Chapter 25
demyan volkov: my daughter
DEMYAN VOLKOV
My daughter was sobbing in my office again.
My office in Las Vegas hotel suite was trashy with gold-painted trim, and desert air was so dry that my lips were flaking off. I wanted to go home to St. Petersburg where air did not hurt my mouth.
My daughter, however, was insisting we needed to stay in Las Vegas for whole week.
And so, Monday morning, this child, fruit of me and love of my life, was once again unhappy and weeping with her face in her hands across desk from me, and I was powerless to make her happy again.
When she was happy, my Alina was beautiful little woman, a pampered poodle of a creature who had known no hardship.
Her country had never fallen from corruption to more corruption to yet more, and yet you must make living.
She does not think of any country as her own because she has never despaired as one waned.
None of her friends died by hands of other brava who then must be fought like lions to survive.
But some of her pretty weakness was my fault. I should have raised her like son.
I should have raised her at my knee, watching as I did business, instead of sending her to international boarding schools to meet “right” people.
She was expelled from Le Rosey school for fighting and bullying. They said they were instituting “language caps,” that no more than ten percent of students could speak same mother tongue, for diversity.
Diversity. When did Le Rosey care about diversity other than what was exchange rate you paid your tuition in?
Really, too many Russian bratva brats with steel in their bones were beating up effete blue-blooded southern Europeans, and so the “school of kings” expelled the Russians.
Then English little girls at boarding school outside London didn’t like her because their friends at Le Rosey sent word ahead that she was not to be liked.
So, Alina was crying in my office again, and I was powerless to help her, again.
I have told her I was helpless because Nicolai Petrovich Romanov was married in the Russian Orthodox Church, and that was my church. I did not fuck with priests of my own church. My soul needed a place to rest.
I took communion on Sundays, every Sunday.
I took communion with Christ yesterday morning in Las Vegas Russian Orthodox parish church that looked like World War II Russian bunker, where I heard priests laughing in Russian about drunken tsar-heir who married complete stranger in dead of night that week.
But it was done. The woman had been baptized and chrismated in Orthodox faith. His marriage had been blessed by God.
And so I told my beautiful, crying daughter, “It is done, and we cannot undo it. It is done before God. I cannot force church to annul real and true marriage between two servants of church.”
“Then get rid of her,” Alina wailed. “You said that if he wouldn’t divorce her and annul it, you would get rid of her.”
“If I do that, Nicolai Petrovich will never love you as you should be loved. You should find love marriage with one of our kind. Find a man devoted to you as I am to your mother, man who can take my place as pakhan and be king of thieves, not pretend to be tsar when we murdered and buried the tsars.”
“But you promised! You promised to get Nicolai Romanov for me, and I want to marry him.”
I could not hold my sigh of exasperation. “Alina, he will never love you. He will never treat you as you deserve to be treated, with love.”
“But you and Mom had an arranged marriage, and you two love each other.”
“It was not arranged marriage. It was business marriage. What I love best about your mother is that she would put knife in my back as I slept if I deserved it that day. Nicolai Petrovich is not in business like us. He is leisure-class leech, skimming life from men who work for living. I ask you not to want this man.”
“But I do! Marrying someone like him is what I need, what you need.”
“So, there are others. Magnus Norway, and Ryan Prussian who owes me money for his overpriced hotels. So many others. So many who are already friends of ours, in business sense.”
“They will all refuse, and they can refuse. Nicolai Romanov doesn’t have any other family behind him to resist your offers. His uncle owes you millions of euros. My marrying one of them is what you need, to be invited to the really upper-class business deals where the real money is made.”
Was my own daughter insulting me? “I make real money, Alina.”
She rested her elbows on the desk and leaned over as if giving me a view of her womanly breasts, which I did not want to see. She was my baby daughter. I only wanted to see again puffy little skirts and tiaras on her as she danced baby ballet. I should tell her to go put on sweatshirt.
But she said, “No, Dad, you don’t make real money. You do well for the head of a small-time bratva.”
Yes, this was getting insulting. “Oh, do tell me how to make money.”
“You have a solid business model that cranks out what is a decent amount of money for its size, but nothing like those people I went to school with.”
And this was why I sent her to fancy boarding schools, to make connections for her and for me.
I sat quietly, listening to my daughter.
“They don’t let you into the big deals unless you are one of them.
The only way to get in with them is to marry one of them.
If I marry Nicolai Romanov, you would be investing in legitimate enterprises where the money didn’t have to be laundered, and that’s where a lot of it is lost even before you pay taxes. ”
Then I was listening very closely to what my daughter told me.
“At the party, I heard about some of the business deals that he is doing with John Borbon and some of the other ones there. Nicolai Romanov is not a leisure class leech. He’s in meetings all week, where he pressures people here and meets people there and invests in properties everywhere and makes obscene amounts of money.
He’s a savvy businessman who invests in opportunities that you and I will never have unless I marry him or someone a whole lot like him. This is a business arrangement.”
I leaned back in my chair and folded my hands over my stomach, which seemed a little thicker every year. “Continue.”
“I heard what the priests were saying in church, too. Nicolai Romanov made a strategic marriage, not a love match, to escape your offer. He’s never been in love because men like him do not love. Trust me, I went to school with them. The world’s elite are nothing but a cabal of psychopaths.”
My daughter had a point. She knew most wealthy people better than I did, and that was why I had sent her to school with them.
“When Romanov comes to understand the benefits of having your money and influence behind him, he will make the strategic match,” Alina said. “He’s sharp, Dad. He’s not a romantic sop. We just have to get him free of Lexi or whatever her name is, and then he’ll make the right choice.”
“You might have to wait months or years for him to understand the seriousness of our offer,” I told her, because my daughter was not known for her patience.
“I’m willing to be strategic,” Alina said, tear tracks still streaking her black and pink makeup down her face. “If I marry him, it would open doors to you that there is no other way to open.”
Maybe my daughter was more like me than I thought. “This is interesting to me.”
“So maybe at one of these events here over the next few days, Lexi Romanov walks too close to a window. That’s how we do it back in Russia.”
I smiled, because now I could help my daughter form her plan. “But they will not be here in America for next few days. They are going to Verona, Italy, to play at being Romeo and Juliet.”
Alina smiled, the first smile I had seen from her this day, and an expression that looked so much like my beloved wife. “Well, then, let’s make sure Lexi Romanov ends up just like Juliet.”
Ah, the apple of my eye did not fall far from tree after all. “I will call my associates in Rome to meet them in Verona.”