Chapter 27 Bastian
BASTIAN
back of house /bak ?v hous/: noun
The door has barely closed behind us before I clock that something’s off.
Zeke is in the kitchen, standing over the sink with his back to us.
The faucet is running, but he’s not washing anything.
Nor is he moving at all. In fact, his shoulders are bunched up around his ears and taut with tension.
I get the impression he’s trying to retract his head into his ribcage like a turtle.
“Hey there, Z,” I say. “Everything okay?”
He doesn’t turn around. “Peach-like.”
Eliana frowns. “You mean peachy?”
“Sure. That. Whatever-the-fuck fruit you wanna call it, that’s how things are. Apple-ish. Orange-esque. Banan-ical.”
Eliana’s hand grabs my forearm, her fingers pressing a quick Morse code into my skin. I’ll give you two some space.
“I’m gonna go check on Yas,” she announces. She sets her cane down next to the door and goes down the hallway.
I wait until I hear the door to Yasmin’s room click shut before I approach Zeke. The water is still running. I reach past him and twist the faucet off. “Talk to me,” I say. “What happened?”
“Women. That’s what happened. They’ll be the death of me.”
“Not if Aleksei is the death of you first,” I say.
Normally, that’s the kind of black humor that would at least get Zeke to crack a smile. But he doesn’t budge. Just shakes his head in disgust.
“She’s pissed,” Zeke finally says. He turns around and leans against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. “Like, really pissed. Nuclear-level pissed.”
“About what?”
“We were talking about everything last night, and I made the mistake of suggesting that maybe she should reconsider this whole ‘stay and fight’ thing.” He scrubs a hand over his face.
“I wasn’t saying I was going to abandon her, man.
I was just... I don’t know. Thinking out loud.
Wondering if there’s a safer way to do this that doesn’t involve all of us potentially ending up in body bags. If she was just safe, then…”
I lean against the opposite counter. “And Yasmin took that as...?”
“A knife in the back, more or less. Proof that I’ll always pick you over her.” He laughs bitterly. “She said I’m ‘loyal like a mutt’ and that I ‘can’t think for myself’ when you’re involved. Which is bullshit. Total bullshit.”
“Is it, though?”
His head snaps up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying that you’ve stuck by me through a lot of shit, Z. More than anyone should have to. I wouldn’t blame you if you said you’d had enough.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Zeke says, but there’s a waver in his voice that tells me he’s been wrestling with exactly that question. “I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m just... Fuck, Bash. I watched you get buried. Or I thought I did. I cried in front of half of Chicago.”
“Nice to know you’re still a cupcake.”
Again, he doesn’t laugh. His jaw clamps down further. “And then you just show back up. It’s a lot, that’s all. I’m just trying to figure out my place in all this. And Yas is currently… less than understanding.”
I push off the counter and move to the fridge, pulling out two beers. I crack one open and slide it across the counter toward him.
“It’s eight in the morning,” he says dubiously as he eyes it.
“That’s never stopped us before.”
With a sigh, he shrugs, picks it up, and clinks the bottom of his bottle against mine. “True that. Bottoms fuckin’ up.”
We both take a sip and settle back against the corner. “She’s scared,” I say. “Yasmin. That’s what the anger is. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.” He takes another long pull from the bottle. “Doesn’t make it easier to hear. Especially after what happened.”
“You mean the assault?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, I mean the assault, you dumbass. Last time I saw Yasmin, she was getting choked out by her psychotic ex and I was bleeding out on the floor of her apartment. She left me there, man. She just left me. If anything, I’m the one who should be righteously pissed at her.”
I squint at him. “But you’re not.”
He folds in on himself, laughing coldly.
“No. I gave it the ol’ college try, but I just couldn’t summon up the anger.
I’m glad she ran. I’m glad she was safe.
I just… I always take life as it comes and goes.
You know that. I’m an easy-going guy. So it’s been real damn weird for me to care so much about something. ”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter.
“Yeah.” He nods and looks me up and down like the evidence is written all over me. “You’ve got the bug as bad as I do.”
“The bug,” I mumble. “That’s what we’re calling it now?”
“What would you call it?”
My mind flashes back to how good and soft and warm Eliana’s skin felt under my hand as she stooped to smell the rose. The delight on her face, that subtle little smile…
“A fucking disaster,” I say finally. “That’s what I’d call it.”
“And yet.”
“And yet,” I agree.
“So what do we do about this disaster?” he asks after a quiet minute of nursing our breakfast beers.
I tilt my head. “Would you be open to taking the women and Sage and running for the hills?”
