Chapter 15 #2
Flowers. Painted ceramics. Baskets of mangoes and limes. Handwoven bags. Silver jewelry. Old women selling spiced cakes. Men calling out prices in quick, warm voices.
Yelena stopped at the first stall and stared. Her face opened. Not carefully. Not with the old calculation.
She touched a painted bowl. Blue glaze. White waves around the rim.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
I reached for my wallet.
She caught my hand.
“No.”
“You like it.”
“I touched it—doesn’t mean I want to buy it!”
“But you looked at it. You smiled.”
“That is not a purchase agreement.”
I looked at the vendor. The vendor looked amused.
Yelena moved to another table. Small necklaces. Bracelets. Glass beads. I followed her. She picked up a pair of silver earrings shaped like tiny crescents.
I reached for my wallet again.
“Salvatore.”
“Let me buy you some earrings, Little one.”
“You are trying to buy me everything I look at.”
“Is that so wrong?”
She put the earrings down.
“Yes.”
The word was quiet. It stopped me.
“Abundance can be another way of refusing to listen,” she said. “My father used diamonds when he didn’t want to hear no. Gianni used dresses. You use islands and boats and . . .” She gestured toward the market. “All this.”
Shame touched something sharp beneath my ribs.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel unheard.”
Her expression softened at once.
“I know you mean well.”
“That does not make it harmless.”
“No.”
I took a breath.
“What do you actually want, bella? You can also say nothing, of course.”
She looked around again. This time I did not move. Did not reach for money. Did not make her choice into a test of whether I could give enough.
After a few minutes, she returned to the silver earrings.
“These,” she said. “I do want them”
I bought them.
Then she chose a painted wooden bird from a toy stall. Its wings were red and gold, its tiny body carved with more care than the price deserved.
“For Kiryl,” she said.
“He will like it.”
“He will pretend he is too old for it.”
“He is too old for it. About ten years too old.”
“I don’t know. He’s sunburned and peeling potatoes. He needs a bird. Every adult needs a bird.”
So I bought it for him.
The blue bowl came last.
She held it in both hands, looking down at its white painted waves.
“For what?” I asked.
Her mouth pressed into a line.
“My future kitchen,” she said. “Maybe . . . our future kitchen?”
I said nothing. I only took the bowl from her carefully after she paid for it herself.
She handed me the wrapped package.
“Would you carry this?”
“Of course, Little one.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Thank you for asking.”
The words were small, but the moment felt very, very big.
We ate beneath a faded blue awning overlooking the harbor.
The table was small. Our knees touched beneath it whenever either of us moved. Grilled fish, warm bread, sliced papaya, sharp citrus, cold water sweating in glasses.
Yelena had put on the silver earrings. They flashed when she turned her head.
“Have you given much thought to what you will do with your mother’s companies?” I asked.
She looked at me over her glass.
“When Gianni is gone?”
“Exactly.”
Her expression became serious.
“I’ll keep them. Manage them.”
“I assumed you might.”
“They were hers before Lev made them part of his structure. They are legitimate. Mostly. There are good people working there. Drivers. Warehouse staff. Office workers. Women my father never noticed because they did not wear diamonds.”
“And the men loyal to Lev?”
“Dismissed.” Her mouth tightened. “Not killed. Not ruined for sport. But dismissed. I want outside audits. Employee representation. Real votes on safety and wages.”
“You would give workers a seat at the table.”
“Yes.”
“Lev would hate that.”
“He hates many things. It’ll just be another thing he can add to the pile.”
I smiled.
She dipped bread into olive oil.
“And Kiryl gets shares,” she said. “Enough that he is safe. Enough that he has a future that does not depend on being useful to any of us. Some legitimate business.”
“Does he manage them?”
“No.” Her answer came fast. “Only if he wants to. He should study. Travel. Become a terrible professor who corrects everyone at dinner.”
“That is a very specific future.”
“I know my brother. He would be excellent at it.”
“He would.”
The harbor wind lifted the edge of her hat. I looked at the blue bowl wrapped beside us.
“Where would you live?” I asked. “If you could choose?”
Her hand stopped.
“I don’t know.”
“Have you thought about it? Not at all?”
“I never did.”
“Why not?”
“Because every house I lived in belonged to my father. Or was some arrangement. A business thing. Danger. I had no agency, no choice.” Her eyes dropped to the table. “I imagined escape. Not a destination.”
I waited. Slowly, she began.
“Near water,” she said. “Not isolated. I want to see it from the windows, but I want a city nearby. Somewhere I can work.”
“Yes.”
