Chapter 15 - Nadya
Some call it tempting fate or a jinx. Others invoke Murphy’s Law or the psychological phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Others still boil it down to a basic, ironic twist. Whatever you want to call it, it is a universally acknowledged risk to ask oneself, “Well, it can’t get any worse, can it? ”
Because, more often than not, the Universe takes it as a challenge.
Nevertheless, I can’t stop my brain from thinking those words precisely as I snatch the proffered phone from Viktor’s hand.
My fingers are still sticky with syrup. My thoughts are stickier.
I don’t have to dwell on who to call. It’s more of a matter of the risk it is to make the call at all.
I could always take my chances with my family, somehow figuring out where Viktor had swept me away to.
Coming out of left field, they’d keep the element of surprise.
And there’s no doubt that they’d use it to—
My eyes squeeze shut as my stomach roils at the thought.
They will kill him.
If they figure it out on their own, my brothers will kill him.
And maybe I should want that. Maybe I am the one who’s fucked in the head for feeling sick to my fucking stomach at the mere supposition of Viktor’s blood being spilled.
It’s as if he’s infected me—and now, because of him, I’m not in the business of shoulds either anymore.
Viktor is terrible. He is arrogant, calculated, cruel, and obsessive. A villain to many.
I’m often afflicted with a desire to maim him myself.
So how dare the thought of anyone else doing him harm tear me apart inside?
If I don’t make the call, my family will never let up.
I know they won’t. They will scour the earth for me.
That’s what Yuris do. This is how we love.
Trifon, Valentin, Leonid, Iosif, Miron, and Darya.
Maybe it’s because our father died months after my birth, and our mother never leaves Moscow, but our family is more a microcosm than a bond.
We fight, and piss each other off, and don’t always like each other or approve of each other’s choices.
But our tether is an endlessly flexible cord.
They will follow it to wherever I am in this world. Of this, I have no doubt.
I could put my faith into my family finding me and avenging this slight, amongst many others, at Viktor’s hand. Or I could put it into my brothers and their militia, having too much firepower for Viktor’s response to prove fatal, even if he dies trying.
Or I could put it in my acting abilities to bring them peace and try to reason my way out of Viktor’s grasp without putting his life on the line.
There’s only one choice here that I could possibly live with. Only one choice that has a shot at no one getting hurt.
No one but me, at least.
When I force my gaze back to Viktor’s face, his eyes are fixed on the ground. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he looks ashamed. As it is, I’d say he looks unhappy.
It doesn’t escape me that this is a test for both of us.
He’s obviously already calibrated the same options I have. It should be a good thing that he isn’t certain what my choice will be. Instead, it kind of pisses me off.
I could have slit his throat in his sleep last night if I’d wanted to.
With a sigh, I shove the covers aside and get out of bed. I say nothing to Viktor. I don’t even want to look at him right now. With one hand, I sip at the perfect cup of coffee. The other dials Iosif’s number.
The phone rings for so long, I’m almost sure he isn’t going to pick up.
And then, he does.
“Yeah?” My brother’s voice doesn’t sound like my brother’s voice, not really. In the place of his typically effusive lilt, there is a disquieting flatness.
My throat seizes. I manage a croak, at best.
It’s all it takes. I’m stricken by the long, shuddering breath he takes. I am eerily aware of my chest caving in on itself. I’m sorry, is all I can think.
“Nadya?” he chokes out. “Christ, Nadya, are you—Nadya, where the fuck are you? What the fuck happened?”
I shift my weight from one foot to another, and I feel Viktor behind me. I step away from him, abruptly tearful. The lump in my throat is the size of a baseball. The ache is relentless.
“I’m okay,” I force out. “I’m safe. I promise, okay? I’m—I’m totally and completely safe.”
“Nadya, where the fuck are you?” In the span of a second, he’s gone from gasping for relief to shouting. I’ve heard my brother shout plenty. He’s never screamed like this at me. Bile rises like a sour tide inside me.
“I’m—”
Viktor’s hand slips into mine. It is so much bigger than mine; it should swallow it. Yet the way he does it leaves the distinct impression that he’s giving me his hand to hold. The way a mother gives her child a stuffed toy to clutch for comfort.
It’s so fucking antithetical.
Tears spill past my swollen lids and down my cheeks.
“I needed to get out. I’m sorry.”
“You’re lying. You’re fucking lying to me, Nadya, I know it. Your guards said they lost you in the crowd. They said you were taking care of a hurt girl,” he argues furiously. He believes in me so much.
He shouldn’t.
“You were suffocating me. You—You understand, don’t you? I don’t want to feel hunted. I’m twenty-five years old. I don’t want to be babysat. Please understand.”
“Where. Are. You.”
Every word is a sledgehammer to my sternum.
My lips purse into a hard line, and I force my breath steady. I angle the phone away to keep Iosif from hearing my struggle. Viktor’s face presses into my hair.
“I can’t tell you that, Iosif. I’m sorry.”
“You can tell me anything, remember? It’s you and me.”
Except it isn’t. It’s not.
I grapple for strength, injecting it into every word I bite out past clenched teeth. “No, it’s not. The bratva comes first. And I get why it’s that way. But it’s also why I’ll come back when I’m ready. Please understand,” I can’t help the way my voice turns pleading.
