FIFTY-THREE WHEN THE RUSSIAN FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THANKSGIVING
FIFTY-THREE
WHEN THE RUSSIAN FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THANKSGIVING
Eyes still closed, I yawn and stretch.
When they pop open, I sit upright, doing a great impression of Dracula rising from the coffin. “What the fuck are you doing in here?” I hiss before turning to Victoria and making sure she’s covered up.
The trust she has in me, in her guards, in her family is absolute because she doesn’t stir from her rest.
In this instance, that’s not a positive.
“The staff thinks you’ve lost your mind.”
“I had no mind to lose.”
Unimpressed, he studies his nails. “Pretty Woman, Maxim?”
I groan.
“You don’t watch movies.”
“Victoria says I need to get a hobby.”
“And watching a movie about a hooker was that?”
“I was just grateful she didn’t start with Goodfellas.”
He snorts. “Should I expect you to take up painting next? How about archery?”
“That’d at least improve my aim,” I quip. “Better to shoot you with, brat moy.”
“Jiu-Jitsu?”
“Doesn’t count, she says.”
Misha scoffs. “Picky women.”
“Isn’t it terrible being cared for?” I say pointedly, earning myself a grumble.
“She sleeps like she’s dead, huh?”
I punch his shoulder. “This is creepy, Misha. What the hell are you doing in here, anyway?”
“You’re the one who won’t answer my texts,” is his curt reply. “What was I supposed to do?”
Victoria moans. “Not barge into our bedroom?” She peeps at us through one eye then tugs on my arm, yanks me back against the mattress, and flops onto my chest. “Go away. I was sleeping, Misha, and Maxim’s too comfortable and too warm for me to let him leave.”
“Maxim wasn’t sleeping.”
“Well, he’s my bed. I need him.” She squints at him one-eyed. “It’s Thanksgiving. This is illegal. Everyone gets today off.”
“I’m here as family, not for work.”
“Even more reason to let us sleep. This is a crime against the fourth Thursday of November.”
“First, it’s 1 PM. Second, Maxim and I don’t sleep well.”
I feel her sudden stillness but barge in, “Jesus, it’s one?”
“Marriage has made you lazy,” he taunts, but he’s smirking.
The fucker.
She turns her head to stare at him. “Why don’t you sleep well?”
“Doesn’t she know about us living on the streets?”
It’s a testament to our knowledge of her father and his parenting skills that he doesn’t bring up the fact that not all of us were pampered as kids.
She wasn’t.
Not until she became an O’Donnelly.
“If this is your way of apologizing, it’s failing.”
“Don’t speak in Latgalian. That drives me crazy. What did you just say?”
I press a soothing hand to her arm and stroke her there until she settles. “He asked if I’d told you about our… living accommodations while we were children.”
She flinches. “I know you were homeless.”
“Homeless isn’t how I’d phrase it,” I clarify. “We lived on the streets—”
“Isn’t that homeless?”
“We had a roof. Most of the time.” Misha drags a bag of batonchik candies from his pocket. He offers her one and, of course, she accepts.
“Do we have to do this in my bedroom?”
“Our bedroom,” she corrects and unwraps the praline. “Go on, Misha. You two know everything about me, which is so unfair. This will go some way to redressing the balance.”
Misha leans against one of the posts on the bed. “Nikolai, Maxim, and I were close in this orphanage the state dumped us in—”
“What made you bond?” she interrupts.
He glances my way, but I motion at him to do the talking. While sending a signed, “Fuck you,” at him.
She clicks the candy against her teeth. “Need to learn sign language too.”
“Back then, Nikolai didn’t talk. At all. But he was a big bastard. Big for his age and bigger still for the paltry amount we were fed.
“Everyone thought there was something wrong with him. Being ‘weird’ in a Russian orphanage back then wasn’t something to brag about. One of the caretakers had taken an interest in me… If I hung out with Nikolai, then he left me alone.”
My hand balls into a fist. “I set fire to that man’s office when that interest turned physical.”
She gasps so loudly that Misha jumps. “Did he—”
“Maxim got there in time. Just like he always does.”
I grunt. “Don’t think you can get around me by bringing up the past, Misha. I’m pissed at you.”
“Why? You know I talk to Nikolai more than you do. I’m not going to keep him in the dark about Victoria’s safety when you’re crazy for her.”
Victoria shoots me a loving, but still smug, smile. “Yeah, Maxim. Why would he keep that a secret from Nikolai? I liked him.” It’s an announcement, pronouncement, and a declaration. “He looks like he turns his enemies into ground human but that he’s putty for the people he loves.”
Misha snorts. “Maybe if you’re his wife or kids, or… maybe you.”
“He’s kind to Aspen,” I chide.
“So, women are his weakness?”
I grimace at that assessment. “He witnessed his father kill his mother.”
