by Nicole Fox
“You have some shit luck, girl. Pregnant, homeless, and jobless.”
I groan. “I wish everyone would stop listing off all of my troubles like that. I know my situation. Also, I have a home, so you can scratch that one off the list”
“Damn Aleksandr,” Samara says suddenly, stomping her foot on the ground. “This is all his fault. Fuck him.”
“I wanted to at one point,” I joke.
Samara turns to me, eyes wide. “Are you serious?”
“God, no. It was a joke.” Not entirely, though, and I suspect Samara knows that. Any woman with eyes knows the Levushka boys are attractive, and between the two of them, Aleksandr always seemed the most centered. Rumors went around about Mikhail’s recreational drug use and drunkenness and sleeping around, but there weren’t ever any stories about Aleksandr. A man like him certainly has his fair share of sexual partners, but he didn’t advertise it the way his twin did. He seemed more in control of himself. And from the outside, without knowing much about him, I’d imagined him as a gentle, caring man.
I realize now how ridiculous that thinking was. A man born and raised learning how to import weapons, build a drug empire, and operate under the arm of the law isn’t a man who will bring his girlfriend flowers and rub her feet at the end of the day. He is going to be demanding and controlling, just like he was in the kitchen a few days ago. So, I don’t know why I feel such a sense of betrayal.
Aleksandr didn’t betray me. He just didn’t live up to the unrealistic expectations I’d set for him. And that isn’t his fault. It’s mine.
Chapter 9
Aleksandr
Mikhail is dead.
My mother tries to grab the phone, and I push her away. Hard enough that her back hits the other wall of the hallway. I am too disoriented to apologize or care.
Mikhail is dead. That is what the detective told me. Officers found his body in a crack house early that morning.
“You can’t know it was an overdose until you do an autopsy,” I say. “It could be foul play.”
She is kind but firm. “He still had the needle in his arm.”
Telling my mother is easier than I expect, which is good because I wouldn’t have been able to handle it if she’d broken down. I am barely keeping myself together as it is.
“I knew this would happen one day,” she says, squeezing her eyes closed. “The longer he went without getting clean, the more I prepared myself for it.”
I’m not prepared. Not at all. I pull out my phone and call Mikhail’s personal bodyguard. I talked to him a few days before, but Mikhail hadn’t been returning any of his calls or messages, either.
“Is it true?” I ask as soon as he answers the phone.
He sighs, the sound coming through like static. “Yeah, it’s true.”
“Shit.” I rear back and hurl my fist at the wall. The drywall dents beneath my knuckles, and I hear my mother release a sob behind me.
“The police called me first because I was the last name in his phone,” he says. “He told me he was just going out for one last hit.”
“He told you?” I growl. “He told you he was going out to get high, and you didn’t mention anything to me when I called you three days ago?”
“He told me not to.” His deep voice sounds raw with emotion. “And considering I couldn’t even find him, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had told you. He was gone either way, man.”
“Don’t call my dad. And fuck you.” I hang up the phone and shove it deep in my pocket before I give in to the impulse to chuck it at the wall. I’ve caused enough damage in my mother’s house as it is.
“This isn’t your fault,” my mother says, moving closer to me slowly like she is approaching a wild animal. “He made his own choices.”
“I didn’t say it was my fault.”
“I know,” she says softly. “But you’re thinking it. You have always tried to take care of Mikhail, but he is a grown man. Was a grown man. He was always going to make his own decisions and there was nothing anyone could say or do to change his mind. You tried your best but his sobriety was always going to be his decision.”
I clench my teeth and turn away. “I have to go. I have a lot to do.”
“Aleksandr.” Her small hand wraps around my wrist and tries to hold me back. I could yank away from her grip with almost no effort, but I let her comfort me for a minute. In a lot of ways, I think it means more to her than to me. “You don’t have to leave. You can stay here.”
I shake my head. “I have to tell Dad. Before someone else does.”
Her hand falls from my arm and she nods. Tears are silently streaming down her face, but neither of us acknowledge them. “He’ll want to hear it from you.”
I truly doubt that, but I appreciate her saying it anyway. She pulls me into another hug, this one tighter and longer than the first. She stands in the doorway as I walk down the steps and across the street to where my car is parked. When I pull away, she is still standing there.
Dad doesn’t notice anything is wrong right away. A member of his staff lets me inside, and I find him in his den in the back, sitting in his leather recliner with a cigar and a book open in his lap. He is too relaxed, so I know no one has told him the news. He doesn’t look up as I enter.
“Father.”
He blinks and then turns away from his book. I haven’t seen him in months, but he doesn’t smile or show much enthusiasm at the sight of me. Instead, he looks back down at his book and puffs on his cigar. “I see you made it to St. Petersburg fine.”
“I did.” My palms are sweating, and I wipe them on my pants.
“And your meetings have gone well?”
I still need to talk to him about the rival family in the city and the contracts Mikhail screwed up, but it hardly seems like the right time. So, I lie. “Everything has been fine.”
He nods, his lips twisted around the fat cigar. “Good, good.”
