Chapter 22 - Viktor
The Yuris’ henchmen drop me off like a fucking parcel, and the only question I’ve got is why I’m not packaged inside a body bag.
Except that’s not true.
What was even more perplexing was that they had Trifon’s red-haired bombshell of a wife look over my slowly healing injuries before putting me in the SUV.
Either this is an elaborate execution ritual at play, or—I don’t fucking know. I can’t think of a single reason for them to extend care. The most mercy I’d fathom is tossing a fucker like me, broken bones and all, on the street to fend for myself.
This unfounded mercy is fucking annoying, actually, because it’s not the possibility I was already prepared for.
For the most part, I’d made my peace with my upcoming demise.
Now, instead, I must trudge up the front steps of the great Zakharov manor with bandaged wrists that make me look suicidal and taped-up ribs that protest every fucking step I take.
My head is swimming by the time I make it to the front door.
That’s where Maxim awaits me, a disconcerting shine to his reddened eyes. He just looks at me. With a puckered brow, I look back.
“So,” he says hoarsely.
“So?”
“He’s waiting,” Maxim sighs and reaches behind himself to open the door. Without another word, he falls into step with me. His arm presses against mine, shoulder to elbow, in unconditional brotherhood.
He says nothing else, leading the way. It makes him a better man than I, though we already knew that. I wouldn’t have roared, I fucking told you so, right in his fucking face.
The fact that he doesn’t make so much as one smartass remark, however, chills me to the core. It’s telling.
Anton knows everything.
***
He’s sitting by the window in the primary sitting room, with his wireframed reading glasses perched on the aquiline nose he inherited from his bitch mother, and an honest-to-God tattered copy of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in his hand.
It’s not even the translated version.
Fucking Christ, you cannot make this shit up.
Even a man with less of a death wish than I apparently do wouldn’t be able to help but laugh at this shit. They’re going to have to call someone in to resuscitate my ass if he starts quoting that shit, because I will, in fact, laugh myself to fucking death.
Already, a second laugh tickles the back of my throat, confronted by Anton’s affronted frown. “Why are you laughing?” he says flatly. It’s not really a question, though the words harbor a throughline of What now?
“The irony,” I answer anyway.
He gingerly tucks a leg of his glasses into the book, placing it like a bookmark, before he shuts it and sets the novel down on the cushion beside him firmly.
As always, I question how this bitch is one of the most feared crime lords in North America. For fuck’s sake.
“Is it?” he asks, rising to his feet to approach me. He traverses the sitting room to face me in the doorway.
I’d say it’s unexpected, but there’s little about this situation that isn’t, therefore rendering the point moot.
I look down at Anton—my half-brother, the celebrated heir of the Zakharov empire, and the bane of my fucking existence.
There is a little over a year between us, and two inches of height between us.
Aside from this, we appear to be the exact opposites that we genuinely are: his coiffed golden hair parallel to my dark, tousled locks; my hazel irises inherited from my mother, and his lipid green gaze inherited from his.
We share the bone structure and thick brows of our mutual sperm donor, so that’s something, I suppose.
For far from the first time in my life, I stand, stricken by what a fucking disgrace it is that we should share any traits at all. Anything I’ve got in common with him, I can’t fucking stand.
“One would think,” he drawls calmly, “you’d be too ashamed to meet my eye, Vik.”
And here’s just one more example of why.
“Ashamed,” I repeat.
“Assuming you’re capable of it,” Anton allows.
“I’m not,” I answer, punctuating with a derisive snort. I shove past him all the way to the spot he had vacated and drop down into it. Let him see how easy it is for me to take his place. I don’t bother being subtle with the implications.
Anton is unamused, turning slowly in one spot to regard me.
“I see.”
“Though, you got me, Ant—consider my curiosity piqued. What is it that you’re expecting me to be ashamed of? Outsmarting you right beneath your nose, or fatefully usurping your rival’s baby sister? Because I’ve gotta tell you, man, I’m pretty fucking smug about both.”
