Kotik

Chapter 41 Vitali Static

Vitali: Static

Ithink I’m crazy.

I don’t want to be crazy, but the rules don’t apply to me like they do other people.

I thought I’d get mad and everything would go dark—or light—or whatever the fuck happens when the static comes, but when I see her on the ground and bleeding, everything becomes sharp and certain.

I know what to do, the way I know what to do with inanimate objects.

I don’t have time to be angry until later because she is what matters most.

And that’s alright because I have time for the other thing.

I’ll take my time with the other thing.

Kotik has a good birthday.

And then she has a second birthday at the Imperial. I don’t like bringing her there, but it’s renovated and the only place I could get a room with a drain big enough to do what I want to do.

Aliev is Musa’s man, so it’s harder to get him, but everyone has to go to the grocery store eventually. It took longer to find the priest, but that’s alright because Kotik’s birthday isn’t here yet.

I’m disappointed that it’s the only family he has left and I can’t find anyone else, but they’re close enough that I don’t mind.

Katya didn’t like it, but it’s important.

She has to know how much she matters. I have to prove to her that I will never let that happen again. I won’t make her watch Baranov, because I got carried away but I’m not letting him off either.

She gives me a gift, and I fuck it up.

I didn’t want to, but the static came on slow and the picture faded out without me noticing.

I don’t even know when things faded out. One moment I was caught up in her, and the next… I can’t think about what happened next. I snapped out of it, and she was right there. Limp, unconscious.

I have never been more afraid.

Not her. Never her. Never ever her.

I can’t protect her from the outside world if I can’t protect her from myself.

She’s scared, and she thinks I raped her. I didn’t, but I can’t tell her that, because I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t believe me. I don’t want to snap if she doesn’t believe me.

She forgives me, and that’s when I truly know I’m crazy.

I have to work on that. She deserves better, and for the first time I think that’s not me and it starts grinding the gears in my head.

Then, it’s Kotik that fucks up and I have to fix it because she thinks the best of people, and Sergei isn’t a ‘people’ but she doesn’t know that. Misha should have known better, but she came back and she’s alright. She likes Misha so I have to talk myself down. I’ve gotten very good at that.

Elena’s missing and it’s making Kotik cry.

I don’t care about Elena, but she does, so I have to find her. I already know it’s not good news. Best case scenario is she’s a prostitute, considering who she’s been hanging around.

I was right in the end, but that didn’t help anyone.

Sergei paid the Chechens to let her go, but twenty minutes into the car ride she starts seizing.

Her mouth is foaming, and she’s dead before we make it to the hospital.

Her arm is swollen; I can see the puncture wound where they stuck her with desomorphine before we picked her up.

I didn’t tell Katya, and she didn’t ask.

I think she’s getting used to this life and I thought I wanted that, but I don’t.

I just don’t know how to stop it. She gets this look in her eyes.

I know she’s thinking about leaving. She told me once she doesn’t know if she can do this ‘real’ world.

And I can’t let her. I can’t let her. We don’t have to be here, but we will be together, because every time I think about her leaving the air cuts off.

Kotik finds out everything.

And she stays.

I’m not sure if that really happened. I have to wait and see if she mentions it because I’ve had dreams where she finds out and there have been a lot of different outcomes, but never that.

I always thought I’d snap if it came to that moment, but I didn’t.

I was dying, and I knew it. I shouted and I was dying.

And then Katya brought me back to life.

Kotik is perfect, but it seems too good to be true.

Too good… for me.

I have a dream about shooting Sergei in the dick.

I go to work.

And then the world falls to pieces.

* * *

I was on my way back when the phone rang. It was Misha, and he didn’t sound right, which didn’t usually alarm me because he had a weak stomach and clear moral lines, but this was different.

“Are you with Katya?” he asked.

“No, she’s at home.”

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t say anything because he said that for a reason and I needed him to talk faster but I couldn’t get that out.

“Vitali, I just left Sergei’s office. Dropped off some papers. Her cellphone is on his desk.”

A painful white flashed across my vision, maybe my brain, and he didn’t have to say more because I had already cranked the wheel, headed back. “How do you know it’s hers?”

“She put a sticker on it. It’s a cartoon cat.”

“Where’s Sergei?” I asked, and a car honked, another sliding off the road.

