Day 14Vasily
Day 14
Vasily
“Did you have a nice night?” Artyom greets me with the moment I open the door and get into his car.
When I got the text to be ready to go in ten minutes, I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t even let anyone know last night that I wasn’t going to show. Dima stopped by at one point in the night, and I happened to be in the kitchen making sandwiches for Ana and myself. He let me know that everything was mostly quiet, a little scuffle happened at the Mexican club, but it was dealt with quickly. I asked why we were involved at all, he gave me a lazy shrug, and that was the end of it. He didn’t say a word about my shirking my responsibilities to fuck my girl.
I didn’t have any texts from Artyom or anyone else this morning despite his all-hands-on-deck decree from just a few days ago. That felt funny, too. It’s like he’d already assumed I’d left, that Ana and I absconded in the night. I figured Dima would have told him otherwise, but who knows. I love Dima, but he’s not always reliable. I told myself Artyom thinks I’d leave without another word, without even a subtle goodbye.
It actually upset me. Baby that I am, I thought it was the most unsurprising end to my relationship with my brother. He didn’t invite me to his wedding, after all. An entire lifetime we’ve spent together, but I’ve only ever been a burden with him.
Just to be a shit, I took Ana out for lunch at my brother’s favorite restaurant in hopes he’d be there or someone would report back to him that I never left, I’m just such an ass I haven’t bothered to show at a time when they really do need me.
Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. Two hours later, I got that message to be ready to go, and I got ready.
I concocted an excuse, too. Drugs and bad alarms. I’m so irresponsible I didn’t bother to tell Ana. My fault. I’m just not ready to give that excuse yet when the car pulls up, and instead of it being Kostya’s, it’s Artyom’s.
I slink down in the seat. “We needed a night, okay?” I say gruffly. “Ana’s been stuck at Kseniya and Miguel’s too many nights. She wanted to be home.”
“You say it like she doesn’t like Kseniya and Miguel.”
I’m hoping my irritated side-eye gets my point across. I do love my brother, and I have been pushing away thoughts of what it will be like leaving him. Leaving everyone. He made it sound easy, like I can just get up and go and he won’t search for me where I’m going, so it’ll be fine. The reality is I won’t be able to talk with him again or Kseniya. Anyone. I could potentially get away with the briefest of conversations, just letting them know I’m okay, or driving hours away to send occasional postcards, but that’s about it.
I may never know if I have nieces or nephews. I won’t be there for milestones. If anyone needs help, they won’t be able to ask me for it. I won’t be there if anyone dies. I love my family, and not just Kseniya and Artyom. The boys in my brigade are just as much my brothers. My earliest memories aren’t just of my parents and my brother; Igor’s also in them. The Bratva, this brigade, truly is my family. My fathers, my brothers. The sons I’ll never meet.
“Something’s got you green around the gills,” Artyom says as he pulls out and heads south. His tone is light, observational, but Artyom doesn’t speak without purpose, and I’m not for a second going to believe he thinks I’ve got a stomach bug.
“A lot on my mind,” I admit, feeling like this is about the only place I can be candid with him.
And this might be one of my last chances to have a conversation with him at all, let alone as brothers instead of Bratva members.
“She loves you, if that helps any.”
It doesn’t. I knew that long before she butchered my native tongue. I knew it a week ago. Still, I smirk. “Why do you think she’d rather be with me than with Kseniya?”
At that Artyom snorts and says, “Your stupid robo-dick.”
I try not to laugh and fail miserably. Worse, because I tried so hard to hold it in, it comes out in this awkward, high-pitched giggle that gets Artyom busting a gut, too. And yeah, for a second there, I’m transported to a younger, easier time, the two of us riding our bikes around the block in Saint Petersburg or playing video games in his bedroom, hiding from Kseniya to torment her because she wanted us to play dress-up but cracking each other up so badly the whole time she always found us immediately.
It’s another wound to my heart, but Artyom’s the first to move, resting his hand on my thigh and saying, “I’ll miss you, brother,” his eyes steadfast on the intersection in front of us even though the light’s only just turned red.
“Who says I’m leaving?”
Artyom scowls, his grip tightening along with his jaw, the muscles ticking there. He’s quiet for a long time, deliberating over his words until the light finally changes and he continues to weave his way through Flagstaff. “Isn’t it what you’ve always wanted to do? You don’t think I’ve forgotten the plans you once made with Brooke, do you?”
