by Nicole Fox
Her jaw slackens for a second before she closes her mouth, which creases into a frown. “I honestly have no idea who would say that. He’s a great boss. I can’t believe anyone would talk badly about him. I had my reservations in the beginning—for a long time, I wasn’t certain if his generosity was compensating for a personality flaw or if it was all a façade, but I know it’s not now.”
“How can you be certain?” I ask.
Her voice turns colder. “Because a couple of years ago, he paid off my granddaughter’s medical bills. I know the rumors about Mr. Akimov. I’m certain that you’re eager to write him up as a villain, but I hope your article looks at more than the rumors about him. I hope you show some measure of restraint and don’t partake in yellow journalism.”
I take a deep breath. I could tell her a million things that could ruin her view of Maksim, but she’s already poked a hole in my view of him. I saw him show kindness toward Lily—someone who could do nothing for him—and he has also occasionally showed me a gentler side, but I never imagined he’d be the type to pay off an employee’s medical bills.
“My article will be comprehensive,” I manage to stammer.
She glances past me as Maksim returns to my side. He gestures between the two of us. “Did you two schedule time to talk to each other?”
“No, I have enough,” I say.
“Great. It’s good to see you, Michelle. Is your granddaughter well?” Maksim asks.
“Yes,” Michelle gushes, beaming. “Thank you so much, Mr. Akimov.”
“Of course. Have a good day.”
He puts his arm back around my waist, guiding me toward the truck. I turn my head, watching Michelle head toward the hotel.
“You paid her granddaughter’s medical bills?” I ask. I feel his hand shift against my hip.
“Michelle is excellent at her job. I didn’t want her to go searching for a second job to pay for the bills, so I covered them.”
I lay my hand over his hand that’s on my hip. “That’s generous of you.”
“It’s not generosity.” He pulls away from me, unlocking the truck doors. “It’s just good business. I need good employees that are loyal to me. She will always be loyal to me now.”
I get back into the truck. As he starts it, I imagine Michelle finding out the truth in my article. She’ll hate me, but if it’s the truth, her hate will be unfounded. It will be hatred that should be placed on Maksim for not being who she thought he was.
“She didn’t tell me anything, if you were thinking she might let something slip about your operation.”
“I didn’t think she would,” he says, pulling out of his parking spot. “She might notice some strange occurrences, but, like I said, she’s loyal to me. I can tell her that I talked to the people in housekeeping and I know she won’t double-check if I talked to them because she’s loyal. She definitely won’t tell a journalist about anything strange.”
“Then, why did you want me to talk to her?”
“I had to explain who you are,” he says. “I thought it was best if I used some version of the truth.”
There’s a fleck of blood on his center console. “I just thought you should know she didn’t tell me anything,” I say. “So, you don’t need to hurt her.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he says. “There are strict moral guidelines in the Bratva. We don’t hurt anyone who isn’t involved in any criminal organization.”
I try to think of someone that he’s hurt who isn’t in a criminal organization. Maybe people in the nightclub, but that clearly wasn’t on his orders and the only innocent people who were injured in that shootout were injured by being shoved or trampled.
“I’m not in a criminal organization,” I say.
“You might consider yourself to be out of it, but you’re Gianluigi’s daughter. It’s in your blood. You were born being every bit as bad as him.” He brakes slowly as traffic slows down.
I turn toward him, the seat belt cutting into my shoulder. “You blackmailed me into doing this. You threatened my child.”
“I didn’t threaten Lily. I offered you information in exchange for going along with my plan. You took the offer.”
“You told me you’d take me no matter what I did. You—”
“I took you and you didn’t suffer,” he cuts me off. “If you think that’s suffering, you still have a lot of growing up to do. And to drive home both of my points, I would never hurt Lily because I know what it’s like to be her. You don’t think I wanted to go after those foster parents, find out if they were worth the air they were breathing? Of course I did. It took a lot of self-control not to interrogate them. But I didn’t. I didn’t do anything because I didn’t see Lily in the same situation I was in. I didn’t see her on the brink of running away, knowing that life on the streets was worth the risk over staying in the foster care system. I didn’t see her future of fighting for scraps in a dumpster against a junkie that was quick with a switchblade. I didn’t see her future, where the offer of shelter was worth working for people who beat and killed others. You haven’t been acquainted with suffering until you see an ugly choice and you take it because the only other choice is to continue suffering.”
I slouch into the seat. I want to tell him I’ve suffered—that my father took Lily, that I carried the weight of my father’s decisions, that I made the ugly choice of running away instead of suffering in the city, that pain can be deceptive and you can get used to it when it slowly piles up—but in comparison to what he’s gone through, I know he’ll consider my pain to be a pinprick.
We are not the same. We never will be.
But he’s given me a peek into his past, one that will work for the beginning of the article. The Bratva boss is a titan among men, a shadow over the city, but before that, he learned survival was dependent on hiding in the shadows. After the death of his parents and the death of his humanity in the foster care system, he was resurrected on the streets of New York …
I continue writing and rewriting the article in my head as Maksim makes his next stop. He takes me to the shipping dock, where he transports stolen guns, along with legally transporting everything from albums to furniture. He takes me to one of his cocaine labs, which was built under a nightclub. Everywhere we go, he is treated like a savior by his legal businesses and a ruthless genius by his criminal subordinates. Everyone treats him like he’s a benevolent god who has come down from the heavens above to grace them with his presence. It’s strange to walk beside him and feel plainly human in comparison.