“Listen, I need to talk to you.” I move into the room and take a seat in the leather chair across from my father’s. I’ve only been in his St. Petersburg house a few times, and it was honestly a complete guess that he would be here at all. If he had been in Moscow, I would have had to deliver the news of Mikhail’s death over the phone. Which, honestly, might have been preferable.
He sighs. “I’m trying to relax. If it is about an issue you can handle, I’d prefer for you to handle it without clueing me in.”
“It’s need-to-know information,” I insist. “It’s important.”
My father doesn’t look like he believes me, but he rests his cigar in an ash tray on a side table, kicks the footrest of his recliner down, and sits forward, elbows on his knees. “What is it? Don’t make me wait.”
I take a deep breath, not sure where to start. “Okay. Well, Mikhail showed me the letter you sent him.”
He smiles at the memory, his mouth pulling up on one side. “Did he? Is he worried?”
“He was,” I say, wondering if my father will catch the past tense. My stomach twists. “He told me he wanted to get clean and do better, so he agreed to go to rehab.”
My father nods, but I noticed his smile slipping, his brows pinching together. “Why are you here, Aleksandr?”
“He left for rehab three days ago, but when I called the facility, they said he wasn’t there.”
“Is it a private facility?” he asks, growing angry. “Those public ones are shit, and everyone will know he is in there. How does it look for the boss’ son to be in rehab? Not great.”
“It’s private. The one you picked out before,” I say quickly. “But that doesn’t matter because he never fucking showed up.”
“Okay, so where is he?” My father’s phone rings on the end table, and he reaches for it.
I jump up and grab it before he can. “Don’t answer that.”
His usually tan face has gone pale. “What is wrong with you? Why are you acting this way?”
“I got a call from a detective an hour ago,” I say softly. “I
confirmed it with Mikhail’s bodyguard.”
He shakes his head, his softening jaw looking chiseled from the way he is clenching his teeth together. “No.”
“He is dead.” I say it quickly because there is no better way to say. No easier way to deliver the news. “Mikhail died of an overdose early this morning.”
“No,” he repeats, standing up and pacing towards his wall of bookshelves. “No.”
“I’m sorry.” I hang my head when I hear him start to cry. My mother said she was prepared for this to happen, but clearly my father wasn’t. Even though he’d sent Mikhail the threatening letter, he always expected his favorite son to turn things around. To find the straight and narrow—or, at least, whatever ‘straight and narrow’ looked like for the heir to a crime family. Now, he never would. It was over.
“You should be.”
I snap my attention up, mouth hanging open, assuming I’ve misunderstood him. “What?”
“You should be fucking sorry,” my father says, wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist. “You were supposed to look after him.”
I run my tongue over my teeth and take a deep breath. My father is hurting. He is grieving, and he doesn’t mean what he is saying. He’ll regret these words later. Even if he’ll probably never apologize to me for them, he’ll regret them.
He paces back towards me and runs a hand through his hair. “You should have taken him to rehab. You should have made sure he checked himself in.”
“What about you?!” I scream, unable to sit there and stay quiet.
“What about me?” he growls, eyes narrowed.
“You sent him that fucking letter. It freaked him out, and he thought he needed another bender. If you hadn’t sent him that, he wouldn’t have gone out for that hit. He would probably still be alive.”
My father’s eyes widen like I’ve slapped him, and he crosses the distance between us in two steps. “Are you blaming me for the death of my son?”
“Are you blaming me for the death of my brother?” I ask, staring right back at him.
His breathing is heavy, his shoulders rising and falling, nostrils flaring. “Get out.”
His expression is rage, and I know he would have banished me from his house and the family if he could have. If he didn’t depend on me to hold everything together, he would have had me thrown from the ranks and forgotten about me as soon as I left his sight. But he does need me. As much as my father never wanted to admit it, I am the son who takes care of things. The son who kept the family running while his other son got high and, apparently, got house servants pregnant. The thought of Zoya makes me clench my fist, and I quickly push the thought away. I can’t deal with that right now.
I take a step back and hold up my hands. “I just thought the news should come from family.”
“You should have let Ivan tell me,” he says, referring to Mikhail’s bodyguard. He drops back down into his chair, picks up his cigar, and waves me away. “Leave.”
Without saying a word, I walk out of his house.
There isn’t time to mourn. Like always, I’m too busy picking up the pieces Mikhail left behind.
Because Moscow police found his body, word of his death is spreading faster than any of us would have liked. Rumblings of it are already beginning to make their way through local news channels and within a day or two, everyone will know. Vlad Levushka’s Son Dead of Overdose. Mikhail’s death will be used to write opinion pieces on the state of crime in the city and my father’s connections to all of it. Though they have no solid proof to connect any of the dots, they will say that our family got what we deserved. That a life of crime doesn’t pay. It will bring the police closer to our operation than we want them, though we’ve been there before. We can handle it.
I just wish I didn’t have to.
I’m halfway back to Boris’ estate when my phone rings. It’s Boris. Part of me doesn’t want to answer it, if only because I don’t want to hear any more bad news. Not for a few hours, at least. But my sense of duty overrides everything, and I pick up.