“Plans I never should have made. If I hadn’t been so busy in school, papa never would have had to give her a ride to work that day. She wouldn’t have been there when the bomb went off.”
“That was a fluke, and you know it. You cannot possibly believe that wanting to leave Flagstaff is the reason she died that day. You might have still been in class, or you might have been sick or working or who knows what. How could you possibly think the two things are in any way connected?”
“You know why.”
Artyom rolls his eyes, like he does every time I remind him I’m schizophrenic. After that first, terrible incident with the voice, the shrink told Artyom it might have been a one-off event and I may never have a full psychotic episode again, and he took it as a guarantee.
But I need to push it.
“What if I lost control of my schizophrenia? What if Ana and I set out into the world together, and I’m the only one she has to rely on? If she can’t get a job or she has a kid and I’m the only one working, and I lose my fucking mind?”
“I’m sure if you were going to, it would have happened already.”
“Average age of onset is 21 to 25 in men. My first episode was at 20, I’m 26 now, I hear voices all the fucking time.”
“You don’t! You hear your fucking conscience, you jackass!”
“Can we not do this right now? Not while you’re trying to kick me out of the fucking brigade?”
“I’m not trying to—!” Artyom cuts himself off, holding his tongue until he pulls off into a parking lot for us to duke it out.
The parking lot where Hector’s cousin and that piece of Irish garbage died.
Fucking hell.
I sit there glowering as he slams his door, marches around the car, his body cutting long shadows from the headlights as he passes them, and throws my door open. He grabs me by the collar to pull me out, but I’m a good boy. I always wear my seatbelt. He practically clotheslines me, but I remain in my seat.
“Take it off!”
I cross my arms over my chest and pout. Brooke was good at pouting, but Ana is a pro. I can learn from that.
“Vasya, I will shoot you in the foot, and then Ana really will be stuck with a lay-about and will never be able to get either of you on your feet because you’re gonna get lazy and spend all your time playing that stupid video game in your boxer shorts until you’re too fat to get around on a bum foot. Ana’s gonna leave your fat ass for some hot ski instructor and take the kids with her, and you’re gonna see them every other weekend until they admit that they hate McDonald’s and your apartment smells bad, and then you never see them again. So you’ll crawl your ass back here and fuck up whatever great life I’m having because I’ll be stuck taking care of you because that’s what family does.”
I slump in my seat as I unbuckle the belt. That hurt a lot.
He pulls me out, but he’s gentle about it, setting me on my feet and embracing me in the way only a brother can, with a hard thump on my back and a tight enough squeeze someone’s liable to break a rib. “The worst mistake I ever made was keeping you from going back to school.”
But he didn’t keep me from doing anything, not in that sense. I made the choice not to go back to school, and that’s on me. “It doesn’t matter. I was never going to finish with the” — voices , but I’m not going to start that fight up again— “shit I was dealing with. And you needed me here.”
“I needed you happy . You know this. I was never going to force you into this life. Dad might have in his way, but never me. It was my responsibility to take over, not yours.”
“And when you die? What then?”
“I’m not dying anytime soon. I’m going to live a long, healthy life, and you’re never going to get that opportunity if you stay here. Listen, I don’t want it to be like this. I wish we had normal lives and you could go to school and get the girl and find the right place to start your family and build your career and come back to visit on the holidays. That’s the life you deserve. That’s not the case, and I will miss you every fucking day even as I pray I never see you again.”
“Well, this sucks.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“So, what, you’re not going to miss me?” I shake my head. “Wait, no, what am I saying? I’m not leaving. I can’t leave. I’m Bratva for life.”
Artyom’s lips quirk up, making it clear he knows that I’m just saying what I’m supposed to, not what’s in my heart. “Because I would hunt you down and kill you.”
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
I look around, spreading my arms to show that I see where we are, that there are a million nearly identical parking lots in Flagstaff and that there’s no way it’s a coincidence that he’s chosen the one that’s still bloodstained from this past week. “So, you wanna tell me why we’re here?”
“Oh, I was going to park right over there,” he says, gesturing to the exact spot where that prostitute’s body landed. “And I was going to remind you why you absolutely have to stay in Flagstaff. Because there’s no chance in Hell you’d be able to hide from me forever, and once I dragged you back, I’d let the cops know about all the deaths they could pin on you, starting with those two.”