“That explains his nonverbal nature as well as the desire to protect the women in his life,” she justifies.
“He’ll cut a bitch too. Don’t make out like he’s a saint when he has a pet alligator called Vasily!”
“Don’t!” I butt in before, ever eager, Victoria leaps onto the fact.
“But—”
“I’ll take you to meet Vasily before I have to talk about Niko’s psychotic pet,” I grouch, glaring at my brother who, feigning innocence, shoves the candy bag back in his pocket and pops one into the corner of his mouth.
Old habits die hard…
It’ll stay there for an hour if he leaves it alone.
You can take the boy off the streets of Moskva, but you can’t take the streets out of the man.
Misha could afford to build a house out of his favorite candy now. That won’t stop him from savoring each and every one of them.
“A lot of male saints killed people—”
“Says who?”
“Someone whose father made her read the bible. St. George was a soldier before he was martyred.”
“Oh, wow. One—”
“How is this my life right now? Jesus, Misha. Get out of here and I’ll talk to you downstairs.”
“No!” She yanks on his sleeve. “Tell me more! I want to know!”
The word “everything” goes unspoken.
“You’re waiting on Maxim,” Misha reasons, his lips barely forming a smirk. “Why did you hang out with Nikolai?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Why not?” She props her chin on my chest. “Did he make you feel safe?”
My jaw works.
“Have you ever seen a picture of his parents, Victoria?”
“Misha,” I warn.
“No. Do you have some? I’ve never seen any pictures! Oh, my god, do you have baby ones?!”
Snorting, Misha collects his phone and brings up a photograph. He tosses the device onto my abs for her to snatch.
“We always take pictures of our keepsakes and have spares on each other’s phone as a failsafe.”
I rub my middle finger along the length of my nose.
She doesn’t notice. Her fascination’s locked onto the picture. “Wow.”
“Uncanny, isn’t it?”
“Are they related?”
“Nah. It’s just a weird twist of fate.”
“They’re so similar.” Sorrow has her brow furrowing. “That must have been bittersweet, dorogoy.”
I ignore Misha’s reaction to the endearment.
“It seemed like a sign when I was younger,” I confess gruffly.
“Does Nikolai know?”
Misha shakes his head. “We don’t talk about it. I only found out because I saw him studying the pictures he had.”
“How many?”
“Three. One of my parents’ wedding day.” My eyes turn downcast. “My grandmother and mother at a picnic. And one I took of my grandmother when she…” I rub my cheek.
“She gave me a disposable camera. Like a foolish child, I wasted most of the film on stupid shit when I should have been taking pictures that’d help me remember her. ”
Her fingers rub my chest. “You couldn’t have known, Maxim.”
“That’s the bitch. I should have known. I’d lost my parents. I knew she was old.”
Misha picks up the miserable tale of our childhood. “After Maxim set fire to the orphanage, we ran away together. Nikolai kept us afloat while we had to be treated in the hospital for burns and, after, he just carried on. Got this dump for us to live in and did the worst shit imaginable for food.”
“Then, of course, we made things worse by bringing in strays.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, wide-eyed. “Like dogs?”
“No. Kids. There were a lot of children who’d prefer to be on the streets rather than live in an orphanage. We used to find them, round them up, and Nikolai had to figure out how to feed them.”
“If we’d known…” Misha’s gaze sweeps down to his knee.
“Known what?”
I dodge the subject. The depths to which Niko sank to provide for us still keep me up at night. “It’s how we got into the Bratva. Nikolai needed help and they were the only ones who’d give it to us.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Hey, we’re some of the success stories,” Misha teases.
“True.” She frowns. “I guess.”
“Those kids are the reason we are where we are,” I correct.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there were few paths for us. We were forgotten.” She stills, but I continue, “No one remembered us. Apart from Nikolai. So when we cut ties with the Bratva, Nikolai was our natural leader because he always had been.”
“Even Maxim’s big head had to accede to that.”
I kick Misha, hard enough for him to wobble then fall off the bed and collapse beside it. “I was injured. In Moscow.” I steamroll past her distressed gasp. “They had to get me out of the city or the Krestniy Otets would have had me killed.”
“I had to sneak into the country.” Misha’s head pops over the side of the bed like a Whac-A-Mole.
“That was a riot, I can tell you. The only reason we survived is because of those kids… all grown up… who wanted to help us. Just like we helped them.” A smile kicks up the corner of his mouth.
“We never asked. They just came. Intel, manpower—they’re the reason we got out.
They’re the reason we have any position in this country at all. ”
“That’s how you selected the name,” she whispers.
“Yup. Nikolai says we should be called the lost boys because everyone gets it wrong all the time—”
“Until we slice their throats,” I mock.
“Until then.” Misha grins before repeating, “But we were forgotten. Until he remembered us.”