Ciaran
When I told Uncle Cormac I’d be spending Thanksgiving with Adeline’s family he threw his head back and laughed. We were in his office, the floor-to-ceiling windows letting in plenty of light, a gold aura radiating from him.
“Fuck me,” he had said, sipping whiskey. “You’ll be wearing matching ties next.”
I think his opinion would be different if he found himself sitting across from Boris in his office.
It’s exactly how I would expect. A stately oak desk. There’s a globe on a side table and maps hung up. A wall of bookshelves and the dark paint give it a moody, academic atmosphere.
There are photos on his desk of his daughters through the years. Adeline’s cheeks are chubby, a toddler version of her staring at us.
I am a stray dog Adeline has adopted. It’s not the worst thing a man has ever said to me, but my insides eat away at me.
Boris and I don’t like one another. It started long before he thought I might take his daughter away from him.
He’s a man of wealth and from a different generation. He looks down at my uncle's and my newfound ideas. He and Lev Zimin believe they know best.
Months ago, I’d have wet myself for this opportunity. It’s now the second time I’ve entered his home, and the last time his daughter had fallen on her knees and taken my cock in her mouth before she’d clenched around my fingers.
But something deadens the smugness.
It’s not that I’ve left all my pride at the door. Adeline hugged me the moment she saw me, a tenderness in her eyes I hadn’t expected. Months ago I’d have sworn she’d want to chop my balls off. Her temper means that is still a possibility, but we’ve found a rhythm.
I don’t have to hide my work. She doesn’t have to dance around her family’s business. Her body was made for me, and my cock has never felt as at home as when I take her.
We’re good together.
And I really don’t want to piss off Gia, who’s started to like me. It’s satisfying seeing Boris’s eye twitch anytime his wife is kind to me.
So I hold my tongue as I sit in a chair across from Boris, each of us with a glass of vodka in front of us.
“How did your meeting with Wallen go this week?” Boris leans back, his office chair swaying.
I’m not surprised he knows about the meeting. I would prefer he didn’t mention it, though. Especially because it’s something I haven’t mentioned to Adeline.
We might not have to hide who or what we are, but we aren’t trading stories in the evening. Still, there is a tension in my jaw that hasn’t gone away since my uncle mentioned doing business with Wallen.
He wanted Adeline dead. That’s something I can’t forget, nor forgive, of him.
Boris might not be aware of just how far Wallen went to try to harm him. But he’s wary, since my dad tipped him off months ago of a threat. He’s right to be bringing this up, something I’d rather not admit.
“There is no love lost between us,” Boris says.
“You’ve done business with Wallen before.”
“I am one man in the cog,” he replies, the closest he’ll ever get to saying he thinks Lev is stupid for working with the other man. “Your uncle has done well since coming to town.”
It doesn’t sound like a compliment.
“Your father is proud of you.”
What little sympathy I had for him due to his daughter dries up at the mention of Cain Murray.
“Wish I could say the same.” It’s the wrong thing to say, and I know it when Boris cocks his head to the side.
Boris is a family man. I should show my undying loyalty to an absent father figure, but it’s not in me to lie.
The Russian scratches his eyebrow. “You’re a credit to your uncle. Is that what I should have said instead?”
It’s an unusual barb, but a barb nonetheless.
Boris takes a long drink of his vodka, his gold wedding ring glinting. “I told my daughter that she merely needs to say the word and you will be gone.”
“I’d expect nothing less of a father.”
“Then you will understand my next words. Wallen has threatened my family. I am not under any illusion that you are loyal to my daughter or her family; otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Perhaps it is just business, and Wallen’s threats are all talk.
Or maybe you are the exact piece of shit I believe you to be, and you will use my baby daughter to your advantage, like the sick son of a bitch your uncle raised you to be. ”
There is a lot to unpack there, but he is not finished.
“One word,” Boris says, pausing to drink his vodka, “from my daughter or from the shadows that like to speak, and you will be gone.”
I sit with my hands clasped in front of me. A picture of nonchalance, when instead I’d like to leave with a mere vulgar gesture, declaring him to be a waste of my time.