“That’s cold.”
“I prefer to think of it as creative. I don’t get to be creative anymore.”
I cast him a sidelong glare. “Hate to tell you this, but you’ve never been creative.”
He tips his head up, contemplates the sky. “Maybe I won’t miss you.”
“I definitely won’t miss you,” I remind him, casting my gaze up as well. God, how long has it been since we’ve had a moment like this? Just the two of us ribbing on each other, cracking jokes at each other’s expense, teasing and poking and having a good time? Everything got so serious all of a sudden. We were just two guys enjoying our lives, Artyom knowing he’d have to lead someday but taking advantage of the freedom he had while he could, me with my big dreams of guiding the brigade into a cleaner, neater, more successful direction while stepping as far out as possible but still being Artyom’s biggest proponent.
And then it all crashed and burned, and suddenly I was Artyom’s problem and he was my keeper, and yes, we were brothers, but we were no longer friends.
“Not that I’m going anywhere,” I add with a smirk.
“What’s that song lyric? The one Americans love so much?” Artyom asks, and it’s funny, but it doesn’t click until then that we’ve spoken in English this whole time, English that’s now thickening with Artyom’s natural accent. Not for affect, though. Artyom doesn’t toss his around like I do. When his accent comes out, it’s because of emotion.
I want to ask him if he recorded his wedding, if I could listen to his vows. I want to hear him announce his love for Jana and hear the sincerity in it, just to know that he really is truly happy with her.
As happy as I am with my Ana. I’ve already decided to bury my accent forever once we leave here. It’s funny, but I think all those years of playing at an accent will protect us. We’re never going to get married, not in a courthouse or in front of our loved ones. The moment we cross the city limits out of Flagstaff, we’ll just be a wedded couple of two years. Ana will be 22, and we’ll have met at the restaurant we both worked at, I as a line cook and she as a server, but now she wants to try her hand at back of house and I’m going to be a security guard. I’ll be Dennis or Steve or Mitch, whatever Ana wants me to be. We’ll figure that all out on the road. When we land somewhere, we’ll be whole new people, and no one will ever hear anything except the most American words out of me.
But I won’t be good at things like well-known American song lyrics. That will be the sort of thing that will catch up with us if we don’t have a good back story, just like Capone getting taken down by tax evasion. We’ll figure it out.
“Ah yes,” Artyom says after a beat. “‘No one here gets out alive.’ Those are the words.”
I try to discuss with Artyom what happened last night, just to get myself up to speed, but he refuses to answer my questions. Instead, he drives us on an old circuit around our section of town. It’s work, technically. Places we need to pick stuff up from, people we need to check on, roads we need to monitor, but most people do a double-take when they see it’s Artyom himself showing up. Several people look visibly nervous about an otherwise routine visit. Johnny Martin jumps out a window at the back of his house when his wife yells for him that we’re both here.
We also have Sergey, Vlad’s little brother. He’s just turned 18, graduating high school in a couple months. There’s been talk about tapping him for the brigade, the pressure coming mostly from Vlad himself. Their dad’s a diabetic, losing bits of himself day by day as the disease ravages his body. Their mom is an alcoholic, healthy as a horse but mean as a snake most of the time. Vlad thinks bringing him in now will be good for him, get him out of that house and making money. Artyom has resisted, as have I.
Not that my opinion matters.
Sergey is having the time of his life, thanking Artyom profusely for the bills he’s handed every time we pick up cash, spouting off about how he can’t wait to join the brigade and how good he’s gotten with guns this year. Hearing that kind of talk from a kid so young makes my teeth vibrate, but I remind myself that Ana is only a year older than him.
No, that doesn’t make it better. I don’t want Ana handling guns, either. It’s something I’ll have to teach her. As clear as Artyom has made it that he’s not going to hunt me down, I can’t say the same about Ana’s brother or even the rest of the bratva. Artyom controls but one brigade. There are men he answers to, men who will care that I’ve vanished.
Taking off will make Ana’s life harder. It will make Sergey’s harder too. It hasn’t escaped me that tonight is a crash course for him in taking over my responsibilities.
