Shattered Glass

by Dani Alexander

  “You could have me.” He stepped forward. Instead of meeting my eyes, Peter appeared to be staring at the center of my nose. “Just help me.”

  “Oh, for fuck's sake.” I sighed. “Just get inside and try not to whore yourself for five minutes.” I yanked him inside the door.

  “S-stop st-staring at me like that then,” he chattered as my A/C unit delivered a frigid welcome.

  Since I didn’t want to turn off the central air, I sent him upstairs while I went to make something hot to drink. “Go take a shower and put on some dry clothes.”

  Midway to the kitchen, weaving a Johnny Walker induced walk, a resounding splat near the stairway grabbed my attention. I turned to see Peter’s shirt on the bottom step. The green lump of cotton dripped rivers of rain on my floor, calling my attention to him. He paused halfway up the stairs, bending to see me through the railing, pale muscled chest inviting me through the bars. “Are you going to join?”

  Yes. Fuck, yes. Yes on four different levels—one of them pleading. “No,” I replied.

  With my mouth drier than a Saharan summer day, I marched/wobbled into the kitchen, slamming the metal teapot down on the stove. The shower upstairs turned on. My eyes rolled upward to the ceiling as I stood, literally waiting for a watched pot to boil.

  What would his naked skin feel like next to mine? How many freckles would I count on the inside of his thigh? What sounds would he make if I used my tongue along his stomach?

  The next second I blinked and stood inside my bedroom, staring at my bathroom door. That was when the diseased portion of my brain began developing a personality and a voice.

  I could have him. I deserve it even. Isn’t it his fault I’m suspended? That my wedding is called off? Any way I want it. He’s a whore. You do him a favor, he does you one.

  And what would that make you, Austin? If you used him like that?

  “A lot less fucking cranky, that’s for sure,” I muttered to my empty bedroom. And maybe my boner finally could stop wearing holes through my pants.

  More than mildly disgusted with myself, I turned abruptly and swallowed bile before forcing myself to walk—not run—out the door.

  “Austin?” Peter asked quietly.

  Downstairs the teapot screamed.

  Getting to Know Your Local Sociopath

  “Tea’s ready,” I said, pretending that was the reason for my flight. I didn’t wait for his reply, or turn to see if he was dressed. If I saw him there, in a towel, dripping wet, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. My fingers already itched in memory of the last time I touched him.

  I jumped over the last few steps in my haste to get downstairs. In the kitchen, I set up two cups of tea and stared at mine while it steeped. Why the fuck was I drinking tea? Across the room, on the coffee table Johnny Walker attempted seduction.

  Peter stepped into the kitchen replacing my whiskey fantasy with one involving my teeth and the borrowed pair of blue and gold college sweats and t-shirt he wore. He grabbed the other cup of tea, eyes shifting along the countertop until he found the sugar. “Would you like some tea with that?” I asked, watching him spoon four heaping mounds into his cup.

  “I’d like a Coke or Pepsi,” he retorted, opening my fridge. “Beggars and choosers, Austin.”

  I wished he’d quit using my name. It was like an incantation, stealing bits of my soul for himself every time he said it. “Soda’s bad for you.”

  “You’re a little young for me to call you daddy, but when you say things like that…,” he deadpanned, pouring milk into his cup and closing the fridge.

  “Nikolaj,” I prompted, pressing back against the counter and hoping either my jeans or polo were baggy enough to hide my erection.

  Peter exhaled an indecipherable sigh and set his tea down. Was that frustration? Resignation? Fucking aggravating man—always so goddamn impossible to read. Pulling himself onto the counter, Peter gripped the edge and stared at his feet. “Did you ever love someone so much, you lost yourself in them?”

  “Not sure I could tell you what love is anymore,” I answered.

  He frowned but nodded, as if he understood. “I was four when Cai’s mom—”

  ‘Your mom, you mean?”

  He shook his head, and I followed a bead of water as it dropped from the tip of an auburn tendril, snuck past his temple and slid down his cheek. My tongue curled involuntarily against the roof of my mouth. “Do you know much about Nikki the Nail?” This time I mouthed a ‘No’. I knew the story of Nikolaj Strakosha, The Boy Who Killed the Mafioso, because it had been a news sensation at the time, but I knew little of the crime family.

  “In the 90’s,” Peter began, “Little Moscow—what we called our neighborhood in Sunny Isles, Miami—was run by the Briansky Boys. The boys being the boss Aleksandr Briansky, his number one Nikolai Dyachenko and his number two, Kaja Strakosha.”

  “Wait. Nikolai is your dad. But Cai is named Nikolaj?” I said, brows furrowing as that little wiggle of question tickled my brain. Nikolaj Strakosha. “He was Kaja’s kid?” The same last names seemed obvious, but the first name was what threw me.

  “Yes. But my dad and Cai’s were like family—in the mafia sense as well as the brotherly way. Cai was named after my dad. Rofasa, Cai’s mom, and Zhavra, my mom, were best friends, practically sisters. And their children couldn’t be more like brothers if they shared DNA.” He waited while I digested that, biting his lip and regarding me through his brows.

  I was struggling with how attached he was to this kid. “Cai’s not your real brother,” I said.

  “Cai is my brother. It doesn’t matter that he’s not related by blood,” he huffed. “Same with Darryl. Actually no,” he added. “Cai’s both brother and son, I guess? If you had to label us at all.”