Zeke snorts. “Not if I value my balls remaining attached to my body, man. And even if I didn’t think Yas would saw off my manhood with a rusty butter knife, you and I both know that won’t end things.
I’m not as well-versed in this underworld shit as you are, obviously, but I think it’s clear that this only ends one of two ways. ”
I nod sadly, eyes cast toward the floor. “Either we get what we want…”
“… or Aleksei does,” Zeke finishes. “Yeah. I’d say that about sums it up.”
“So that’s it then. You’re siding against me.” I mean it half-jokingly, and to my relief, Zeke chuckles a bit for the first time since Eliana and I got back home.
“What are best friends for if not stabbing you in the back?” he asks.
“I thought you said they were for showing up for each other, even when you don’t deserve it?”
“Wrong. They’re for cold-blooded betrayal. You heard it here first.”
“Always knew I couldn’t count on you.” I slug him in the shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go sit outside. It’s getting stuffy in here.”
We take our beers to the backyard and find seats in the grass with our backs against the house. The sun is coming up over the trees and birds are wheeling beneath the clouds.
It’s nice out here in the boonies, I’m realizing.
I always swore up and down that I’d never leave Chicago proper.
The city was in my veins, in the marrow of my bones.
I’m brats and the Bears and green rivers on St. Patrick’s Day.
I’m Malort and the L and lake-effect snow in April. I am the city; the city is me.
Or so I thought. But it’s turning out that a lot of things I thought about the course of my life aren’t quite as set in stone as I once believed.
Maybe other futures are possible.
“We need a plan,” I say. “Preferably not a fucking stupid one.”
“Then you’re barking up the wrong tree, brother. The only plans I ever come up with are fucking stupid.” He looks at me and his grin fades. “Running won’t work. We both know that. And going in guns blazing is suicide. So what does that leave us?”
I don’t answer, because I already know where he’s going with this. It’s the only place left to go, but as many times as I’ve tossed and turned thinking about it, it just seems too damn daunting to ever work.
“We need leverage,” Zeke continues. “Real leverage. And to get leverage, we need a threat.”
“How exactly do you propose we get that?”
Zeke turns to look at me again, his beer bottle dangling between his fingertips. “We feed him to the feds.”
“The feds,” I echo. “You want to turn my brother over to the FBI.”
“Unless you’ve got a spare army hiding in your back pocket, that’s the only way I see it happening.
Aleksei’s got more men and more money than we could ever hope to match.
But you know what he doesn’t have? Immunity from federal prosecution.
” Zeke takes a swig of his beer. “The Bratva operates how they want because the local cops are bought off or shitting their pants in fear. But the feds? That’s a different ballgame entirely.
You know they’ve been trying to build a case against organized crime in Chicago for years.
You could hand them Aleksei on a silver platter. ”
“And what happens to me in this scenario?” I ask. “Last I checked, I’m not exactly innocent here, Z. I’ve got bodies on my conscience. Literal fucking bodies.”
“I know that.”
“So, what, I just waltz into a federal building and say, ‘Hey, I’ve killed a dozen people, but my brother’s worse, so please arrest him instead of me’? They’ll cuff me before I finish the sentence.”
“No,” he agrees, “that won’t play. We have to go about it from an angle.”
We throw ideas back and forth for a while as the morning sun climbs higher and the dew evaporates off the grass around us.
Each one is worse than the last. By the time Zeke starts suggesting elaborate disguises and tipoffs to the feds written with letters cut out of different magazines, I know we’ve emptied our collective tanks and come up empty.
“We’re fucked,” Zeke summarizes at last. “Aren’t we?”
“Maybe,” I admit. “Probably.”
But even as the pessimism leaves my mouth, something in me rebels against it. I can’t be fucked. I have a child on the way. A little boy or girl who will need a father. If I’m fucked, so are they.
I’m never going to let that happen.
“You don’t actually believe that,” Zeke says, reading me like he always does. “You’re still hoping.”
“Hope is for suckers.”
“Then call me a sucker.” He tips his bottle toward the sky like he’s saluting the angels.
“Because I’m not ready to give up on any of this.
So long as there’s breath in our bodies, we’ve still got a chance of finding our way to whatever fucked-up version of a happy ending we might still be able to scrape together. ”
“Happy endings,” I say with a scathing laugh. “You really think those exist for people like us?”
“I think they exist for people who fight for them.” He drains the last of his beer and sets the empty bottle in the grass. “And brother, we’ve been fighting our whole lives. Might as well fight for something worth having, right?”