We’re in the parking lot of a deli we’ve just collected money from, Artyom pacing around to the side of the building to take a phone call while I sit in the front seat of his car, listening to Sergey carry on about what he’s going to do with the money he’s making tonight, and I watch him in the mirror. Really watch him.
He counts the money over and over again even though it’s barely more than a hundred bucks. His cheeks glow. He keeps price checking stuff on his phone. Sneakers, better headphones, a backpack. Somehow, he has enough for that. He kept a mean mug for the people who owe us, but now he can’t stop grinning. He’s happy.
Ana’s happy, too.
I won’t give either of them amazing lives, but maybe I’ll make their lives happier, at least. Maybe life is hard no matter what, and it’s all a trade-off, and Sergey will see the light fade from a dead man’s eyes too soon and Ana will have to watch her back everywhere she goes, but it’ll be worth it. Sergey will be able to get away from his parents and buy the things he wants when I leave. Ana will have control of her life by my side. She won’t have everything she wants and she’ll struggle to get everything she has, but she’ll earn it and she’ll get it on her own terms.
We’ll be happy together.
This is a good thing.
Artyom isn’t looking so pleased about things when he returns, though, and the scowl he wears has me immediately tweaking. I don’t leave without his good graces, no matter how much we banter about how he’ll hunt me down. And this is Sergey’s first day. He knows nothing— except how to fire a gun, apparently. He’ll probably have Vlad holding his hands for several months, and it will be a long time before he can fill my shoes, regardless of how little Artyom trusted me with. If Artyom needs me, I have to stay.
It settles like hot coal in my gut, burning through and smoking me out, leaving the taste of ash in my lungs. Tony is expecting Ana tomorrow, the following day if I say it’s fifteen nights. I can’t trust that the asshole will sit around forever waiting for her; I can’t trust anything over there.
I can’t trust that he’ll treat her right when I return her either.
I might be freaking out, but Artyom is distracted and Sergey is just as used to it as everyone else it. It’s what I do. Artyom says, “Those fucking morons,” under his breath and then pulls out of the parking lot, making his way back toward the outer edge of the territory, on to the Mexican strip club.
“Wanna explain what’s going on?” I ask, looking back at Sergey. Technically, the kiddo’s not even allowed in the club. He’s underage. I don’t know if the Mexicans care about that, but I’m not here to start a war over something stupid.
“Just making a quick stop. Hector says they got a package from the Irish, and he’s nervous about it.”
That gets my pulse racing. “Is it a bomb?” With another glance back at Sergey, I mumble under my breath, “We got a rookie. We’re gonna die. It’s a bomb.”
“It’s not a bomb,” Artyom snaps back before the kid can get too nervous. “Fuck, they opened it already. It’s just a bunch of paperwork. Deeds and shit. But there’s a note he thinks is written in Russian. That’s got him tweaking.”
That’s got me tweaking. What the hell are the deeds for? Why would they pass the deeds off to the Mexicans instead of a group friendlier with them, and why would they include a note in Russian? “I don’t like this,” I mutter, acid burning my throat.
“You don’t like anything. This could be the best fucking news we’ve ever gotten. Good riddance to the IRA, I say.”
I catch a glimpse of Sergey in the back seat. He’s nervous. No surprises there. We’re speaking in Russian now, and he’s shaky on the language. His mom’s American. It’s not spoken much at home, just between his dad and his brother, usually in hushed tones to deliberately hide it. This is Sergey’s first step toward membership in the brigade, but the road in front of him is long and lethal. No one here gets out alive, not really.
Except me.
I just gotta survive the night, and I’m gone. I don’t know what my life with Ana will be, but we’re going to live it. Together.
“This is probably nothing,” I say to the kid. “You get used to the weird shit. But we got a big task for you, okay?”
He swallows. He’s pale and dark-haired and pimply, got that lanky build of a kid who suddenly sprouted up out of nowhere, the bones rocketing up before the flesh could catch up to them. His Adam’s apple is sharply cut from the shadow of his neck, making the motion almost cartoonish. He probably isn’t anything worse than skittish, but that Adam’s apple makes him look terrified.
“You just gotta watch for anything strange in the parking lot, okay? You know the jackets the IRA boys wear? You watch for those, and you watch for the Blazing Hell crew. You see any of them, you shoot us a message.”
I wave my phone at him, but his hand goes to the pocket where his piece is, not his phone.
