Chapter One #2
The service corridor smelled like bleach, fryer oil, and rain from the rear entrance. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead. Someone had propped a crate against the wall beside the mop sink. I stepped around it, one hand on my bag strap.
Gennady moved out from the shadow near the rear office.
I stopped so fast my heel scraped the tile.
He’d taken off his overcoat. His gray suit seemed darker in the service corridor, stripped of velvet and amber light. His remaining man stood near the end of the hall, not close enough to touch me, close enough to block the cleanest path.
“You’re leaving without saying good night?” Gennady asked.
“I said good night to the table.”
“I’m not a table.”
“No,” I said. “Tables don’t corner women by the staff exit.”
His face changed. Not much. Just enough to show the wet, mean thing under the polish.
“You think this sharp mouth helps you?” he asked.
I shifted my bag strap higher on my shoulder. “I think I’m tired and I’m going home.”
“You should think about your brother.”
The radiator pipe along the wall gave a hollow tick. My pulse filled the space after it.
“I do,” I said. “Every day.”
“Then you should think better.” Gennady stepped closer. “Petya came into a room where men use real money. He played with money that wasn’t his. He smiled, he promised, he lost, and now he hides behind his sister’s skirt.”
“He’s trying to pay.”
“He’s trying to breathe.” Gennady studied my uniform. “I decide how long he keeps doing that.”
My fingers tightened on my bag strap until the seam cut into my palm. “Tell me the number and the date. I’ll deal with it.”
“You’ve been dealing with it so well.”
“Tell me.”
His smile returned, slower this time. “Three days.”
The corridor narrowed around the words.
“No,” I said. “He said two weeks.”
“Petya says many things. Most of them are stupid.” Gennady moved another step closer. “Three days, Nadia. Then the balance doubles, or your brother comes with my men and learns what happens when men sign markers they can’t cover.”
“He doesn’t have double.”
“I know.” His voice dropped. “That’s why I’m speaking to the useful Yelchin.”
My stomach turned.
Gennady reached up and brushed one loose strand of hair near my shoulder. I jerked away before he could touch skin.
His face went flat. “Careful.”
“No, I understand exactly what you mean.”
His brows lifted. “You’re telling me no?”
“No, I’m not going anywhere private with you. No, I’m not working off Petya’s debt on my back. No, I’m not pretending I don’t understand what you’re asking because you dressed it up as a favor.”
For a second, his face went still.
Then he laughed softly.
“So much pride in a waitress uniform.”
I stepped sideways, putting the mop sink behind me instead of the wall. “Move.”
“You should be sweeter to the man who can save your brother.”
“You’re the man threatening him.”
“Threatening?” He spread his hands. The rings shone under the corridor light. “I’m offering terms.”
“I don’t accept them.”
His eyes hardened. “You will.”
The rear door opened behind his man, and cold air swept into the corridor. Two kitchen staff came in carrying a crate between them, shoulders wet from the rain. Gennady didn’t move right away. He made me stand there and wait for the space to become public enough to breathe.
Then he stepped aside.
“Three days,” he said. “Tell Petya I’m done being patient.”
I walked past him without running.
Outside, the rain had turned thin and needling. It hit my face, slid under my collar, and cooled the sweat at my neck. The alley smelled like wet cardboard and old grease. I didn’t stop until I reached the corner, under a broken awning where the streetlight flickered over puddles.
My wrist still carried the shape of his fingers.
I took my phone out with wet fingers and called Petya.
He didn’t answer.
I called again.
He still didn’t answer.
By the third call, my breath had gone shallow. I shoved the phone into my coat pocket and headed for the train.
Our building sat on a block where the wind came mean off the water and every gate sagged on tired hinges.
The front lock stuck unless you lifted the door as you turned the key.
The hall smelled like old paint, damp wool, and someone’s boiled cabbage from two floors up.
A television shouted through one wall. A baby cried below us.
The radiator clanked like it resented being asked for heat.
I climbed the stairs because the elevator had been broken since October.
By the time I reached our door, my thighs shook. I unlocked the first deadbolt, then the second, then the cheap chain Petya had installed crooked after a man waited outside last month asking for him by name.
The apartment was dark except for the blue flicker of the television with the sound off.
Petya sat on the floor by the coffee table, one knee drawn up, a hoodie hanging loose on his lean frame.
His dark hair stuck up in pieces. A bruise yellowed along his cheekbone, half-healed and badly hidden.