When he takes me inside Dunlop’s Bookstore, I’m modestly surprised to see the interior is similar to his own library, but with the addition of semicircular bookshelves centered around a circular desk and a cash register manned by a white-haired man.
“Maksim!” the man greets. He’s the first person we’ve encountered today that has referred to Maksim by his first name. “What a pleasure to see you here! Some great new texts have just come in that you might take an interest in. There’s a professor named Liston who wrote about World War II and Stalin’s efforts to turn Russia into a superpower. If you’re here for Miss Balducci, we also have an edition of the Kama Sutra with aesthetically pleasing drawings included for each situation.”
How does he know who I am?
“We’re not interested in that. We need to see the back room.”
The man glances between the two of us. “Of course. Let me get the key.”
He turns to a small sculpture of an elephant made out of book pages and pulls out the ear. At the end of the folded and bent book pages, there’s a metal key. He pushes a section of the desk and it swings open. Stepping out, he guides us toward the back of the bookstore, stopping in front of a door with the sign “Employees Only.” He unlocks it with a different key. When he opens the door, I hold my breath, but it’s only filled with cardboard boxes.
After we’re all inside the room, the man closes the door behind us, locking it again. He and Maksim move boxes away from the back
wall. There’s a large door painted the same shade as the walls. The man unlocks it with the elephant key, pushing it open and gesturing for us to step in.
The room reminds me of a survivalist bunker—the cement floor, the cold air—but instead of food that never expires or a cot, there are long metal containers stacked up on stair-like shelves. Maksim walks over to one of them, takes a key out of his wallet and unlocks it. He opens the top.
Guns. There’s must be at least fifty stacked up. The sheer scale and audacity of it are equally thrilling and threatening. It’s an overarching sensation concerning his whole operation.
I turn to him, a thousand questions running through my head, but the one that pops out isn’t what I expect.
“How does he know who I am?” I ask, indicating with my head to the old man.
“Charles likes to know everything about everyone,” Maksim says. “Is that all you wanted to know?”
“You know that I want to know everything,” I say.
“Yes. That’s why I’m showing you everything.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. “You have some alternative motive. Why on earth would you store guns in a bookstore?”
“The public thinks the store is using it for storage—and we are,” he says.
“This is also where everything started for me,” Maksim says, shutting the metal container. “After a few years of living on the streets, Charles took notice of me and let me stay here at night—in this very room. When the city tried to take the store from him, I helped him keep it, in exchange for my old bedroom.”
“Maksim is being too modest. All I did was give him some space to stay out of the cold. He saved my bookstore.” Charles grins. “I sometimes wonder what I would have gotten if I’d provided him with a mattress.”
“I’d love to hear more about his beginnings,” I tell Charles.
“Oh, there’s not much to say,” Charles says. “I knew he’d do what he needed to do from the moment I saw him steal Crazy Ben’s coat.”
One thing is clear: Maksim Akimov has developed a remarkable set of skills that have fueled his rise to becoming the pre-eminent force in the city’s criminal underground. The breadth and sophistication of his operations inspires awe and fear in equal measure. Yet it is his personal story that is perhaps most impressive. From humble orphan to ruthless titan, his trajectory defies all logic, just as much as it defies the ceaseless attempts of law enforcement to restrain his ever-expanding empire. One could spend a lifetime wondering what it will take to bring him down—or one could simply wait for the oats he has sown to be reaped. A man unconstrained by morality will inevitably self-destruct. In the end, it is only our morals that separate us from the beasts. And this much is certain: Maksim Akimov is a beast. The time has come to cull him from the herd.
That’s how the article will end.
That’s how this whole thing will end.
As I try to get back into the passenger side of his truck, the door won’t open. Maksim crosses around the front of the truck, his keys still tightly in his hand.
I should be afraid for my life. He’s locked me out right after showing me every secret of the Bratva. I should have seen this coming. I was so consumed in my drive to write this article, I didn’t see the only reason he’d let me witness it all—I wouldn’t be alive to tell anyone.
But I’m not afraid. Maybe because of the inevitability. Maybe because the truth does set you free.
He leans against the door, staring straight at me.
“You have everything to take me down now,” he says. “But if you do, you won’t just be hurting me. You’ll also be hurting all the people you met today. Not just the Bratva men, but all the employees in my legitimate businesses that depend on me to pay them, so they can feed their families. And I know what you’re thinking—someone else will take my place. When it comes to my legal businesses, that’s not true. Their jobs will be eliminated. But you’d be right about the Bratva. Your article would take me out and likely most of my lieutenants as well. The Bratva would be too badly maimed to recover. We’d be replaced. It’s too large of an area for your father to take full control over, so the others would flood in as well—Dos Gatillos, the Polish mob, and all those petty little street gangs that make the Bratva look like the royal family. You’d be allowing these mafias and gangs to come in.
