by Nikki Sloane
I went back downstairs and poured myself a glass of congratulatory wine, but it was also a preemptive strike. If Sidor was out and “working,” he would demand sex when he returned.
The doorbell sounded, startling me, and I spilled wine on the counter. The dark merlot ran rivulets down the cabinets. I grabbed a kitchen towel and haphazardly mopped it up while peering at the front-door camera feed from the screen of my phone.
I didn’t recognize the pretty blonde girl standing on the front porch, and I wondered if she was some girl he’d taken up with on the side. Perhaps I would get lucky and she was pregnant with his child. If that were the case, he’d let me go. I could be free from all this.
I tapped the screen and spoke loudly into my phone. “What do you want?”
Her expression was grim, announcing she didn’t want to be here. Behind her, I saw a fancy car in the circle drive. “Sergey Petrov sent me,” she said. She peered into the camera. “It’s about your husband.”
Once again, I had the strange prickling sensation, alerting me that something was wrong. I went to the door, pulled it open, and ushered her into the foyer.
She looked young, perhaps nineteen, and a little familiar. I’d seen her before but couldn’t place where, and the faint lilt to her voice hinted we probably could hold this conversation in Russian. Her English was good though. Perhaps she was like me and had been raised watching American television.
Was she a Petrov? Sidor’s family was so large, and most of them had never bothered to learn my name, so I had done the same with them.
“What about my husband?” I asked.
She clasped her hands together and ran the pad of her thumb nervously over the back of her hand. “He’s . . . I’m sorry. He’s been shot.”
I blinked to try to absorb her statement but couldn’t. “What?”
“He was out with Sergey and—”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where or who they were meeting.”
“No,” I said, my tone demanding and frustrated. “Where was he shot?”
She drew in a sharp breath, but it didn’t give any power to her voice. “In the head.”
I pulled my gaze away from her and turned to glance at the sitting room Sidor had begrudgingly let me turn into my studio. I felt as hollow as the statue I was building, devoid of emotions. “Is he dead?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but Sergey says it doesn’t look good. He wants you at the hospital.”
And if Sergey Petrov wanted something done, it had to happen. He was the head of the Russian bratva in Chicago, and his rule was merciless.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked. She had to be wondering why there weren’t tears streaming down my face, or how I seemed completely indifferent to her shocking news.
I ignored her question. “Who are you?”
“Oksana Kuznetsov.” Her gaze dropped to the stone porch. “I’m the Petrovs’ housekeeper.”
I took a step backward, more stunned with this revelation than anything else. I knew Sergey disliked me, but this cemented it, and now I could place her. “He sent the girl who cleans his floors to tell me my husband’s dying?” I swore in Russian. “Fucking Sergey.”
Oksana’s eyes went wide, and I realized my place.
“I didn’t say that,” I announced quickly. That kind of comment was dangerous.
Thankfully, she nodded in understanding. “And I didn’t hear it either, but we need to go. I’ll drive you.”
❃ ❃ ❃
I stared at Sidor’s nearly lifeless body, only kept alive by the whirring machines attached to him, wishing he could hear me when I told him what a failure he’d become. I used the exact tone, a similar disappointed glare, and the same Russian words he’d lectured me with for the past seven years.
Three days he’d been like this, and I couldn’t believe my terrible luck. When karma delivered a bullet to his head, this awful man couldn’t even die properly.
I’d fulfilled my marital obligations to the best of my ability and deserved to be released from our arrangement. How many months of this would I have to endure?
What if he lasted a decade or more, taking my best years with him?
Divorce wasn’t acceptable to the Petrov family, and neither was turning off the life support system. I couldn’t instruct the doctors to shut down the machines and speed along my husband’s guaranteed descent to hell, because Sidor had never trusted me. He’d given power of attorney to his brother, Sergey.
I was his wife, yet even in his eventual death, Sidor had kept me powerless.
No money had been set aside for me, and there would be none coming my direction. Even though I carried the Petrov last name, I’d never been part of the family. I was a mail-order bride from the homeland and hadn’t produced any children.
Only miscarriages and art.
The lawyers I would need to fight the power of attorney or to petition for divorce were expensive, and the Petrovs had all their mob money and ruthless attorneys on retainer. They would oppose and stall at every opportunity, until I’d been bled dry. Whether they got the outcome they desired or not, in the end they would win. In our marriage, Sidor’s money had been my life support. For all their righteousness about that being sacred for him, Sergey had no qualms about shutting mine off.
I sat in the uncomfortable hospital chair, my posture perfect, while my mother’s condescending voice echoed in my head.
Nothing is good enough for you, Nikita. You’re never happy.
I wondered how I was supposed to be happy when nothing ever went the way I’d planned. I’d been nineteen when I’d seen the online ad looking for young, pretty girls who could speak English. I understood what was required of me when chatting with the lonely American men, most of whom were as old as my father.
I would get nowhere as an artist in Volograd, where money was hard to come by and even harder to keep. Sidor was supposed to be my escape from Russia. His long, unattractive face and line of work made finding a wife for him difficult, and he wanted someone he could speak to in his preferred language. He was wealthy and an art lover, and it wasn’t likely I was going to find a better match. He had seemed nice enough, and I’d been too naïve to see through his act.