“A kitchen large enough for Tonio to invade, maybe.”
“That requires a reinforced pantry. And it would need to be roughly the size of a football stadium.”
“And a room for coloring.”
“A room?”
“Yes. With shelves. I don’t want to hide the books afterward. I suppose that I could do other things in that room as well. Not just coloring.”
My throat tightened.
She looked at me. “What?”
“I have to admit. Recently I have imagined a house. For both of us.”
Her breath caught.
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
I considered lying. There was no point.
“Since you fell asleep with your head in my lap and a coloring pencil in your hand.”
Her eyes filled.
“Does that frighten you?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s funny, I don’t fear death or pain or hardship. But this, I do.”
I said it plainly.
Her face changed. A small hurt. I reached across the table and took her hand.
“It frightens me because I know what it means,” I said. “It means I want something that can be taken from me. It means I want to promise you permanence when I spent ten years believing I could not keep it.”
Her fingers held mine.
“And?”
“And I can’t bear the thought that you might be taken from me. That you might decide, even, that I’m not good enough for you. That I could lose you through no fault of my own.”
Her eyes shone. She leaned in and I kissed her. Lightly, sweetly, with true, deep love.
Near sunset, we found a beach bar at the end of a narrow dock.
The floor was built over sand. Music played through old speakers. A few staff moved behind the counter, but the tables had been cleared. No crowd. No guards in sight.
Yelena looked at me.
“You organized this?”
“It was no big task. I just asked for some privacy.”
“You are incapable of doing anything casually.”
“That is not true!”
“You rented an arcade for our first date.”
“Well yes, but it was a good arcade. And casual!”
She accepted half a cocktail and drank it slowly. Something pink with crushed ice and too much fruit.
When I looked away for a moment, she stole a slice of pineapple from my glass.
“My little thief.”
She smiled at me over the pineapple.
Then the music changed.
A faster song. Warm drums. A singer whose voice sounded like smoke and sunlight.
Yelena stood and held out her hand.
“Dance?”
“I have not finished objecting.”
“Maybe you could objectify while we move together?”
She pulled me onto the floor.
At first she danced with distance between us. Her yellow dress moved around her legs. Her hair had escaped beneath the hat. She laughed when I missed a step.
“You are bad at this,” she said.
“I run an international shipping operation, I’m not a dancer”
“And I guess international shipping doesn’t require much rhythm.”
Then she came closer.
Her arms went around my neck. Mine settled at her waist. Her body moved against mine without calculation. Not performing the bratva princess. Not performing a perfect Little. Just Yelena.
My Lena.
She tipped her head back and laughed at something I said. The sound made my chest ache.
When the music slowed, she rested against me.
“Daddy active?” she asked.
“Yes, little one.”
Her eyes softened, then flashed with lust.
“Then tell me what to do.”
“First . . . I want you to drink some water.”
She frowned. “That . . . is deeply unsexy.”
“You drank half a cocktail in the sun.”
“This is oppression.”
“Water, please, now.”
She drank.
“Put your sandals back on before the dock.”
“I don’t want to.”
“The dock has splinters.”
“I will bravely face them.”
“No.”
Her mouth curved. “No?”
“No.”
She kicked off the sandals anyway and walked toward the dock barefoot.
I caught her before she reached it.
“Sal.”
“You were warned.”
“I was exercising my free will.”
“You were being a menace to yourself.”
I lifted her into my arms.
She made an outraged sound, then wrapped her arms around my neck, then tenderly kissed my cheek.
On the boat home, she sat beside me beneath a blanket. The harbor lights grew smaller behind us. Her head rested against my shoulder while she wrote in the firebird notebook.
After several minutes, she turned the book toward me.
I want a home with you.
For a moment, I could not breathe. The words were written in dark ink. Careful. No hedge around them. No joke.
I touched the page.
Then I looked at her.
“I want that too,” I said.
Her eyes shone.
I kissed her, mouth fitting to hers like it was made for this.
The first pass was gentle—hesitant even, like I could lose her with a single rough move.
But she made a tiny, involuntary sound, a hungry one, and my chest went molten.
I held her close, the line of her back arching into my hands.
Her lips parted under mine and I lost what little patience I had.
Her nails dug into my shoulders, then slid up into my hair, anchoring me.
It was all I could do not to press her against the bar and let everyone see how I wanted her.
She tasted like sun and salt and the pink drink, citrus and sugar, pure Yelena.
Her legs tangled with mine. She pulled me with her body, no wasted motion, no hiding from the heat.
I had to stop myself from marking her right then, teeth on her neck, hands roaming everywhere.