“You’re not going to need that. You just let us know if they’re coming. They’re a bunch of pussies, they’re gonna show up in numbers. You see anything, you text us and you duck down in that seat, you got me? These doors are bulletproof. If things go tits up, I don’t want you standing behind them in the way of friendly fire. You text me and Artyom both— in fact, let me set this up.”
I make a group chat for just the three of us and send a message so it’s at the top of the screen. Makes it look like a big deal, like this job is really important.
“There. You send that message, and if you hear gunshots inside, you text your brother and Kostya. Let them know where we are. Sound good?”
Sergey nods rapidly, gives us a stern look like he’s taking this job seriously, but I see the relief in the way his chest sinks back down. This car is safe. Hell, it’s bullet-proof. Pretty much the safest place to be. If disaster happens, he’ll have done his job but survived.
Disaster isn’t going to happen. This isn’t a place where people cause problems. But if it puts him at ease— and also keeps him out of the place he’s not allowed to be in— I think my lie was worth it.
Artyom and I head in together. No one stops us this time. No one questions if we belong here or calls anyone to make sure we have permission to enter. They practically roll out the red carpet for Artyom.
It’s a quieter night in the club than last time I was here, but it’s Friday. There should be a little of everything here. Blue collar guys on a night out. College kids. Bachelor parties. Truckers, too, and now I’m realizing that’s part of what had me nervous in the parking lot was the lack of trucks. They have a huge back lot here, and as much as I can’t see them most times, I can hear them. I can smell them.
Just a single stripper on stage and a couple servers lingering at the bar, no more than a dozen clients.
It’s too fucking quiet.
I step in front of Artyom, a natural reaction to the feeling running up and down my spine. This is wrong. When the same lady who led me upstairs appears again to usher us to Hector, it takes all I have not to grab my gun and start the exact nightmare I warned Sergey of but thought there was no way it was ever going to happen.
She doesn’t lead us upstairs, not tonight. Tonight, she leads us to a booth near the stage, where Hector sits and two of his cronies stand on either side, as though to prevent entry into just that booth. No real protection, but in this world, a lot of the protection is just a perception, a reliance on rules even in the criminal world, that keeps everything up and running and everyone alive even when all that’s really needed is a single bullet from a hundred yards away to end Hector.
I need to get out of here.
I need to get out of Flagstaff.
I’m not going to fucking die in Flagstaff.
We aren’t offered seats. I wouldn’t have expected one for myself, but I’m irritated that they don’t offer one to Artyom. He doesn’t seem bothered, so I let it slide this time.
If this is nothing, if I have one foot out of Flagstaff anyway, I’m not going to risk that foot for something as stupid as a booth for four that Artyom hasn’t been invited to. Instead, I position myself behind Artyom and watch warily as Hector slides the package across the table to us.
It’s nothing special, just a manila envelope stuffed with an inch-thick stack of paper. I watch over his shoulder as Artyom shuffles through it, and just as Hector said, it appears to be deeds to Irish properties. Over a dozen, most with addresses I don’t recognize offhand, but there’s one I catch immediately.
It’s a small apartment complex, only about twenty units, that’s been an issue for us as long as I can remember. It’s technically on our side of the line between us and the IRA, but the IRA have controlled it since before the lines were drawn. It was a negotiation chip of a by-gone era, when our uncle was hammering out a peace agreement. The street was ours, but we let them keep that.
Artyom casts a look at me, but I’m not sure what he’s trying to convey. I just see that, at the bottom, there’s the sloppy signature of the owner signing the property over but no buyer listed.
I don’t get it.
The last page of the stack is a note. It’s typed up and printed, and just like Hector said, it’s in Russian. It’s a short message, I’m guessing copied and pasted from a translation service.
“V obmen na bezopasnyy marshrut cherez Flagstaff,” Artyom reads aloud in Russian. “Ty reshayesh, kak eto razdelit’.”
In exchange for a safe route through Flagstaff. You decide how to divide it.
“Well shit,” I mutter. “I don’t like that at all.”
Artyom shakes his head grimly. “What are these places?” he asks Hector. “Who sent this?”
“They arranged a meeting this afternoon. Allesandro met up with Murphy and was given this.”