But it’s been several days since Adeline slept in my bed since she’s spending time here during her school break. What the hell is wrong with me that I’m willing to withstand Boris’s disrespect all because I’d like another hug from his daughter?
“I don’t like Wallen,” I say with a shrug. “But as you said—I am but a cog in the wheel.”
He’s got another thing coming if he thinks he can speak of my uncle like some fucked-up man, as if the Zimins aren’t some inbred Russian psychopaths. I won’t give him any more power by appearing rattled. I’ll allow his speech to be nothing but a non-issue.
Boris smiles slightly.
I smile back. “Adeline told me you have a family tradition of making paninis with leftovers.”
I know I’ve made the right play when his fingers tighten around his vodka.
My first Thanksgiving takes place around the Akatov table.
Adeline to my left, her brown eyes curiously peeking over because she’s desperate to know what happened.
Her brow pinches every time I tell her everything is fine.
I’ll deal with her pouting later and not when I’m being served mounds of mashed potatoes and turkey.
“Was it everything you dreamed of?” Nat asks later. We’ve moved into the living room, an American football game playing. Dessert plates are scattered on the coffee table.
“It was,” I tell her, my chest oddly light considering my girlfriend’s father threatened to kill me hours earlier.
Adeline and I are sitting in a chair big enough to be a small sofa, our socked feet propped on an ottoman. Lennie is curled in another armchair, a book in her hand. Gia keeps wandering back and forth between the kitchen and living room.
“Did Seamus make a pumpkin pie?” Adeline asks, licking her fork clean of whipped cream.
I dig my phone out of my pocket, showing her the photo he sent me. My family made the day into an excuse to participate in eating a shit ton of food.
“Ian even texted me to say Happy Thanksgiving.” The message popped up, one of the few I’ve received from him since traveling here.
Adeline perks up, understanding this. “Is that all?”
I nod and push her hair out of her face. She sucks on the fork, lost in thought.
A commercial blares on the TV, catching my attention. When my head swings, I notice both Boris and his eldest daughter blatantly watching us.
“Adeline, what happened with the Christmas decorations?” Boris asks.
Nat hides a smile. “Mom is hauling down boxes.”
“And no one wanted to help?”
“She shooed us away!”
This tends to happen. Gia likes help about as much as her youngest daughter does.
“Go check on her,” Boris says. “All three of you.”
“But I’m reading,” Lennie says, and at first I think her soft-spoken voice is being serious, but I catch the twitch of her lips.
Boris is at risk of overplaying his hand.
“Dad, go check on the plants or something,” Adeline advises, setting her plate on the coffee table.
His chest ripples with a deep sigh.
“Are you tired?” Adeline asks me, like we haven’t all descended into a lazy post dinner haze.
“It’ll be okay,” I reassure her, knowing she’s worried about me getting home late.
“Why don’t you just stay the night?” Nat asks.
Boris goes completely still.
“I wouldn’t—”
“You don’t want to mess with the trains, and we haven’t even begun to start decorating,” she says.
“I didn’t—”
“What about the trains?” Gia appears.
“We can’t just throw Ciaran out into the dark streets on Thanksgiving Day,” Nat tells her mom in that typical deadpan tone she uses.
Gia frowns, thinking this over.
Adeline meanwhile, squeezes my knee, also liking this idea.
Gia shrugs. “Stay the night.”
“I didn’t bring anything.”
She waves the excuse away. “You think we can’t find you a spare toothbrush? Boris will lend you some sweatpants.”
Nat slaps a hand over her mouth, barely hiding her snort.
It only gets ten times funnier when Lennie of all people asks, “Is he going to sleep in a guest room or Adeline’s room?”
Adeline leans around me to answer. “He’ll stay in my room.”
Nat’s shoulders shake. Gia rolls her eyes, not fussed. It’s not even Boris’s left eye twitching that makes me warm inside. It’s Adeline’s shoulder leaning into mine as we sit side by side on the outrageously comfortable armchair.
The rest of the evening was spent helping the Akatovs decorate for Christmas. At least the female members. Boris left muttering something about going to Lev’s. I took this to mean he needed to go vent to his friend about his daughter’s love life.