Bills lay beside an empty noodle cup and the cracked mug where we kept quarters for laundry.
I closed the door behind me. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
He flinched.
“My battery died,” he said.
“Your phone is in your hand.”
He stared down at it as if it had betrayed him.
I took off my coat and hung it on the chair because the hook by the door had ripped out of the wall two weeks ago. My work shoes came off next. The relief was so sharp I had to put one hand on the wall.
“Gennady came into the lounge tonight,” I said.
Petya stood too fast. “Did he touch you?”
The anger in his voice was real. So was the fear under it.
“He grabbed my wrist in the booth. Later he cornered me by the service corridor.”
Petya’s face went gray. “Nadia.”
“He said three days.”
He stared at me, speechless.
I stepped over the frayed corner of the rug and picked up the stack of bills. “You told me two weeks.”
“I thought I could fix it before then.”
“With what?”
“I had a thing.”
“What thing?”
He rubbed both palms over his face. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t ask you for the truth after Gennady Kask put his hands on me at work?”
“I didn’t know he’d go there.”
“You knew exactly where I worked.”
Petya turned his face away.
The radiator hissed, then fell quiet. Cold crept around the window where the tape had peeled from the frame. On the sill, the basil plant I’d tried to keep alive had given up and gone brown.
I set the bills down one by one. “How much?”
He swallowed.
“How much, Petya?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Do you mean twenty-eight hundred?”
His eyes closed.
My fingers went numb. “Twenty-eight thousand dollars?”
“It wasn’t that much at first.”
I laughed once, and it came out wrong. “That helps.”
“I was winning. I was up, Nadia. I swear to God, I was up, and then they changed the game.”
“Don’t blame the game. Your mouth got you here. Your hands signed something. Your feet walked into that place.”
His shoulders folded in. “I know.”
“Do you? Because Gennady said the balance doubles in three days.”
Petya’s head snapped up. “He said what?”
“He said three days or the balance doubles. He said you go with his men if you can’t cover it.”
“No.” Petya shook his head too hard. “No, that’s not what they said.”
“What did they say?”
“That I had until Friday.”
“Today is Tuesday.”
“I know.”
“Friday is three days.”
“I know!” His voice cracked, and he turned toward the window, pressing his fist against his lips.
For a moment, I saw the part of Petya that still believed he could stand between me and the wreckage if he hid the wreckage fast enough.
He was too proud to ask. He was too reckless to stop.
He was twenty now. Old enough to sign markers.
Still young enough to believe panic could be outrun if he lied fast enough.
I wanted to hug him.
I wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled.
I pulled out the chair and sat before my knees gave out. “Show me everything.”
He hesitated.
“Petya, don’t make me ask twice.”
He went to the counter and lifted the loose panel behind the microwave. From behind it, he pulled a folded paper and a small envelope. He laid them in front of me as if they might bite.
The paper was a marker with numbers written too cleanly. The envelope held cash. Not much.
I counted it twice because the first number was too insulting.
“Four hundred and sixty dollars,” I said.
“I was going to add tonight’s delivery money.”
“You lost your delivery job last week.”
He looked at the floor.
I pressed my fingertips to my temples, then lowered them. I couldn’t start crying. If I did, he would comfort me, and then I’d forgive him too soon because he was my brother and I was tired.
I took my tips from my bag and added them to the envelope. Three twenties. Five singles. A wet ten I’d forgotten. The pile seemed smaller after I touched it.
“Rent is due Monday,” I said. “Gas is overdue. Electric is one warning away from shutoff. I can ask for extra shifts, but that gets us maybe two hundred more if my feet don’t break off.”
“I can work.”
“You can’t work twenty-eight thousand dollars in three days.”
“I can go there and talk to them.”
My head jerked up. “No.”
“I started this.”
“And they’ll finish it with your teeth on a floor.”
His jaw worked. “I can’t let you fix it.”
“You should have thought of that before you made me the only person left standing between you and Gennady.”
He recoiled like I’d slapped him.
Then his jaw tightened, hard enough that the muscle jumped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I thought I could win it back. I thought I could get ahead for once and pay the rent and maybe get you out of that place. I know that sounds stupid. I know it was stupid.”
The television flashed over his face. Some silent commercial with a woman smiling in a clean kitchen bigger than our whole apartment. The radiator banged once and gave us a thread of heat that wouldn’t last.
“I’ll go to him,” Petya said. “I’ll tell him to leave you out of it.”