19. Nona
NONA
“Smert Rodu Rostovykh,” Alex repeats a little softer as if trying to interpret them, even though everyone in this room knows what he means. “Those were their exact words?”
Rikki is sitting on one of the chairs in the forbidden living room while Marius leans over him, dabbing the cut over his eye.
In spite of the beating he took, he doesn’t look all that bad.
Besides the cut, he’s got a couple of bruises on his face, ribcage, and knuckles.
He’s shirtless, wearing a large bandage over his ribs that we watched Marius painstakingly put on him.
Alex is sitting on the arm of the couch in front of him, his arms crossed as they talk. And me, I’m just standing in the corner of the room, watching it all, my feet frozen to the floor.
“Yeah,” Rikki answers. “I’d say there were about five of them. All sporting Irkutsk ink, all waiting for me the minute I got out of the car.” He winced as Marius pressed a cloth into the cut. “Managed to fuck four of them up before the fifth one got the drop on me with a metal baseball bat.”
“You’re very lucky,” Marius says. “They could have broken your ribs. I told you the last time to watch your flank when you get into scraps.”
Rikki snorts and says, “Kind of hard to do when you’re not expecting the bat.”
Alex is nodding sharply as he starts to pace, his mouth pursed. Whatever state of anger he was in before this, it’s increasing to rage.
“So, they’re escalating,” he says. “Well, if it’s war they want, then that’s what they’ll get.”
Marius, who’s blind in one eye and half deaf in the ear facing away from Alex, looks over at him. “And so the beat goes on,” he says. “And just when I was getting my supply of antibiotics and bandages back up again. That certainly was a short truce.”
“Turns out the Irkutsks were never interested in peace,” Alex responds, glancing over at me. His eyes feel about as glacier-like as their light blue color.
“We should check on Yeva,” Rikki says. “Maybe send someone over to keep an eye on things.”
I’m stepping back, out of the way and well out of the conversation. The chill that surrounds me is almost more than I can take. I need some air.
I want to go out to the front stoop, but… but I’m just too afraid to. Someone’s probably watching this brownstone. In fact, having heard what those men said to Rikki, I’m willing to bet that my father has been watching us for a while now.
I go to the kitchen and sit down at the table, my hands shaking. ‘Smert Rodu Rostovykh’ or ‘Death to the Rostov Bloodline’. It echoes in my mind like an alarm. I wrap my arms around my stomach and it flips. I guess all the plans that my father had have changed, and all because of me.
I think back to the moment I saw the word ‘Pregnant’ in the little window of the test and how it felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. This should be a happy occasion. I should be celebrating this new life with my husband.
But my first thought was to my father. What is he going to do if he finds out? He’d been clear on what my position in all this is supposed to be. This marriage isn’t supposed to be about love or even peace between our families. I am still supposed to be serving him.
The problem is that…
Tears start burning my eyes and I have to stifle a sob. Dammit. I wasn’t expecting to feel this way about Alex. Every smile he gives me, every little fucking thing he does to care for me and protect me…
I’m falling in love with him. And I want to have his baby more than anything in this world.
Only now he hates me because he thinks I’m a traitor. It’s only a miracle that he didn’t shoot me dead before Rikki called.
I wipe the tears from my face and get up to make myself some tea.
I need to get a handle on myself if I’m going to survive this.
Especially now since my father has lost his mind.
Somehow, he found out. His spies somehow figured it out, or maybe I said something at the coffee house that tipped him off.
No. I didn’t even know it then. He found out sometime after I did.
But how? Alex doesn’t even know. The day I found out, I emptied the bathroom garbage, threw it into the trash can in front of the brownstone just in case Alex might happen to see even part of the box in passing. And besides all that, I’ve told no one.
If my father knows, and judging from the message that he wanted Alex to know, he just might, he wouldn’t be able to abide the product of this union.
If I don’t know anything else, I know that my father hates the Rostovs.
I have no doubt that he would try to wipe us all out just to keep the Molotov bloodline from moving forward.
The teapot is set to boil as I look for the teabags. These kitchen cabinets have filled since I moved in here, and not by my doing. Alex filled the fridge and the cabinets himself and has been doing it since his father’s death. Another way to make sure I’m taken care of, I guess.
I find the box of teabags. My favorite flavor—Blueberry Mint. I must have mentioned that it was my favorite in passing because there’s always a box here for me.
The tears start to come again and this time, I can’t stop them. I set the box down as I sob, the rivers of tears rolling down my cheeks. How could I have messed things up so badly?
“Nona?”
I start and whirl around. Kostya is standing in the kitchen doorway, tilting his head as if to get a better look at me. I look away, wiping at my face frantically.
“Hi, Kostya.” I am doing my level best not to sound like I’ve been crying in the kitchen. It’s not working. My voice cracks at the first attempt at sound. Still, I don’t turn back around. “Alex and Rikki are in the living room.”