“He’s there. Listen, it’s none of my fucking business so don’t go thinking I’m trying to make it my business, but Sergei’s been talking about you. Saying you’ve gone soft. Wouldn’t put it past him to grab Katya to make sure that gets figured out.”

Another flash. I got that ringing in my ears, and had to focus on my hands and the steering wheel because it made sense Sergei would lash out and I was an idiot for not thinking ahead.

“What do you have on you?” I asked.

“Ah blyad, don’t get me involved in this shit.”

“Anything heavy?”

Swearing in the background meant Misha held the phone away, knowing he would give in. I was right because the trunk clicked. An old Lada trunk. He was already on the way somewhere less than fun.

“NSV machine gun,” he finally said. “But hren if I’m giving it to you, it’s brand new.”

“You’re not giving it to me. You’re using it. Meet me on Tsarevskaya and Gritsova, there’s a pharmacy there.”

“Hren. With. You.” A pause. “What are you doing?”

“Having a chat. Make some calls, find out if I still have someone watching the Mira Street apartment or if he pulled them, when he pulled them, and who it was.”

“I don’t fucking work for you.”

“If there is someone there you trust, have them go inside the apartment. Sergei will try to frame it as retaliation from the Chechens for Aliev.”

More swearing.

“How far away are you?” I asked.

“Five, maybe. You gonna wreck the offices?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d rather not.”

Another white flash. I didn’t lose any time, but it did blind me for a moment.

“There are good guys there, Vitali,” Misha said, and I could hear that soft-something in his voice that would make him a good leader if he got his shit in order and cut down on the pirogi. Whatever he thought of me, I always protected my men, and he would too.

“I know,” I said, and my wheels skidded going over the curb into the parking lot. “I’m not the asshole you think I am, Mish.”

“Aha.”

“Make the calls.”

I never traveled cold, but it was a Friday—a paperwork day—so there was only a Makarov on me and another in the car. That wasn’t being prepared for what I’d have to do.

Another flash. Static. Can’t think about Katya, because I’ll lose it. Strictly professional.

The phone rang.

“You trust Roman?” Misha asked.

“Yeah, I put him on Katya duty because he wasn’t sleeping when the twins were born. He owes me.”

“Right.” He hung up.

The Lada pulled in too carefully—blyad—and Misha spilled out of the car. He wasn’t as pissed as I thought, and I suspected it had to do with the opportunity to play with his toys right out of the package.

And there were a lot of toys.

I inspected the tightly-packed space under the false lining in the trunk.

“Sykin son, you have Stechkins,” I muttered, taking out the pistols.

“I hate that you think you need a bigger magazine,” Misha said with a frown. “Where do you want me?”

“Who’d he pull from the apartments?”

“Boris and Pavel this morning.”

“It’s not Pavel. Go in and find out where Boris went—and if he came back. See how many are in there.”

Misha rubbed his brow. “Vitali, why the fuck should I?”

I straightened and looked him in the eyes. “You know as well as I do he’ll kill her. I might not be a good person, but I know you are, and that’s why you’ll do this. Because you’re loyal. Maybe not to me, but to Katya.”

I didn’t say it because there were already skips in the record player, but Sergei wouldn’t just kill Katya. He would make sure I knew he’d stoop to whatever level he needed to make his point. Elena wasn’t personal. Katya would be.

“I have to work here after you do whatever you do.”

“I’ve got good news for you,” I said, slipping a grenade into my pocket. “There’s about to be a job opening with its own office.”

Sergei expected me, but not yet. I had no doubts my apartment was being watched, but without Misha I wouldn’t have found out for a while, and Sergei wouldn’t have told anyone to watch for me in case someone decided to snitch.

Didn’t matter; I went into a back window while Misha went inquiring in the front.

The girl who did the secretarial work liked me, so she only smiled and didn’t ask questions when I knocked a plant off the windowsill while climbing in.

I thought about how angry Kotik would be if she knew, and it gave me a shiver.

I loved it when she got jealous. Made me hard to know she’d fight for me with her little fists if it came to it.

And she’d be more likely to forgive it if she found out about the times I wasn’t so good at controlling my own jealousy.

The door to his office stood ajar, and for a moment I had to pull back and think—if this was a misunderstanding, or maybe she just left her phone, it would be a shame to—

The record skipped.

TV static.

The next thing I knew, the gun was drawn and pointing at Sergei’s chest. The fat fuck’s face twisted into craters with sparse patches of facial hair and canyoned jowls.