Allesandro. I don’t like the guy, but I tell myself it’s just because he ratted me out to my brother about the heroin last week. And the fact that he was breaking the sort of stupid law that brings down an entire syndicate. But I look around and don’t see him, and I really don’t like that.
“I sent him back out to see if he could rustle up some IRA guys,” Hector explains before I have the chance to ask. He points to the stamp that’s under one of the signatures on each document. “They’re all notarized. He witnessed it. These deeds are legit, but I still didn’t like this.”
“Agreed,” Artyom says with a rigid nod, his lips tight. Everyone’s nervous. I stuff my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting, which has one of Hector’s guys easing a hand toward his gun.
I can’t fucking wait to be done with this shit.
Maybe I’ll hear the voices less in Denver.
Maybe I won’t need to balance coke out with Xanax in order to keep myself from exploding.
Maybe I won’t get an ulcer from the stress by 30.
Maybe worrying about bills and school districts and which cardboard can be recycled will be easier.
Maybe I can give Ana the life she deserves.
“What’s that note say?”
Artyom translates it for Hector, and he doesn’t feel any better about it than we do.
“I hate this,” one of Hector’s men grumbles, and it’s enough for us to all take a deep breath and relax enough to think. We all bust out our phones and sit down, five big guys squeezing into a booth for four, but we’re driven now, checking out what all these addresses are.
In addition to the apartment complex, there are a few warehouses in nice locations, a beauty salon, a café, and an actual laundromat, which are all used for money laundering, and a truck stop they can’t operate if they can’t traffic, anyway.
The rest is residences. We’re holding the deeds to roughly twenty-five families’ homes, and I don’t like that. One thing that everyone in Flagstaff seems to agree on is leaving the private lives of civilians alone.
“We need to check these places out,” Artyom says.
“Now,” Hector agrees.
We don’t usually work this closely with the Calaveras, but there’s no discussion, no argument. Everyone takes a stack and makes some calls, hunting down people to drive by the addresses and figure out what’s going on. I take the opportunity to call home, just to soothe my nerves some. Dima answers immediately, and even that stresses me some.
“You home, brother? You okay? Is Ana okay?”
“Uhh, yeah, she’s sitting right next to me. Braiding my hair.” Dima has a buzz cut, so that’s a joke, but I’m pretty sure the rest of it was serious. He switches to Russian for, “Why are you asking, though?”
Good man, there. Doesn’t want to alarm Ana. He respects her. I appreciate that. “Shit’s happening. I don’t know what. Just stay there, okay? I have a fucked feeling about tonight.”
“You gonna tell me what exactly caused this fucked feeling?” he bristles.
I don’t want to. For real, I don’t need him to be worrying, because Ana will notice and start to worry, too. And he’ll get really antsy, try to drop Ana off at Kseniya’s so he can come out, but I need him to stay with Ana.
I need Ana safe.
“Just the usual nonsense. IRA pulling some stunt,” I say, trying to keep it as light as possible. “Just stay where you are.”
By the time I’ve gotten off the phone with him, we’re already getting people checking in. There are signs indicating the businesses are closed for the foreseeable future. The truck stop is the only business that would be open at this hour anyway, and they’re having an everything must go sale. We get video confirmation that people are moving out of their homes.
One of the videos is from Alessandro, and he’s talking to Walsh, the second-in-command of the IRA branch. “We have half the units at Alliance Arms cleared out,” Walsh promises as he mops his brow with a greasy rag, drying up the obvious sweat. He’s got a giant hutch in front of him, the sort of thing his ancestors would have built the house around with the intention of never moving it again. He’s legitimately moving that family out.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Artyom says in Russian. We usually stick with English out of deference for the cartel when we’re here, it’s manners, but the fact that I just chatted with Dima in Russian gives us a pass on that, I think. I’m sure they do the same when they’re not thinking about it. Sometimes the switch between the native tongue and the local tongue doesn’t always flip properly.
I nod and lean back in my seat, feigning comfort. If anything, I’m happy Artyom is agreeing with me. I don’t care how legit this all looks. I’d rather be cautious and looking neurotic later than be dead for falling for their trap. “Yeah, this is about to get ugly, and I don’t want to be here when it does.”
Casual as you like, he says to Hector, “I’m going to check that apartment complex myself. My sister lives just down the street, and I want to touch base with her too, but she’s not answering the phone. I’ve got a set of keys.”