“Mikhail really fucked us up,” Boris says in way of a greeting.
I pause, trying to decide if Boris knows my brother is dead or not. “You heard the news, right?”
“Of course I did,” he snaps. “That is the problem. Mikhail went off and killed himself and now every thug he ever did business with is going to try to slip away without paying up.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right,” Boris says. “Your brother wasn’t exactly organized, so I am trying to get Ivan to ship us his cell phone so we can dig through his texts and calls.”
“I have the password for his email,” I offer. “I doubt he did much official business over email, but it might give us a place to start.”
“You do that, and I’ll handle the cell phone. As soon as I know anything else, I’ll give you a call.”
“Won’t I see you at the house?” I ask.
“Not today. Or tomorrow, either. I have a lot of meetings to schedule, so I’m going to work from a hotel in the city center.” I hear a voice somewhere in the background, and Boris pulls the phone away from his ear to talk to them. Then, a second later, he is back. “I have to go, but let me know what you find. And if you are too broken up to handle shit, just tell me. I can take on more.”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
And over the next few days, I am fine. If “fine” means exhausted and overextended and overwhelmed. If that is the case, I am beyond fine.
Somehow, even Mikhail’s email is disorganized. None of his contacts have names, but are instead listed under descriptors like “red SPAR.” After an hour of digging through back and forth correspondence, I learn the name referenced a deal Mikhail had done with a man driving a red convertible in St. Petersburg involving a shipment of Assault Rifles. According to Mikhail’s last email to the guy, he hadn’t paid up yet, so I add his name to the growing list of shit I have to take care of.
If Mikhail had died a month sooner, I may not have worried about any of it. I may have just wiped the debts clean, emptied his email inbox, and washed my hands of all of it. However, now that I know about the rival family in town, we can’t afford to be seen as weak.
Word of Mikhail’s death is getting around, and if we don’t nut up and collect what is ours, it will be just another foothold our enemies can use to propel themselves higher up the ranks. Several of our biggest partners have already contacted me to say they’ve been approached by men and told to cut their ties with us.
We have enough trust built between us and our oldest partners that it would take a lot more than intimidation to scare them away, but still, the threat is there. If the Levushka family stumbles, there is someone there waiting to pick up the pieces. And I won’t let that happen.
Because I’m next in line.
The reality of that doesn’t fully settle in until two days after Mikhail’s death. I’m going to be the boss of the Levushka family. Assuming my father doesn’t have me banished, that is. I’ve texted him about the rival family moving onto our turf, but he hasn’t responded. I can see that he is reading my messages, but I have no way to know if he is doing anything about it. If Boris is telling the truth—and I have no reason to believe he isn’t—my father is a mess. Uncontrollable weeping followed by rage. He is working his way through the stages of grief and until he finds his way to acceptance, it is best for me to steer clear. So, I do.
By the end of day two, I feel like a mad man frantically patching holes in a dam on the verge of bursting. Just as soon as I plug one hole, another one appears. On top of that, I haven’t eaten anything more than a plum from the kitchen all day and my body is jittery from all of the coffee I’ve had. So, I head down to the kitchen.
Even though I know Zoya is gone, I still look for her as I enter. I can imagine her sitting behind the island like she was the first day I walked in with her lopsided ponytail and full, pouty lips. Then, for the first time in two days
, I allow myself to think about what my mother told me:
Zoya is pregnant. With Mikhail’s child.
My mother wouldn’t explain why she thought so, but she has never been a woman prone to engage in unfounded gossip. If she told me the baby is Mikhail’s, she had a good reason. I just wish I knew what it was.
Dinner was hours ago, so I don’t expect anyone to be in the kitchen. Despite what Zoya said the day we argued, I’m not as spoiled as I seem. I can open a refrigerator and make myself a sandwich. But when I pay someone to do it for me, I expect it to be done right. There is a difference. The problem is that, as I get more and more distance from my argument with Zoya, I can’t help but feel like I instigated everything. As a paid employee of my uncle, she should have held her tongue, but I also shouldn’t have insulted her.
Guilt—or hunger, I’m not sure which—gnaws at my stomach, and I try to ignore it. None of it matters anymore. Zoya is gone.
Just then, the pantry door opens and a middle-aged woman comes walking out backwards, a mop and broom in her hands. When she gets through the door, she turns around and sees me, jumping in surprise. It is Agatha, Zoya’s mother.
“Mr. Levushka,” she says, smiling up at me as though I wasn’t the reason her daughter was fired. “Can I help you with anything?”
I consider asking her to make me some food. Agatha isn’t the usual cook, but I’ve had enough meals cooked by her over the years to know she easily could be. However, the words that come out of my mouth are unplanned and unexpected.
“Where is Zoya?”
Agatha’s eyes widen in surprise, and then she lowers her head, her feet shuffling nervously on the tile floor. “She isn’t here.”
“I know that,” I say impatiently. “But where is she?”
I don’t know why it is important to me, but I need to know Zoya isn’t living on the streets somewhere. Perhaps, it is because she might be carrying my brother’s child. Or maybe it is more of that unfamiliar guilt. I can’t say for sure.