Sidor paid off my parents’ house and brought me to America. We married the week after I turned twenty, in a civil ceremony that lasted less than ten minutes. He’d bought me a pretty white dress, and after we left the Cook County courthouse, he took me straight to Sergey Petrov’s house to meet my new family.
The conniving Petrovs made me long for the harsh winters and overt corruption of Volograd.
Tonight, a fall storm raged outside the hospital, and the rain pelted against the narrow slice of the window in Sidor’s room, driving against the glass like it wanted to break it and get at me. I shouldn’t have come. I’d thought if Sergey knew I visited each day, the loyal wife, he might take pity and help me, but there was no one here. No family, and certainly no friends.
I twisted the tissue in my hands until it began to shred.
There was a short, loud knock on the door, and I flinched like it had been gunfire. It swung open without waiting for my response, but perhaps they thought there was no one in the room except for Sidor, and he wasn’t going to object.
The man who came in was just too old to call a boy. He looked old enough to carry a gun, but too young to buy a drink. He was drenched, water dripping off the tips of his dark hair and falling on his leather jacket. His gaze swept the dim room as if searching for something specific, unfazed by the machines or the man being kept alive by them. When he found me sitting across from Sidor, surprise flickered in his eyes. As it faded, something else moved in.
It whispered of violence.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
There were plenty of people in Sidor’s life I hadn’t met. I didn’t need or want to know about the business he and his brothers were in. I’d seen enough, know
ing he carried a gun to his meetings, and sometimes he came home with blood staining his clothes.
“Nikita Petrov,” the boy-man said, recognizing me.
He was attractive, and when he smiled, it flashed his dimples. He was probably used to the girls melting when he did it. I found his out-of-place grin unsettling.
“I knew Sidor,” he said.
He hadn’t really answered my question, and I wanted to correct his tense because, as I was painfully aware, my husband was still alive. The man stepped deeper into the room, leaving water pooled on the floor, and my pulse sped with his proximity. As he swiped a hand over his forehead to wipe away the rain, I caught the flash of something inside his open jacket. It was the dark handle of a gun.
Anxiety tightened my voice. “How do you know my husband?”
His gaze traveled slowly down the length of my body, before settling on the tissue I’d been twisting in my lap. I looked the part of the grieving wife, even thought I wasn’t. The only tears I’d cried tonight were for my situation.
Was it possible this man was family, and could tell Sergey I’d been here? It seemed unlikely. He gave off an adversarial vibe.
“We had a mutual friend.” Once again, he used the past tense, and it felt like a threat. His eyes were so dark they looked black.
“My husband doesn’t have friends.”
He laughed, but it was humorless. “I’m talking about Ivan Kovačević.”
My blank stare told him I didn’t recognize the name.
That wasn’t the response he was expecting, and he hesitated. “No?”
“Is he someone my husband works with? Sidor keeps his business separate from me.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re the one who does those sculptures and shit.” His dismissive tone felt calculated and surgical.
If he was hoping to get a rise out of me, he would fail. Sidor had said far worse. Even when my art started selling and I made a name for myself, he was quick to remind me how I came from nothing and would be nothing without his money.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I asked pointedly. The rain was pounding outside, and the crack of thunder set me further on edge.
“No.” His gaze drifted from me. He studied the machine’s clicking and the screen displaying Sidor’s vitals. His breathing fell into the same languid rhythm as the accordion flapping in the tube, the one that forced air into my husband’s lungs.
Meanwhile, I went short of breath. Malice seeped into the room like a cold draft. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it pressing on my skin.
“You think this is worse?” His attention snapped back to me abruptly. “He’s never going to wake up. I mean, fuck. That bullet should have killed him.”
It had, more or less. Sharp pinpricks needled up my spine. The longer I stared at the man across from me, the more I wondered if he’d been the one to pull the trigger.
“Dragging it out like this, it’s kind of cruel.” He shook his head like it was a shame, but his eyes gleamed and said the opposite. It seemed like he enjoyed this idea quite a bit. “Don’t you think?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. If I sat still enough, perhaps he’d forget I existed. That had worked on Sidor, but . . . no. Not here. The man’s expression twisted with displeasure as he waited impatiently for my answer.
“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s very hard.”
His smile was evil, full of sharp teeth and wicked eyes. “Good.”
Bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it back. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?”
“I don’t think I did.” He weighed his words and gave them more impact. “It’s Vasilije Markovic.”
I tensed, shredding the tissue further, and although I tried to stop it, a gasp cut off in my throat.
“Well, there’s a name you recognize.” He couldn’t have looked more pleased if he’d tried.
Sidor told me nothing about his business, but it was impossible to carry the Petrov last name and not know who the Markovics were. Sergey and Sidor had been fighting with the Serbians for the last year, and steadily gaining ground.
That is, right up until the moment someone put a bullet in my husband’s brain.
