15. Nona
NONA
He asked me not to wait up for him and I swear I wasn’t going to. Alex’s business is his business, after all. I don’t really have any part of any of that. I’m just his wife or whatever.
Except… Except I just had a bad feeling when he left tonight. I don’t know if it was the fact that I just saw Gedeon doing something the other day that could be construed as shady when I was at the mall or if it’s just something in the air. Whatever it is, it isn’t really letting me sleep.
I’m sitting in the game room, watching the news. For a few hours before this, I just lay in bed, scrolling on my phone, trying to distract myself into sleep. When that didn’t work, I made myself a cup of tea and decided to watch the local news.
Dark back alley deals don’t make headlines unless something’s gone really wrong and the civil peace is disrupted.
Well, sometimes not even then, depending on that week’s news cycle.
Crime in the city is as normal as breathing so unless somebody gets identified as being connected in some way, whatever happened is usually reported as typical news fare.
It’s like when one of my father’s warehouses burned down a while back.
The news reported it as a kind of spectacle, warning drivers to steer clear of the area.
They mentioned nothing about the possibility of arson or that the matter was under investigation.
It certainly didn’t mention that the warehouse belonged to Slavik Sokolov of the Irkutsk crime gang.
But that said, right now, listening to the talking heads go on about other things happening in the city, I don’t really know what I’m looking for. Especially since I don’t know where Alex went or what he’s doing. I don’t know what they’ll report if something’s gone wrong.
I hope nothing’s gone wrong. My husband is an obstinate man with a cruel streak, but he loves his family and his brotherhood. I would hate to see him lose any part of the things that he values most in one night.
I’d also hate for him to die. I wasn’t kidding about that part. Practically speaking, I wouldn’t know where that would leave me. We haven’t been married long enough for me to think that his father or siblings would make sure I was taken care of in light of being widowed. Emotionally speaking…
I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that.
I look down at my empty cup of tea and it occurs to me how silly this is that I’m sitting here waiting up for a man who probably wouldn’t even notice that I wasn’t in bed, anyway. I should just go on back to scrolling on my phone and try to sleep…
The screen changes suddenly. A graphic whizzes by as a sharp sting rings out and words in bold font reading, Breaking News appear on the screen.
I freeze, my heart in my chest.
The graphic slides away with a whoosh and one of the talking heads reappears. “Breaking news tonight,” she begins. “Gunshots ring out in the Upper West Side of Manhattan near the West 79th street leaving several men dead.”
The screen changes to B-roll of the area. A dark street, damp from the light rainstorm that blew through a little while ago. A parking lot that’s been cordoned off with police tape and officers walking around investigating bullet holes in cars and shell cases on the ground…
My stomach tightens and my mind immediately starts to make excuses. Crime happens all the time. This was some other gang activity. Italians and one of the motorcycle gangs battling it out…
“Witnesses report hearing gunshots a few minutes after midnight tonight,” the reporter says. “So far, no one has reported actually seeing the incident, but police are still investigating. We will have more on this—”
I turn the television off. My hands are shaking. It happened maybe thirty minutes after Alex left. And with no one identifying the dead…
My phone buzzes on the end table next to me. I pick it up. Damn. It’s Yeva.
“Nona? Is Alex there?”
“N-no,” I say. Her voice is firm. There’s no panic in her tone or hysteria. Just a simple question. She doesn’t say anything for a moment… and I hear the news on the television in the background.
“Okay,” she says finally. “When he comes in, can you tell him to call me?”
I want to tell her not to worry, to tell her that the news report doesn’t mean anything at all just yet and we just have to wait for more information. Alex will walk through the door and it’ll all be fine.
I want to say all of that, but the only thing that comes out is, “Okay. I will.”
She hangs up, and my heart’s in my throat. What do I do if he doesn’t come home? How long do I wait? It’s already almost dawn…
I hear the front door open and for a split second, I don’t know what to do. He’s home. He’s home.
I’m in the hallway, rushing to the front of the house. I hear talking coming from the kitchen. Rikki’s voice saying, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
I round the staircase and walk into the kitchen. Alex and Rikki are standing near the kitchen table… Both of them look like hell.
Rikki’s jacket has smears of blood on it. He’s got a bullet wound in his right shoulder and the jacket is covered in blood around the burn hole, but he’s not bleeding at this moment. But Alex…
He’s covered from his chest to his pants in blood. It’s splattered across his face, which is ghostly pale. His eyes are wet and rimmed with red and his nose has pinked at the tip.
It went wrong. It went very, very wrong.
They both stop talking and look over to me, then Alex looks away, back to his brother.
“After you tell her, stay with her tonight,” he says.
“What about you?” Rikki asks. “I don’t feel right about leaving you—”
“I’m fine,” he says quickly. “Yeva won’t be.”
Rikki nods slowly and as he turns away, I see a deep hurt on his face. Rikki’s going to talk to Yeva… About what?
“What happened?” I ask, my voice betraying me once again. I sound small and frightened. Alex is not even looking at me.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” he says to Rikki. Then he walks out of the kitchen, maneuvering around me so that he doesn’t touch me at all.
I turn to Rikki, walking up to him. “Hey. What happened tonight?” I ask again.
Rikki sighs and with his large frame, he looks as though he’s deflating a little. “We were ambushed,” he says simply. “Lost a lot of good men tonight… and the Pakhan. The Pakhan was killed.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Alex… is he hurt? He-He was covered with blood. He’s not hurt…?” I trail off. I don’t know what I’m even asking.
Rikki shakes his head. “No, no. He’s all right.
In fact, he’s the only one of us who got out without a scratch.
” He clears his throat and looks away from me.
His eyes are starting to water. “We’ve always joked that he was charmed.
Or bulletproof. The rest of us come out all beaten up and he’s always…
” He stops himself and clears his throat again.
“Look, you’re going to want to give him some space to get himself together, but…
but make sure he gets some sleep tonight.
We’ve got a lot to take care of tomorrow.
He needs as much of his head in the game as possible.
” He pauses, his watered-down rusted-gold and green eyes locking eyes with me. “All of us have to be ready tomorrow.”
He turns away from me and says, “I’ll talk to him soon.”
I nod. He returns my nod with his own, then he leaves, walking out into the rain through the back door.
I wander to the foyer and look up the stairs to the second floor. Alex has left smears of blood on the railing. Specs of red dot the steps. So much blood… and apparently, none of it is his.
He lost his father tonight. Forget all the Bratva politics and rules. Forget that a king was assassinated. Alex lost his father tonight. I can’t begin to imagine how much pain he has to be in. He shouldn’t be alone. No one should be alone after something like this.
I walk up the steps. Immediately, I see the door to our bedroom is cracked and the light is on.
I walk to the door and the moment I do, I hear the shower running in the bathroom.
The first things I see are his bloodied clothes on the floor, leading to the bathroom door, which he didn’t bother closing.
Steam rises out to the bedroom ceiling, filling the room with a heavy, wet scent with a hint of his musky odor mixed with copper.
Give him some space, Rikki had said. I suppose that would be one thing I could do. Pick up his clothes and close the bathroom door. Let him do what he has to do to get himself together.
But what if he can’t do that? This life can be filled with death at times… But to lose your father? Tomorrow, everyone will be looking to him to take over, and he’s got to be ready for that.
And… and he shouldn’t be alone. Maybe tomorrow, at some point, he can work through this on his own, or even the next day. But not tonight. I can’t leave him alone tonight.