I’m not an actress. This act of performing, no matter the motivation, is pure torment. It’s nearly as unbearable as the dense, damning silence on his end.
“I can’t believe you,” he says. And I hear it. The disbelief.
I squeeze my eyes shut, letting tears wet my cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I exhale.
“No, you’re not,” he says cruelly. “You’ve been gone for days. We have all been sick with worry. We have been combing the fucking streets for you. No one has eaten, slept, or breathed. But you can’t tell me where you are? Are you serious?”
“Iosif—”
“Don’t. Just fucking don’t, Nadya. I covered for you, you know that?
That first day, when you didn’t show up, and Darya called Trif?
I lied for you, yet again. I told him you just needed a minute.
And then another day went by. And I had to look our brother in the eye and tell him I lied to his face.
All for you to—what, take a vacation from reality? ”
My fingers press to my lips, staunching the sob that threatens.
I can’t speak anymore. I can’t.
Every word of defense I’ve got is a graveyard of shattered glass. All I do is choke on the blood in my own mouth.
Iosif keeps going. “I’ve always thought that you and I are the same. But we’re not. I would never fucking put our family through what you have. I can’t believe you.”
“I’m—” I croak, dropping Viktor’s hand. It presses to my chest, trying to hold together my breaking heart.
“I don’t fucking care. You want to be on your own? Fine, be on y—”
I don’t hear the end of the sentence.
The phone is unceremoniously ripped away from my ear.
Through the blur of my grief, I can barely process the snap of Viktor breaking the phone in two.
Only when I swipe my free hands over my eyes, clearing the veil of tears, do I see what he’s done.
In either fist, he holds a piece of the phone.
Both hands quiver with unrepressed fury.
“Go away,” I say. I want to scream the words, and instead they come out in a sob. “This is all your fucking fault. Just—please, just go.”
“I fucking know it is,” Viktor spits.
“So go,” I cry, burying my face in my hands. I dig my nails in where they land, their bite punishing.
His hands wrench them away from it. “No.”
“GO!” I scream up into his face.
His face drops so close to mine, I feel him shake his head more than I see it.
Just like I feel his face beneath my fingertips when he plants them there.
With his fingers over mine, he digs them into the crinkles by his eyes.
He drags them down, tearing at his skin.
“Hurt me. Not you. Never you. Please, baby.”
Every word is a broken whisper.
My hands tremor beneath his, and another sob huffs past my lips.
It isn’t a choice my head makes. Maybe it’s my stupid, fickle heart to blame.
That’s where I feel the visceral pang, the breath before my hands draw his mouth to mine.
The smarting pain spreads out from my chest. Viktor’s breath falters against my mouth at first contact, and then, his tongue wipes the salt of my tears from my lips.
This isn’t like the other times, and it is.
Our fire hasn’t guttered out; our mouths move together with feverish ferocity.
I push, and he pushes back. I push harder, and he takes it, absorbing the impact like he’s made for it.
He is a mighty oak, and I am the forest fire.
He burns, and his hands warm my shaking body.
There are no words between us. This is our language.
I devour his, I’m so fucking sorry. He knows that my fingers clutching in desperate fistfuls of his hair means I understand why this happened.
He mouths his gratitude for it in kisses that stray from my lips to my cheeks, my chin, the line of my jaw, and all the way down my throat.
I can taste my tears on his lips, eventually.
We share the burden of that salt between our tangling tongues.
His hands drop to the backs of my thighs and hoist me up his body, carrying me back to the bed to tuck me into his lap.
He kisses me and kisses me and kisses me, until his apologies are just reverence.
“Viktor.” His name is all I can say.
I’ve never said it like this before, smeared with and oozing emotions I have never known before.
I say it over and over as he draws his own t-shirt and sweater from my body, ridding me of any fabric on my body, baring me beneath his touch.
As his lips close around a taut nipple, suckling at the bud while his hands worship me in handfuls.
“Let me,” he begs, his fingertips sure to bruise the hipbones he clutches at like this. He drags me over his hard length, denim coarse against my cleft. Viktor’s tongue laves over my chest, mouthing at the valley between both mounds, like he can’t choose. “Let me make it better.”
I can deny him nothing when he pleads like this, I discover. My body is his. I give it to him. He coaxes it up, up, up, in tandem with his spine flattening against the mattress. His touch smooths over my thighs, guiding my pussy to his waiting mouth.
“Oh,” I cry out. “Oh, God—Oh, Viktor, please.”
Please. I’ve begged him like this before, and it wasn’t this heavy then.
It’s so heavy now, costing me what feels like everything.
My fingers grip his hair, pulling at the strands like an anchor, because that’s what he is amidst this storm that’s pulling me under.
I gasp for a breath I can’t fully catch.
I can make do with it. The lack of oxygen is less to blame for the way my head swims than Viktor’s treatment.
The groan he buries between my legs plucks at my nerves like guitar strings. There’s no hesitation or restraint in the way he licks at me. My hips roll into the flicks of tongue within the latch of his masterful mouth. Viktor takes care of me.
He gives, and he gives, and he gives.
He drowns my pain with pleasure until the tears that pour down my cheeks are for sweeter reasons.