Hector nods like he thinks it’s a good idea. Whether he believes it or not, I don’t care, because his goons let us out of the booth.
To make it all even more casual, I light up a cigarette as we stroll out, like I plan on chilling in the parking lot for an extra minute before we head out. No big rush. Silly prank. When we step outside, the back door of the car opens and Sergey gets out.
“Hey guys, it’s been quiet out here. Nobody’s even driven by. Everything’s good.”
Artyom and I exchange a look as we realize we never asked why it was so dead inside the club. I catch the widening of the eyes of the security guys as well, both men lowering their hands to their guns while one radios inside. I’m already shoving Artyom back toward the building as a safety measure when I hear the sudden rev of engines and squeal of tires.
Three cars appear out of nowhere. The world lights up, deafening us with the explosion of guns.
My breath catches, my stomach plunging as I see him fall face-first to the ground. For a moment, Sergey doesn’t move, and panic grips me like a vice. Blood seeps from beneath his shirt, staining the parking lot.
“No!” The scream rips from my throat, raw and jagged, my mind racing ahead to the worst. This is it, my greatest fear. We brought the rookie out, and now he’s been shot. Did they hit something vital? Can we staunch the bleeding? Is he—
Then, with a groan, his head lifts. “That sucked.”
Relief crashes over me. “You okay?” I yell, barely able to hear my own words over the pounding in my chest.
“My ass,” he groans again, rolling slightly. “They shot me in the ass. They—” His voice dies out, and the color drains from his cheeks. I think he’s about to pass out, which I’ll have to rag on him for if he survives this, but we’ve all been there. But then he croaks out, “Artyom?”
It seems like only a second has passed since I dragged him down to the asphalt, but he hasn’t moved.
He hasn’t moved.
And the hand I’ve anchored next to him feels damp. Warm and damp.
I look down at him.
He looks up at me.
Coughs softly.
Blood sputters up.
The world goes dull and numb around me even as men begin to spill out of the club, some fanning out across the parking lot, some rushing to me and Sergey and the bouncer. Crowding them. Crowding us. Crowding me.
Crowding Artyom.
“Brother?” I whisper.
His chest rises and falls beneath mine. He’s breathing. He lost a tooth in the fall, and now his mouth is filling with blood, I’m sure of it.
I peel myself off him. Leave it to me, stupid, paranoid, drug-addled me, to nearly kill Artyom because I let him drown in a mouthful of blood.
My hand slips in the warm puddle growing around him, and he coughs again.
Just coughs.
“Brother, say something.”
He opens his mouth, but only wet, ragged breath comes out.
In the middle of his shirt, his black shirt, there’s a damp patch. A tiny hole at the center, no bigger than a dime.
I put my hand over it, and though he’s the one with the hole going straight through his body, I’m the one whose heart is leaking out.
“No,” I groan. “No. No. No, no, no, no.” My breathing goes heavy as I tear the shirt apart.
His breath goes shallow.
Rapid Spanish surrounds us. I speak the language, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. And I don’t understand why they’re whispering when they need to be yelling for help. Calling 911, calling a doctor, calling someone, anyone.
I don’t understand why their whispers transport me to that moment two weeks ago when I was so fucked up I could see the words coming out of my own mouth.
And this tiny little nothing of a girl whispered the same words — different words but the same words but different — but different words in that same hushed tone.
They’re not the same words.
But they are.
Prayers.
But they’re not.
And Artyom blinks oh, so slowly as he reaches up and grabs my shirt, pulling it, and it’s Ana pulling on my shirt. She’s so fucking weak and he’s so fucking weak and I go to him as I would go to her because he is my heart the same as she is my heart.
“Brother, no,” I groan as I touch my forehead to his and tears trickle down his cheeks.
Not his.
Mine.
My tears.
My life.
I tell him, “Don’t you leave me,” but I was the one who was going to leave.
I was going to leave him, just vanish into nothing, a ghost. I was going to be his ghost.
He taps my chest. My heart. He’s stealing my heart. He’s stealing my life.
You’re going to die in Flagstaff .
One last weak, terrible, breath, the most useless breath on planet Earth, and then his eyes fade. His body deflates beneath me.
The clock starts ticking.
I’m going to die in Flagstaff.
I’m going to take the world with me.