Chapter Thirty-Eight
Roman
Checking my watch to see how much time we have left stirs me uneasily. We have eleven hours until we can go into hiding, but then what?
I text Nikolai:
Do you have a location on Stepan?
If I can do anything to feel productive, it is to devise a plan. Even if I have to hide Ava away for years, the mafias will keep doing what they are doing, and everything we have been working toward will be for nothing, including Ava. She doesn’t deserve to be hidden or a part of any of this, yet I have shown her the depths of it. Hope is what I wanted but it was bleak. The hope for her to leave after I showed her, but this is my life and who I was.
Sarah and I have lost him and not sure if he is with the Italians. 6 dead at the house and by the footage, it seems he left with the Italians. I can’t ping his phone because he left it there.
New phone?
Yes, that’s what we think. We will keep working on it.
I toss my phone on the small kitchen island and rub my hands over my face in frustration. I will find him sooner or later, but now we have the Italians on his side. I repeat in my head over and over, take him out, claim your spot, and keep going. It feels like it will never end because there will always be a mafia in my way. I have always known this, but now I have something precious to use against me, to protect, My Sweet Rabbit. They know my weakness now and they will try to get to her.
The kitchenette is almost as big as a closet, with two small coolers. Ava still has a towel around her as she digs through the duffle bag for some clothes. I lean back as I slice some tomatoes to watch her. The scrapes on her arm are healing, but there is a heaviness to her like a weight of pain. She moves slowly, pulling out her sweatshirt, bra, and leggings. The look she gives me when I catch her isn’t a fuck you like I would expect at this point, but blank, like her eyes lost some of the light that was there before.
She unravels the bunched-up blankets and leans back on one of the chairs. I watch her as I bring our food over and take a seat next to her.
She relaxes onto her side, propping her head on her hand, “So tell me, why don't you want to be a part of the Bratva?”
I hand her the plate, “It isn’t that I don’t want to be a part of the Bratva. It’s that the Bratva should represent something more than fucking people over.”
She takes a bite and does a little bob with her head, “Well, what do you mean? I think the Bratva always has and always will take what isn’t theirs. Isn’t that some kind of thing written in stone somewhere?” She gulps down a bite as she shrugs her shoulders.
“They are in my way of making something better. We own most of southeast Baltimore, so the people have to pay their dues. They can’t have anything to themselves, but there are better ways to make money than using people.”
“So you don’t want to be a gangster?” The way she says gangster makes me chuckle.
“I guess you could call me that, but I have never really considered myself one. We were bred for this life, the others and I met a long time ago at a school that supposedly beat you into one.”
“Wait, like a boarding school?”
“No, like an orphanage, more like it. Parents give you up and send you there, cutting all ties, and if you make it out, they scoop you up and bring you into the Bratva. Most parents who send their kids there, don’t expect them back or care to have them return.”
She sets her sandwich down, “I…I am so sorry. So, Alexei, Nikolai and Sergey are a part of your Bratva, and you met them there?”
I take her hand and kiss it, “Sort of. They are from other connected families but a lot smaller ones than I come from. Except Nikolai, he was a rogue informant for the FSB.”
“It’s a small fucking world then,” She lifts her hand to the pit, “He is one too, and Nikolai and you, are all Russian.”
“And so are you. I know you have grown up in it in your own way, but it’s a smaller world than you think.” She rubs her thumb over the scar on her hip as I set the plates on the side table, “So tell me, Cottontail, How did you get those scars?”
She stops rubbing her thumb over them, bending her head down for a moment, “Well… I was thirteen, and my parents thought it was a good idea to make some money,” she hesitates, closing her eyes briefly, “I lost my virginity that night and fought as hard as I could. He held a knife to my throat and told me he was going to cut my… my.” She stops completely and looks at me like she is afraid to tell me.
I hold her face, grazing my thumb over her cheek, “It’s ok if you don’t want to tell me.” But when she does and gives me a name, his balls will be hanging from his teeth. I grab her hand, kissing every finger, one by one.
“No, no. It’s ok. I haven’t told anyone, so...” Her eyes gloss over and close, “When... when he said that he was going to cut me open from my navel to my,” she takes a breath, “my genitals… he sliced my hip. I stopped fighting after that and let him do what he wanted.”
“What is his name?”
She pulls herself onto her side, facing me as she opens her eyes. “I don’t know if you would believe me.”
“Try me, baby girl.” I try to stay calm as the rage starts to build.
She looks up at me as tears glide down her cheeks, “It was your brother. He was young too, but he still acts like it never happened. Maybe he didn’t want to either. So maybe he just tries to forget about it? I stopped thinking about it and pushed it down to keep going. When I came over to the house, I blocked it out when the thought of what he did to me would rise to the surface. I just told myself I would keep pushing it down to stay strong. Stupid, I know, but I feel like it is a gift I have given myself. Something nobody could take away because it was mine to keep. To just… I don’t know… like bad things never happened.” She wipes her own tears swiftly, playing off the severity of what he did to her. What her parents did to her.
The red and black started to fill my throat and then my eyes. I felt like I could fucking punch out a window at this point, but I stayed calm to listen.
She sniffles as she wipes her nose, “Fuck, it feels good to tell someone. I guess it was my luck, and I always just thought that—”
“—No, they are monsters, and he will fucking die. I promise you that,” I say, keeping my tone as even as I can, as much as I want to spit anger. I pull her to my chest and hold her.