Chapter 40 #3
Galina collapses against the table clutching her hand, gasping, but she stays silent. For the first time, she seems too scared to spew her venom.
I step forward, lean on the table, and bring my face close to hers.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice calm. “My husband is a mafioso because my father sold me with your blessing—all to cover a drunken gambler’s debts.” I look at Aleksei, who trembles in his chair. “You handed me over thinking you were getting rid of a problem.”
“Svetlana…” Aleksei begins.
“And then something happened that you didn’t foresee…” I continue, ignoring his interruption. “I found a family. A real family, with people who would kill and die for me. Thanks to you, I have a home for the first time in my life.”
I look back at Aleksei.
“And thanks to you, I almost lost everything.”
“We didn’t do anything! You can’t blame us.”
Galina screams angrily, still clutching her hand. Aleksei just sits in his chair crying pathetically.
“When he drank too much and wanted to feel important by bragging about who I was and who I married, they took advantage of it. Men invaded my home, shot the woman who’s been more of a mother to me than you ever were, and almost killed my son!”
Silence fills the kitchen. I straighten up, wipe my hands on my pants after touching that dirty, sticky surface, and speak again, my tone serious.
“That’s why you’re going to die. It’s not for revenge, not out of hatred—you don’t even deserve that from me.” My voice comes out low and calm, as if I’m explaining something complex to a child. “You’re going to die because you endangered the only good thing I’ve ever had, and I won’t allow that.”
Aleksei slides off the chair. He falls to his knees on the floor, clasps his hands together, and begs between sobs:
“Daughter, please. I’m your father… I raised you, paid for your ballet classes, gave you everything! Please, I’m begging you…”
“You sold me for a gambling debt, Aleksei.” I look down at him, that small, pathetic, stinking man I once called father. “You both deserve to rot in a ditch.”
I turn my back because I have nothing more to say or do here. I thought it would be difficult, but it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
“YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!”
The hoarse scream comes first, then the sound of chair legs dragging across the floor. I don’t turn around for another one of her tantrums—I’m fed up with it.
The only thing that catches my attention is the loud metallic click. The screams stop, breaths catch, and Galina’s eyes widen at the pistol pointed at her forehead. Maksim’s hand is as steady as a surgeon’s. He keeps the barrel pressed exactly between her eyes, his expression impassive.
“She’s nothing,” Galina snarls, scared but unable to control her tongue—a tongue as loose as her husband’s. “She was never anything. She was born nothing and will die noth—”
“She is the Queen of the Bratva,” Maksim states, his voice dangerously low and hoarse. “And you just raised your hand to her.”
Galina only has time to widen her eyes before the loud crack of the shot rings out. I don’t close my eyes or turn away. I watch my mother fall dead, her eyes wide and her expression terrified, onto the floor of the small, filthy kitchen.
Aleksei is still on his knees, now screaming over his dead wife’s body. He calls for me, but I don’t look. I just head toward the exit, wiping my hands on my coat once more because they still feel sticky. Maksim follows behind me, ignoring Aleksei’s screamed pleas for mercy.
As I descend the few porch steps, I catch Maksim in my peripheral vision, giving whispered orders to the soldiers, who nod silently.
As soon as the car starts, they enter the house.
I wait for the remorse to arrive. The guilt.
Vysotsk falls behind with all its insignificance and mediocrity, and I only want us to get home soon.
Maksim’s hand covers mine as he drives. Even without saying anything, I can tell he’s restless, worried about me. That’s why I decide to speak, just to reassure him.
“I’m fine.”
“I just killed your mother, Svetlana.”
“It was better this way.” I shrug.
His brow furrows as he stares at the road, making the scar shift slightly.
“Solnyshko…”
“I feel relieved,” I say quietly. “I don’t know what that says about me, but it’s what I’m feeling right now.”
He lifts the hand he was holding, brings it to his lips, and presses a kiss to my fingers.
“It says you’re as much mine as I am yours. I’m proud of you.”
I don’t know what to say, because I don’t see any reason to be proud. I just feel like I’ve closed a bad chapter of my life to begin another.
“I didn’t do anything special.”
“Yes, you did.” He looks away from the road. “You acted like the Queen you were born to be.”
Maksim offers me this title again, but unlike the first time, today I feel like I can accept it.
“Does that mean I’m Bratva now?”
“You always were, Solnyshko.”
He kisses my fingers one more time and heads toward our home. And when I fall asleep on the way, I feel, for the first time in my life, the lightness of belonging somewhere.