Their house is so big we only set up a fraction of the decorations before Nat got a phone call from her girlfriend and Lennie decided she’d had enough of people.
Gia was true to her word, giving me a pair of Boris’s pajamas. Part of me wanted to put them on so I could take a photo and send it to Uncle Cormac and Seamus.
Something held me back, though. I’m not a sentimental guy, but I didn’t want to mess this moment up with cameras and texts. I wanted to enjoy this moment in time, spending it with just Adeline and her family.
In the end I shucked off my clothes but never put on the pajamas. Adeline snorted when I slid under her sheets.
“We are going to sleep,” she said, implying there’d be no other activities.
I acknowledged that there was a piece of me that wanted to bury my cock in her so hard, claiming her in her childhood bedroom.
I ignored it, something dulling the boyish rage I usually feel when I’m in nice homes like these.
I’m not so fucked up that I can’t admit how fucked up it’d be to use her to get at her father. For once I ignore the beast that lurks inside me, the one raging to show people up.
Adeline kissed me goodnight on the cheek, and I laughed instead of hauling her back for more.
That might also be because I like the feel of her curling against my side.
Normally, she sleeps with her back to my shoulder while I stare up at the ceiling.
Tonight she’s got her head on my chest, her arms wrapped around me. The weight of her is a steady pressure.
I never told her about the meeting with Wallen.
I can use any excuse I want. I know it’ll piss her off. That she’ll go back to staring at me like she did those first few weeks I crashed into her life.
She doesn’t mention Jack, but sometimes I see her still, and I wonder if she’s reliving those moments when he touched her. No matter how hard I try to pull them away from her, sometimes her body stiffens when I first draw her in for a kiss.
I find this more maddening than anything I’ve ever encompassed simply because I can’t do anything about it. I can’t take the memory away. I can only blame myself for not getting to her quicker that night.
That night where I had watched and waited and later congratulated myself for being incredibly lucky in spinning my own trap.
I run my hand down Adeline’s back. “Ads.” I jostle her. “Ads.”
She emits a sleepy moan.
“My cousins and I are going to Vegas for New Year’s,” I tell her. We decided yesterday. After Wallen invited us.
“What?” Adeline rubs her face, eyes still closed.
“Vegas for New Year’s.”
“Okay, later.” Her hand smacks my face. I assume she meant to cover my mouth, but she gets my nose instead.
I move her hand aside. “Would you be okay with that? Me going to Vegas?”
She frowns in her sleep. “Are you asking if I trust you?”
“Well. . . There’d be a lot of women there, wouldn’t there?”
She smiles with her eyes closed. “They can have you. I wish them well.”
Shouldn’t she be a little bit bothered by the idea of me around skimpily clothed women?
“What about Christmas?” she mumbles.
I’m not holding my breath for an invitation from Gia. They invited the wee Irish guy to show him an American holiday. Boris will have a ten point plan on how to stop his wife from inviting me to another family gathering.
“I’ll spend it with my family.”
“Back home?”
“No, with Cormac and the boys.”
She nestles into my chest. “No. Here.”
“Ads. . .”
“Adeline Marie.”
I laugh quietly. “Yeah, okay, princess.”
In her sleepy state she places me in a death grip, our bodies impossibly close, and I welcome it.
“Come to Vegas with me.”
The question is so quiet I’m not sure she can hear.
I’m not sure I want her to hear. I’m asking her to travel to the other side of the country to meet with a man she hates.
There’d be a lot of explaining, and I’m not sure I could properly enlighten her on why I’d want her to come along anyway. Why I want her by my side constantly.
“No,” she moans.
A sharp pinch of disappointment hits me. “You don’t want to?”
“I’m going to do nothing on my break. I’m going to read and watch Sailor Moon and bake cookies with Lennie.”
People assume Adeline is a partier, but they’re wrong. She’s worked hard, and her roommate situation has stressed her out. She deserves her break.
“Okay.” I rub her back softly.
“You go and have fun.” She presses a sleepy kiss to my chest. “I’ll be here.”