I grind my molars together as he shakes his head slowly, resolutely unaffected by any blow I land.
“I know you are, Viktor. You are a smug person. A peacock. You always have been,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“And I’d rather be that any day than the pussy you are,” I counter like whiplash.
The only proof that he is bothered is the flask he draws from the pocket of his slacks, uncapping it and raising it to his lips.
He doesn’t wince over the bite of whatever’s in there; whiskey, I’d bet.
I watch as he licks his lips after, then tucks the flask away.
A single swig is all he allows himself. Everything in moderation with him. It’s fucking insufferable.
“We don’t have to draw this out,” I spat.
Anger catapults me to my feet, and I surge toward him, ensuring he’s aware of all three inches I have on him.
I snap my fingers in his face. “Chop chop, let’s fucking go.
We don’t need the theatrics. It’s just us here, right?
You could probably just shoot me and get away with it. ”
“You are a fucking child,” Anton says with a humorless laugh. “And an ungrateful one, at that.”
“Oh-ho-ho-ho, here we fucking go again.” I splay my arms out to the ceiling. “Let’s hear it, Ant. Tell me again about how I should be kissing your feet for making me Avtoritet because Papa Dearest ordered you to. Go on.”
His seething is only visible in the glint of his eyes. “You certainly didn’t earn it, did you?”
“When have you ever fucking let me?”
“Is that how you’re planning to play it?” he demands, brows flitting up his forehead.
“Play it? It’s the goddamn truth.”
“You use resources that belong to this family to build a competing operation, cultivating alliances you at no point informed me of, and started a fucking war with the Yuris to cover it up, costing my men's lives in the process. And you’re the victim?”
He never lets the heat in his eyes make it past his lips. Oh no, Anton Zakharov is cool, calm, and collected. He is level-headed and brutal in only the most clinical of ways.
“Do you ever get sick of looking down at everyone off that fucking high horse?”
“You aren’t everyone. And perhaps you should consider that my horse seems so high to you, because you’re so low.
You are low, in every respect, Viktor—the roads you take, your sick mind, and your morality.
That’s the conclusion I’ve come to, at least. What other explanation is there for being a traitor? ”
I point at him. “Fuck you, Anton.”
“Charming. No, thank you.”
“What do you want me to say?” I growl. “I built something instead of just fucking inherited it. When you can say that, that’s when you get to fucking judge me, you sanctimonious goddamn prick.”
Through gritted teeth, he challenges, “Is that right? Is that why you went behind everyone’s back to do it?”
“You make it fucking impossible, Anton!” I shout, shoving him away from me with both hands on his chest. The force of the propulsion elicits a grunt from him. Vindictive satisfaction drips from a hot tap inside me. I shove him again.
“Fucking low-life thug,” Anton glares, his hands in tightly-bundled fists by his sides. I fucking live on the sight of him losing control, finally.
“Yeah, and you’ve made damn sure that’s all I’ll ever be, haven’t you?
I’m the pawn you let stand behind you at meetings.
The one who delivers news you don’t fucking have time to, and will take the hits you can’t stand to fuck up your perfect fucking suits.
” Every word comes out with more of an edge than the last. With each one, I think, Good.
I hope you fucking cut yourself on them.
Rage and loathing swirl inside me in a catastrophic storm.
“And what are you going to blame me for next? Is your dick getting the best of you on me, too? Or is it just one more reason you’re not trustworthy?
That’s why you’re a pawn. Because you’re fucking reckless.
With your life, with this family’s name.
” His scoff drips disgust. I’m nearly impervious to his condemnation.
“Your obsession with Little Yuri is what’s done you in.
They call it an Achilles’ heel, do you know? ”
I sneer, dismissing him with a crude gesture. “I’m familiar with the myth, you patronizing cunt.”
“Viktor.” His jaw clenches. “When have you given me a reason to take you seriously?”
“I built—”
He pivots away from me, like he can’t stand the fucking sight of me. Well, ditto, motherfucker.