“I’m aware,” he says. He takes slow, careful steps into the kitchen. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m just fine.” The sobs are starting to come back and suddenly, I feel like I’m going to collapse. I swallow them back hard. “Do you want some tea? All I’ve got is Earl Grey and Blueberry Mint, but you’re welcome to—”
He’s walked all the way into the kitchen and now he’s standing next to me, looking into my watery eyes. He sinks a little and sighs. “I guess you and Alex have talked.”
I could laugh at the irony of the spy who told on me to Alex being the one to comfort me.
“For the record, I didn’t rat on him,” I say.
“He doesn’t believe me, but it’s true. I didn’t…
” I cut myself off. Oh, well, he knows, anyway.
I look up at him and finish my thought. “I didn’t tell my father anything.
The truth is that he’s been watching me for a while now, since I got married and…
and it just so happens that he chose that day to ambush me. ”
His eyebrows lifted. “Have you told Alex any of this?”
I shake my head. “What good would that have done? He’d never believe that I didn’t tell my father whatever family secrets I’m supposed to know. Which, by the way, is practically nothing. How could I be the rat when I don’t know anything?”
Kostya regards me for a moment. Then the teapot goes off and he walks over to it and takes it off the burner. “You really care about him, don’t you?”
I nod. “I guess I do. I mean… I’ll admit, I certainly wasn’t expecting to. We barely knew each other before getting married. Now… Kostya, I want to make this work for real. And now, no thanks to your surveillance and my father’s surveillance, I’m pretty sure it’s all been trashed.”
“Well, you did meet with the enemy.”
“He’s my father, Kostya. What was I supposed to do? What would you have done?”
He walks over to the cabinets and gets two mugs for us. “I’m the wrong person to ask,” he says. “My mother abandoned me and my father died when I was baby. I don’t exactly have the experience to draw from.”
“But Fedor was like your father too, right? Alex always says that you’re like blood brothers.”
He pauses and glances over at me. “So, what would I do if I were in your position and it was Fedor?” He pauses, pursing his mouth to one side.
“I honestly don’t know. And Fedor, Alex, Rikki, and Yeva are the closest things that I have to blood relatives.
My loyalty to them goes deeper than just this brotherhood. ”
“It’s not so easy, is it, when you really think about it?”
“That is a valid point. But your position isn’t the same as mine.
Your father is still alive and kicking and has been your entire life.
And unlike me, he was alive when you joined your new family.
What it would come down to, I suppose, is who I truly owe my loyalty to.
The family I left behind or the family who found me. ”
I scoff. “You make that sound so clinical.”
“Sorry, I don’t deal in emotional attachments much,” he says. “So, you’ll have to excuse me if I sound cold. Like it or not, though, it is the way it is. You made a choice and it ended up putting you in the crosshairs. You can’t blame me for doing my job.”
We’re making tea together now. He grabs the box of Earl Grey and I take the blueberry mint.
As we navigate the process, he says, “You’re going to have to prove where your loyalties truly lie, Nona.
Not just to him, but to this Bratva. If you really want to make things work between you, what you need to understand is that the Molotovs don’t work like other blood families in Bratvas.
They… they have a bond. And it’s unbreakable.
I believe it’s why they’ve survived for generations. ”
I’ve seen that for myself, so I know it’s true. I don’t think there is anything that Yeva and Rikki could do that would destroy Alex’s trust in them.
“Rikki and Yeva are the people that he will always be able to trust. Always. They are and always have been the exception to the rule. If you want him in your corner the same way, well, you have to be someone he can trust with his life,” he says.
“How can I do that? I’m not his siblings. I’m…” I stop myself. The errant thought stops just behind my teeth. I’m just his wife carrying his unborn baby. “I’m an outsider, Kostya. I’ll never have the history that they do with him.”
“But you do have some history, right?” he says. “Open up to him. Make yourself completely vulnerable to him and then let him make the decision to accept you.”
The image of lions accepting a cub into a pack comes to mind. I’ve seen enough nature shows to know that it doesn’t always go well and cubs can easily be devoured in the process. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It is,” he says as he pours the hot water into his cup.
“And you both know it. That’s why it will work.
If he means anything at all to you, he will have to reckon with what it means for you to hand him your life.
And that’s something he can’t ignore or fight or run away from.
He will have to confront it, for better or worse. ”
My jaw clenches automatically. It feels like he’s asking me to walk myself out onto a plank in the hopes that Alex will decide to pull me back in.
He steps away with his cup in hand. “Thank you for the tea. I’ve got to have a word with your husband.”
I watch him walk away and suddenly, I feel less like weeping and more like fighting.
Maybe I’ll be one of them in the end, after all.