“First, there would be an all-out war over territory. Multiple mass shootings as each group tried to get the upper hand by eliminating the others. After several months, one or two of them would win out. I’d put my money on Dos Gatillos—they have the ammunition and they don’t care about killing civilians. They’d saturate the streets with drugs. They’d keep everyone under their thumb by killing off anyone who doesn’t go along with their racketeering. Several of the gangs traffic women and they’d love the new supply offered by the new territory.
“You must have done your research into the Bratva since I’ve taken over. We don’t deal in that filth. We don’t involve the innocent. You’re an investigative journalist. You know that if you kill a tyrant, it doesn’t mean that every citizen goes on to live in complete bliss. Someone is always waiting in the background, waiting to take over. There is a power vacuum that is waiting to be filled. I need you to think about that. Get in the truck.”
He unlocks the doors. I get inside, more panicked than I was when I thought he was going to kill me.
Everything he said is true.
My job is to tell the world the truth in the hope that it will trigger change and benefit society. But this story may not necessarily have that effect. I’d like to convince myself that Maksim was exaggerating, but I can see everything he said happening.
He drives us north. I look out at the streets, imagining another Mafia or gang taking over the area. I’ve seen Dos Gatillos and the Polish mob’s territory. Everyone in those areas lives with a defeated acceptance. The addicts roam the streets, but they don’t have to roam far to find a dealer. There are memorials to people who have been killed on various corners or in front of stores. The air of resignation is suffocating.
Maksim stops in front of a small building with a sundae-shaped sign hanging above it.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You’re manufacturing drugs in here. Something is hidden in the bottom of the ice-cream containers or behind one of the machines. There’s also a secret room somewhere.”
“No,” he says. “I don’t own this place at all.”
He indicates in one direction with his head. There, sitting at a bright pink table is Lily with one of Maksim’s soldiers. She drops her spoonful of whipped cream and a cherry and waves at the two of us.
I jump out of the truck, barely thinking as I run over to her. I hug her so hard, she makes a small squeaking noise.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Wow.” She fixes her hair. “You’re a great hugger. Better than anyone at the house.”
Maksim joins us. I get the same as Lily—a fudge sundae—while Maksim sticks with vanilla ice cream. Talking to Lily about her life—the tribulations of math homework, the social intricacies of fifth grade, and the way that Ronnie Carlton says the word “magicians” in a funny way—I see her intelligence, her earnestness, and her precociousness. She is everything I could have wished her to become and more.
I turn to glance at Maksim at one point and he’s equally taken by her. It’s such a strange thing to see—a Bratva boss, my ten-year-old child who was stolen from me, and a silent, brooding Bratva soldier—but there’s also something leisurely about it. It almost feels like a family.
After we drop Lily off at home, Maksim drives me back to the mansion. He takes the long route, speeding down the backstreets with a well-developed fearlessness. The sense of freedom inside his truck is more energizing than the adrenaline or the fleeting panic. Alone together on the road, nighttime all around us, and the warm glow from our time with Lily creates an ease between us that burns brighter than all the city lights.
When we start getting closer to his house
, car lights stumble out of the darkness as it crests the hill. His arm swings out, hitting against my chest as he stomps on the brake. We jerk to a stop just as the car drives in front of us in the intersection. He turns and his eyes sweep over me wordlessly.
When we get back inside his mansion, he takes me in his arms. His hands are in my hair. He’s kissing me. We’re crashing against the wall. He’s pressed up against me. His breath hits against my lips.
I kick off my shoes and run, adrenaline pouring through me, past the library and up the stairs, hearing Maksim’s footsteps catching up to me. I run straight to my bedroom, collapsing onto the bed, my ankles draping over the mattress. Maksim comes for me a second later, his body falling beside mine as his arms curve around me, pulling me on top of him, kissing me through the drape of my hair. Everything feels so natural between us, so good.
He pulls my blouse over my head. Our bodies return to each other. We kiss, his hands exploring my exposed skin and my hands undoing the buttons on his shirt. He unclips my bra as I reach the last button. We start a pile of clothes beside the bed.
We twist against each other, finding friction and undressing each other. His hands slide down my thighs, pushing down my underwear and pants. Kissing down my ribs, my hips, my thighs, his lips leave a trail of tingling heat.
Even when completely naked in front of him, I’m not self-conscious or nervous. I just want him with me. I want to feel him on top of me, feel him inside me, and feel like we’re the only people in the world.
I run my finger over his tattoo of the NYC skyline on his chest, covering it with my palm as he kisses me again. I try to stop him as he pulls away, grabbing onto his arm, but he slips out of reach at the end of the bed. He drops his boxer briefs and pants and then he, too, is bared to the night.
When he lies over me again, his weight soothes me, but as he kisses me again, his mouth nudging open my mouth, and I feel his arousal against my thigh, the comfort vanishes and it’s replaced by desire.
When he presses down into me, his cock completes me. As he moves inside me, slower than usual, I keep my eyes on his face. He looks back at me with an almost puzzled amazement.
