Chapter 30Vasily #3
To Sasha, I say, “Oh, it’s just my new product line.
We think Kostya planned to present it as his own after I was dead to prove he was as good as me, the fucking thief.
Fucking asshole. Fuck— prosti menya, pozhaluysta, babushki,” I murmur apologetically to the table of kindly old ladies with scarves around their heads, whom the hostess unfortunately sat next to us.
“I’m still as shocked as you are,” Sasha says. “He was always kind of a jerk, but not that much of a jerk.”
I never saw it, though. Or I ignored it. I wanted an easier life because I couldn’t handle responsibility. But it turns out I can handle responsibility; I just needed it forced on me.
It’s nearly three in the afternoon on a Tuesday.
Lunch breaks are over, but it’s not quite time for the early birds.
In the two weeks we’ve been in Tampa, I’ve come to appreciate this as the family hour, when everything is a bit more casual and the customers aren’t patrons, they’re friends.
The kids of the employees have just gotten off the bus and loaded into the booth next to the server station, where everyone both front of house and back of house can keep an eye on them.
We enrolled Artom in a homeschooling program for the rest of first grade while we figure out the finer details of where we’ll be living going forward, so he’s been happy about the social time he gets at the restaurant.
He’s even excited to do his schoolwork alongside the older kids with homework.
Ana wasn’t lying. I couldn’t have asked for a better kid .
“Funny how, when you picked up your wife, you didn’t ask about your son,” Sasha muses with another bite of the medovik. “Damn, that’s good.”
“Are you questioning my parenting skills?”
“No, I’m questioning your marital status. According to Leo, you have no marriage certificate on file.”
I tap the tablet. “And this file is nothing.”
Seriously, that file needs to not exist for anyone who’s not me and an incredibly small pool of people.
Leo has a stupid amount of money, way more than I, so I trust that he wouldn’t keep it, and this is the only copy in existence.
This is going to be a secret between me, a single printer, and Dima.
That’s it. Because Benedetti is still playing her part with us, and if she finds out we are printing guns that can get through airport security, we’re in major trouble.
She has a mess to clean up for us, and she nearly lost her assignment over these guns.
Despite the effort we put into making sure that everything Kostya attempted to frame on Dima went right back on Kostya, they got uppity about the guns, made a bunch of reports.
Turned out a lot of the agents didn’t appreciate the effort they went through just to nab Tony the Bitch.
On that note, Sasha gestures to the tablet and says, “You might be interested in the slideshow on there.”
“Oh?”
I know I shouldn’t get excited and I definitely shouldn’t pull it up here in Ana’s restaurant, but I don’t have anyone behind me. The temptation is too much.
The photos start at a distance, and they’re blurry.
It’s of the industrial dryers at a prison, the type that run pretty much nonstop.
Everything looks normal and unexciting about them, but then the next photo is the side view of one, and then there’s a panel that’s been removed, showing a hole in the wall behind it.
The next one is zoomed in on the hole, showing me Tony’s face.
He’s alive.
His mouth is sewn shut, but he’s alive.
In that one, at any rate.
But there are multiple similar photos, the only thing changing being the date on the time stamp. After maybe day four, I’m not so sure he’s alive anymore.
Day seven? Definitely not.
“Zvyozdochka?” I call.
Ana peeks out of the kitchen and then swings over to us when I crook my finger.
“Zvyozdochka, I have some bad news.”
“Really?” she asks, and I see her look of concern over the fact I say this while Sasha has three quarters of a slice of medovik in front of him. She wanted it to be perfect for him.
“It seems your brother died.”
Her lip twitches, so she covers it with her hand. “Oh?” She coughs. “No.”
Sasha raises one eyebrow and says blithely, “My condolences.”
“There are pictures,” I offer.
“I’m sure I don’t want the details,” she drawls. “Sasha, would you like some more coffee?”
“That would be lovely, thank you.”
The moment she vanishes into the kitchen, Artom runs up to us, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, can I go to the park with my friends?”
“Go see if Uncle D can go. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until I’m done here. ”
He pouts enough I almost cave and tell him my meeting’s done, but then he skitters off to the kitchen. Dima’s a way bigger sucker.
“You love him.”
I look back to Sasha. “He’s my son. Of course I do.”
“Yes, but there’s a difference between the love a father has for his son and the love a man has for someone he truly cares about.”
It takes me a moment to understand. Sasha’s father was not a kind man.
Not to anyone. Not to his son. And when his son came out as gay at the age of fourteen, meaning that between his sexual preference and his skin color, he’d never be accepted into the Vegas Bratva, his father became incredibly cruel.
“You are not Dosifey. You would be a great father, I’m sure.”
Sasha shrugs like it’s nothing. “Not like I’m getting my husband pregnant anytime soon.”
“Just keep trying anyway. That’s what Ana and I do.”