“Do you know how sickening it was to receive that phone call from Trifon Yuri?” Anton asks the window. His hands clasp behind his back. “My second-in-command knocked a woman out and abducted her. That you would do it to anyone is wretched enough, and then you went and did it to Nadya Yuri?”
I hate her name in his fucking mouth.
“I married her.”
“That is not what a marriage should be,” he sighs, shaking his head over and over again. “That is not how you earn a woman. It definitely isn’t how you keep one, you idiot.”
Idiot.
I’m always the fucking idiot.
“What would you know about it? You have a wife for less time than it took our father to knock my mother up, and you’re an expert?”
Silence could kill.
Anton turns to face me, and every line in his face is shrouded in unrepressed fury. Every bit of it that he’s been squirreling away inside bursts through the dam. He breathes heavily, pure malice swimming in his eyes.
I went too far.
The stunning realization collides a millisecond before Anton’s fists do, flying right into my fucking jaw. I go down when his knee drives up into my battered ribs right after. I gag on bile, my vision dotted with black as agony pulls me under.
“Don’t you ever bring her up!” His veins protrude, his face flooding puce. “I will fucking kill you, Viktor. Don’t—”
Agony tears at my chest at the sight of his eyes, red with rage and grief.
“Ant,” I wheeze, tears welling. I try to straighten and stagger. “Irina was—”
“What did I fucking say?” he roars in my face and punches me again.
The fresh split in my lip reopens where it had managed to crust over, blood spilling down my chin. I catch myself on the arm of the sofa.
I don’t hit him back.
In a surprising turn of events, this pisses him off. Did we fucking trade places or something? Fucking hell.
It costs me to stay right where I am, but I do. Hunched and spitting blood onto the vintage rug that Galina had probably imported from fucking Italy or some shit. Yet Anton still approaches, coming to stand over me, his fists still balled up and ready to swing.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Maxim races in, getting between us. “What the fuck? What did you do?”
It probably says too much about me that he can deduce that I’m the one who fucked up without any other context.
“Might’ve brought up his dead wife,” I mutter, swiping the back of my hand over my bloodied mouth.
Even Maxim shoots me a dark, disappointed glance over it.
I sigh.
“Viktor,” another voice enters the room.
It’s the familiar gravel of my Uncle Boris’ tenor, domineering.
I wasn’t aware he had already returned from Moscow.
Clearly, here he fucking is. One wouldn’t expect a man who moves with a walking stick in hand to take over a room so entirely, but he manages. “Sit down, son.”
I’m nobody’s son in this fucking place, and we all know it.
But I sit, accepting the handkerchief Anton tosses at me before sinking onto the opposite sofa.
Boris and I might share the same technical position in the Zakharov bratva, but he’s Anton’s true advisor. It isn’t remotely surprising that it’s to him Anton turns, and asks, “What do I do with him?”
“You can’t execute your… brother,” Boris says.
He doesn’t say it outright, but the pause is enough.
“No. That didn’t even cross my mind,” he admits with a strangled laugh.
How easily the two of them talk about me, right in front of me.
Maxim shoves a baggie of ice at me. I hadn’t even noticed him leaving the room. Fuck, I’m so goddamn out of it.
He drops down beside me.
“There must be repercussions,” Boris sighs, aggrieved.
Anton raises his flask to his lips again, taking another, deeper swig this time.
“I don’t want you in Boston. If you want New York, fine.
Boris will be Avtoritet to you. Yes? Whether either of us likes it,” he slants a sideways look that makes it unclear whether ‘us’ is referring to him and me or him and Boris, “you are Sergei Zakharov’s son. ”
I glower at the ground. Before I can say fuck no, Maxim nudges me right in my taped-up ribs. I have to swallow down the wounded whine.
“Do what you want with it. So long as you do it, the hell away from me. I’ll clean up what I can of your mess. That’s what I do from my high horse.”
He points to Maxim then.
It takes me a dazed, woozy second to realize he’s demanding his fucking book. His glasses go back on his nose.
Like I don’t even exist.