Chapter 28 Our Happy #2
Similarly, he got me heels. The bruises on my legs limited me to comfortable options, but we found a pair with high-set straps to keep the pressure off tender places.
They immediately ended up in a red, velvety, structured bag with ‘Salvatore Ferragamo’ written in white script through the middle. Vitali didn’t let me carry it.
I couldn’t look at the price tags because I already felt sick thinking about my old neighborhood and Mama’s plastic pearls. It didn’t end up mattering anyway, because no prices were displayed in any of the stores. These weren’t for the type of people who worried about money.
Our last stop before circling back around to pick up the dress stopped my heart.
Tiffany & Co.
The world quaked, or maybe my insides did. Keeping myself together as we strolled the displays was hard enough, but impossible as we reached the rings.
If I threw up on their floors, it would probably cost me five years’ salary.
Or more. Certainly more.
In my old life, I would have never moved into his apartment until after marriage.
It’s not like the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but the way you daydream about it is different than being right there—next to the person who you hope to be your forever.
It’s scary, and it’s dizzying. And you second-guess every aspect of your life—of yourself.
Because it will never be just you again.
To choose someone, to truly choose someone, was to become a half of a whole standing on the hairpin that was life.
Knowing that their hardship became yours, and sometimes you’d have to take the bulk of the burden to maintain the balance.
Vitali’s life was heavier, and even if he insisted on carrying it, that’s not how the world worked.
You couldn’t just take away someone’s ’unlocked door privileges’ when it came to raising a family. But he’d probably still try.
He paused and scanned the gold bands with the ice-like set stones without any obvious emotion. I didn’t dare look at him in case we made eye contact, as that would be too much for my fluttering stomach.
Oh God, he said it was a very special day.
Then, he moved on.
My stolen necklace was replaced by one the attendant brought from the back. Silver chain and a diamond-set heart with a small inscribed lock. He didn’t look happy about it and muttered something about it being temporary, but put it on my neck anyway.
The idea stuck. I was convinced he would propose, and the embers of those thoughts were only stirred and fed into blazing flames as I got my hair done and bruising covered with fragrant makeup.
By the end, only the texture of the scab remained, making me pretty as long as I didn’t look at myself in direct sunlight.
The last stop we made on the drive home (home) was a large, unmarked concrete building with a heavy iron fence and bars over small, dark windows. This wasn’t a familiar part of town, and when Vitali opened the door for me, a wave of sulfurous smog and chemical waste assaulted my nostrils.
What a diva I’d become…
“We will only be a minute,” he promised.
It’d been so long, I had forgotten what he said about managing a warehouse—and it came as a surprise that he hadn’t lied. Cold and mostly empty aside from some pallets and metal crates, it was a stark contrast to the perfumed luxury we left behind.
He led me through another door where a couple of lamps flickered atop old desks crowded with paperwork and empty coffee cups. I almost didn’t notice Misha wedged into the corner. I had never seen him with glasses on, and the image was oddly disarming. He scrunched his nose at the sight of me.
“Ah,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Hello,” I said.
“What’s the best Sergei has down here?” Vitali asked.
Misha rubbed his shaved head and pushed the glasses up, then thumbed through the papers before him. “He just got the Benz S-Class, but he’ll shit himself if you take it.”
“Keys inside?”
“Vitali,” Misha very seriously folded his hands, like a teacher delivering bad news to a failing student’s parent. “You keep telling him ‘no’ lately, and if you take that thing on top of that, he will lose his mind. You know what happens.”
“The keys in the car or not?”
Misha sighed, took the glasses off, and rubbed his eyes. “No, I have them.”
Vitali raised an eyebrow expectantly.
The big man pulled out a drawer and dug around for a moment before producing a set of keys attached to a black fob, but Vitali didn’t reach for them when offered.
“You can tell Sergei I took them, but you’re going to drive it. Pick us up at seven,” he said, then turned to me. “Want to see it, Kotik?”
I’d never seen anyone go from infinitely tired to life-ruiningly annoyed so fast, but Misha didn’t argue. Nor did they give me time to answer, because a moment later we were headed down a large set of metal stairs.
There were two floors below the warehouse, and each echoed with male voices going about their day.
The bottom of the stairs emptied into another office, but this one looked closer to a prison cell.
Most of the guys I knew were sitting around on couches, and the air was more cigarette smoke than oxygen.
Once my eyes stopped stinging, I saw the numerous girls quietly tucked away in the shadows. They looked unwell.
But what drew my attention the most was the overlarge, dry red stain in the middle of the room.
“What happened…” I muttered, and immediately decided I didn’t want to know.
“We killed a dog,” Boris said from somewhere in the Marlboro haze.
They laughed, and I didn’t ask any more questions.
Cold seeped from under the far door and created living swirls as it cut through the smoke. Through it was a vast, dark space, which flickered with sharp fluorescent light a few seconds after Misha flipped the switch.
I gasped. The warehouse was much larger underground, and every bit of it was full. Rows of canvas-covered cars stretched wall to wall, unmarked and giving off the aura of a filled-up morgue.
Vitali took my hand and we followed Misha, who counted off the metal bodies on his right. Close to the end, he stopped and unclipped the bottom of the cover, revealing the giant, glamorous black Mercedes-Benz.
This thing radiated money. Not a speck of dust sat atop the obsidian-like paint or the silver details. The headlights were so clear they could have been crystal. Even the president never rode about in anything like this.
Vitali ran his fingers across the hood as he circled it, then opened the back door. I peeked around to see the leather interior with polished walnut details. This was undoubtedly the nicest car I’ve ever been around.
“I should get one of these,” Vitali muttered, then shut the door. It didn’t slam, but eased closed on an inaudible mechanism. “Tonight is a special night, Misha. I’ll make sure to say thank you.”
Misha swore under his breath. “Thank you—nothing. I’m nobody’s chauff—”
“It’s a special night,” Vitali repeated slowly, giving the man a meaningful look.
And that was the end of the conversation.
As it turned out, it was indeed a special night.
A very special night.