfect for both spying the upturn of her lips and peering down the V-neck of her cropped black sweater. I absolutely do not miss when her gaze flicks, almost imperceptibly, toward my crotch.
Grekov sniffs indignantly. “I’ve no desire to be shot in the fucking face, so I will not repeat that.”
I pull Nadya along to one of the atrociously patterned couches in my mother’s living room. “Fine. Thursday morning. Tell him to meet me in my office. I’m not schlepping to his.”
It’s always a risky game to play. But if there’s anything I’ve learned while getting on my own two feet, it’s that no one hands you respect. You have to take it. Sometimes, you even have to slit a few throats before you do.
“He won’t like that, Viktor.”
“Heartbreaking. I’m still not his bitch. The route runs through me. Therefore, I dictate the terms. You’d both do well to remember that. Got it?”
I can practically hear Nadya’s brain whirring, processing each scrap of insight I purposefully dangle.
She’s probably spiraling, too, over why the fuck I’m giving information away in the first place.
I’ll give her an hour before she finds a way to accuse me of playing a trick on her.
Already, I have to fight off a dopey-ass grin at the anticipated argument.
It makes it so fucking easy to get through the rest of the call.
Though I’ll attribute part of it to the reps I’ve been putting in for the past two years.
I have put so much time, my own sweat and blood, as well as that of many others, into paving this fucking path for myself.
Moreover, I’ve done it from the shadows.
Our product through the Solntsevskaya ports in New York and Russia, and several of their holdings—from sports betting and money laundering to drugs and weapon trafficking—through the Zakharov-proofed pathways in Boston.
I’ve been the one who’s cemented an alliance Anton would call unnecessary.
It is my legacy, the one I have forged, not the one I have been anointed with.
And, in the wake of it, it means something to me to share it with someone, finally.
Even if she’s a Yuri. Fuck. Even if she’s the most spectacularly fucking stupid complication I could’ve engineered for myself.
Neither of us exchanges a word when I hang up. There’s no chance. My mother cuts right in, plopping in between us, with a bottle of chilled vodka in her fist. It’s evident that she has already gotten into this.
“Shall we toast to your victories, Vitya?” she asks, beaming.
She raises the entire bottle in a haphazard toast—and it’s only Nadya’s lending a hand that keeps the bottle’s contents from splashing all over the place.
My mother means the world to me. She is where I’ve gotten my lifeblood.
She is the closest thing to a real, true home for me.
She is also a fucking mess. A painful, albeit worthy, person to love.
I’ve long since made my peace with how, sometimes, these are the repercussions when you’ve had a tough life. I see no point in condemning her.
On the bright side, neither do I try to convince her to give up the booze anymore.
Nadya knows what she is doing when she makes the effort to pry the bottle from Milena’s grasp, with the cool and calm reassurance that, “I’ll bring it back. With glasses. Let’s take it to the food, huh? I was promised a meal. Your son already has me at least one sheet to the wind, Milena.”
It doesn’t work. But it’s admirable.
And it’s something that my mother hugs the bottle to her chest and grumbles, “No, I keep,” tutting at Nadya, and still conceding, “I pour. You bring glasses.”
It’s a compromise Nadya accepts without hesitation.
Despite the semi-drunk she claims to be, her expression is remarkably sober to my eye. I can see, plain as day, that she’s putting some pieces together. This—how my mother wants to imbibe when booze is leaking through her fucking pores already—and the fact that I do not drink.
She doesn’t bring it up here.
In this penthouse, she takes the glasses to the dining table she gamely brings the food from the kitchen to. She lifts my mother from the couch and seats her at the head of the table. She allows my mother to pour for her, which is her highest form of endorsement.
She looks at the brimming glass in her hand, her smile entirely genuine. “What would you like to toast, Milena? This magnificent feast you’ve put together?”
The way she says it, I can tell that Nadya’s gathered that my mother has no idea that she is my wife, let alone that I’ve made her so through such dastardly means.
Truthfully, I hadn’t intended to test Nadya with this.
With this many unstable variables, that would be pretty fucking stupid of me.
She could have outed it. The chances that my boisterous, passionate, tactless, and occasionally venomous mother will remember this the morning after are always slim to none.
She passes with flying colors, regardless of these facts.
I’m not delusional. I know that she owes me less than nothing, and yet, she gifts me an hour I hadn’t planned for and wouldn’t trade.
An hour filled with my mother’s half-true stories and bawdy laughter. With Nadya spitting water out of her nose and moaning over Milena’s special borsht and pelmeni. Amidst it all, I forget how long it’s been since anyone, but the two of us, sat at this table.
What I can’t overlook is watching Nadya’s guard slip farther and farther away.
***
My mother passed out cold before we left. I suppose it’s a good thing I’m desensitized to this routine by now. My mind is somewhere else as I tuck a throw around her. Specifically, it’s on the woman patiently waiting by the front door.
I gently open the door, gesturing for Nadya to go ahead first. She falls into step with me.
She’s not saying anything, again. It fucks with me when she dials herself down to mute.
To call it troubling is an understatement.
Standing there, waiting for the elevator in utter silence, is worse than fucking troubling.
I’d never, to look at her, initially assume that she’s an introspective person. Yet it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that she can be.
Though it has to be said, I’m not sure it isn’t her chosen form of retribution for me.
She’s a kill two birds with one stone kind of woman.