My gaze flicked to the call button on the wall, and that action wasn’t lost on Vasilije. Even if I made it across the room, I’d be dead before the nurse came to see what the issue was. He slowly blinked his black eyes, daring me to try it.
“Did you come here to kill me?” I asked, my thoughts scrambling and tripping over themselves to try to find a way to save myself. “Because you shouldn’t. You’d be doing Sergey a favor. I mean next to nothing to the Petrovs.” I echoed the same words Sidor had told me countless times. “I’m only a mail-order bride—a hot piece of ass for my husband to screw.”
Vasilije arched an eyebrow up into a sharp point. “Don’t think he’s going to be screwing you anymore.”
“No.” Not in the physical sense. My voice was much stronger than I felt. “Thankfully not.”
I didn’t enjoy sex, not with anyone, and it didn’t matter what kind it was. It could be slow and gentle, like it had been the first few months, back when Sidor wanted to make sure I’d stay, or it could be rough and cruel, like when he’d stopped caring.
It was a line item in the transaction of our marriage, and something I dealt with the same as a visit to the dentist. I viewed it as an unpleasant but necessary task if I wanted to keep all my teeth.
When I gave him what he wanted, he was far more likely to give me what I needed, and I found this an acceptable compromise. I used his money to purchase supplies for my “hobby,” until the day I had sold enough to become self-sufficient.
Yet, everything I earned was funneled back into my next project, and I still had two pieces left with no interested buyers.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Vasilije said, showing off his dimples. “What a stupid fucking thing to say.”
My shoulders ached from how hard I had them tensed. “You’ve come to finish off Sidor then?”
Had he picked up the sick spark of hope tinging my voice?
He frowned, put his hands on his hips, and cast his gaze toward the bed where my husband lay motionless. The only sign of life was the quiet, incessant hiss of the respirator.
“I wouldn’t tell anyone.” I spoke just loud enough to be heard over it. “Not unless you wanted me to.”
He grinned widely. “You want your husband dead, Mrs. Petrov?”
“He is dead. A doctor declared it on Monday, but Sergey is fighting it. Do you see the straight line at the top of that screen? That’s Sidor’s brain activity.” Or lack thereof.
Vasilije glanced at the monitor. “Yeah, I’m sure it always looked like that. Your husband wasn’t too bright before he got shot in the head.”
“Please,” I whispered. “I’ve been trapped beneath him for seven years. You do this and you could help me escape. You’d be a hero, taking down a monster in the process.”
His sharp gaze cut me in two. “First off, I’m not a hero.” He said the word like it disgusted him. “And second—help you? Fuck off, lady. Why the hell would I help a Russian, let alone a disloyal one like you?” He motioned toward the hospital bed. “No, Sidor Petrov is exactly where he should be. If you want him dead? Well, you’re going to have to do that yourself.”
-4-
I’d risked a lot to have this dangerous conversation and gained nothing.
Vasilije Markovic stood in the center of the hospital room, and although he was just a man, his presence took up every inch of the space. It left no air for me to breathe.
Lightning slashed the sky and flickered across his hard expression. If I wasn’t so frightened, I’d want to sculpt this moment. His face would be exaggerated as the young predator, satisfied with a recent kill and now hunting simply for the sport of it.
“Why are you here?” My voice was a shadow.
He didn’t seem like he w
as going to answer for a long moment, but he threw a hand up in a casual gesture. “I wanted to see him like this. I wasn’t there when it all went down. I heard it was the Italians.”
So, Vasilije hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger. It was both comforting and disappointing to know. His dark thoughts were loud on his face. He needed to see Sidor when he was at his most vulnerable and doing so made the Serbian man feel intensely powerful.
“My family wasn’t the one on this, but he fucking got what he deserved. You want to know why?” His question was rhetorical. “On top of everything else, he and Sergey ordered their lackey to burn a house down with a family inside. A normal fucking family, who had nothing to with us Serbs, or you Russians, or anyone.” He sneered. “He used that family as pawns, hoping to start a war.”
I pressed my palm to my chest, trying to shield my heart from the hurt his words caused. I knew Sidor was evil, but I didn’t want to hear the evidence. It was cowardly, but I needed to stay ignorant.
“I didn’t know,” I gasped as disgust roiled in my belly.
His eyes narrowed as he evaluated me, and it appeared he’d decided to believe me. His expression was icy. I wanted to point out it was all the more reason to end Sidor’s time on this earth, but from Vasilije’s standpoint, I understood. He wanted to maximize Sidor’s suffering.
“Something else you should know,” he said. “We can get to him anytime.”
Did he understand how empty that threat felt? It was stupid to goad him, but my situation was hopeless. “To do what? Stare at him?”
Vasilije’s eyes widened, then flooded with faint amusement. “You Russian women are tougher than your men.” His expression hardened and turned serious. “I meant Sergey. You tell him that next time you see him.”
I stared glumly at my knees. “I don’t want any part of this life.”
“Probably shouldn’t have married Sidor Petrov then.”
His glib remark rankled. He had no idea what I’d been through or sacrificed, but I was smart enough to keep my emotions under control. “Yes. It’s a decision I regret daily.”