  I had a lot more important things to ask. Tons of questions that needed answering. So naturally I picked the one that would abso-fucking-lutely complicate everything. “So you and Darryl…?”

  “Sometimes.” Peter nodded. “When we’re lone—”

  “I don’t need the details.” My stomach was already moving like a group of otters were playing keep away with it. “Just move on.”

  “You asked,” he said hotly.

  “And now I’m un-asking.”

  “Whatever. Fucking frustrating,” he muttered. Ditto, I thought. “It was weird with Darryl and me at first.” He reached for an apple on the breakfast table, and then somehow expected me to concentrate on his words when he bit into it, causing its juice to glisten on his lips like cheap gloss. Come to think of it, that fucking lip ring was goddamn distracting, too. And he smelled like rain.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ. Can you just tell the story?” I lashed out testily and tossed my tea in the sink, replacing it with a beer.

  Peter stopped eating, his mouth hanging open in an invitation I didn’t take. He began to chew again, slowly, eyeing me warily. “Okay…”

  “You and Darryl and Cai…” I rolled my beer in a ‘move on’ gesture that caused bits of liquid to pop out of the bottle—which only reminded me of how long it had been since I’d gotten laid.

  “Look, this isn’t even important, is it? I mean you don’t need to know what happened then, you need to know what happened with Iss.”

  “You asked for help and then laid a bombshell on me. I want to know more.” I took a long sip of my beer and watched Peter over the rim of the bottle. Setting my Guinness down, I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re still assuming I’m going to help. I don’t know that I can, but if I could, why would I? You’re a complete baffling fucking mystery, and you’ve spent every day of our brief history lying to me. Even your name is a lie.”

  “I’m Pyotr Nikolaevich Dyachenko, if that’s even the slightest bit important. They call me Petya where I come from. I have Tourette’s. It used to come out as me twitching my nose when I was nervous. I don’t do it so much now. Cai thought it was funny and started calling me bunny—which I changed to Rabbit—for obvious reasons. It was Joe who g
ave me the last name Cotton to play off of Peter Rabbit and Peter Cottontail. Not really lies. Just…bending things a little. Okay? My name isn’t a lie.”

  Pyotr. Peter. Something else caught my attention. “Bending things a little? Telling me that Alvarado didn’t deal more than club party favors?”

  “I told you. I did what I had to do. I told him you were interested in me. He threatened Cai if I didn’t lead you off the trail.”

  “Threatened him how?”

  “The day you came in to question me about him, he said I was to tell you, or do, whatever I had to so you’d back off. Except for the part about him not being ambitious and only dealing weed,” he shrugged, “the rest was true.”

  “And he and Joe?”

  “Joe wanted to save Iss. Iss didn’t want to be saved. He used Joe and Joe let him. Only time he ever stood up to Iss was when he said to stop hooking up with me.”

  I had been right about Alvarado after all. In order to not think about how closely Peter and I resembled Joe and Alvarado, I focused on the other thing that caught my attention. “You’re the son of Nikki the Nail.” I wasn’t clarifying who was who at that point. I was trying to wrap my head around who Peter was asking me to help. I had to have that wrong.

  “Yes.”

  “The Russian mobster that Cai shot in the head.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want me to help Cai.”

  “Yes,” he breathed with such conviction that my eyes closed, and my breath became a distant memory. “I’m trying to explain it.”

  “I’m listening.” Enraptured was a better way to describe what I was—a child at story time, hearing a reading of The Godfather.

  “My mom and Cai’s mom were inseparable, even though Rosafa is Muslim and my mom is Catholic. Darryl’s mom was a crack head, and his dad beat the shit out of him. So everyone was always at my house.” He grabbed the beer from my hand and took a pull before I could stop him. I yanked it back, but he appeared unaffected. “The Family started meeting at our house too. There was a lot of talk about a snitch early on before Briansky got arrested.”

  “You know a lot about this. What were you back then, like seven or eight?”

  “Ten, when my dad started grooming me. Eleven, when the organization went to shit.” He gazed at my beer. “Can I have one of those?”

  “Did you turn twenty-one in the last week?" For spite, I took a long drink. Peter rolled his eyes.

  “Darryl—”

  “Real name?”

  “Daniel,” Peter answered. “Daniel Corozzo. Son of Tony Corozzo.” He twitched a smile. “Tony the Pipe. Lowest of the low in The Family. And probably the only one not in jail or dead by now.”

  I rubbed my temple trying to process the information. “Interesting combination: Nikki the Nail’s son, Kaja Strakosha’s and Tony the Pipe’s?”

  “Catholic and Muslim. Albanian and Russian. Very weird. But we were more than friends. We were all family.” Peter nodded. “Darryl—Danny, I mean—was like a pariah. He wore pink shirts and painted his eyes with glitter. Sometimes he curled his hair in ringlets. You can imagine how that went over with the Family.” I didn’t stop him when he retrieved a beer. It seemed to me that Nikki the Nail’s son earned at least the right to one beer. “He was older but so fragile. One day I let him paint my toe nails pink, and that was it for him. We were bonded for life.” He laughed. “And Cai by proxy.”

  “Why did Cai kill Nikki?”

  “To get that, you have to know how things went to shit and how we three kids were involved,” he explained. “My dad and Kaja mostly did enforcement. Things that had me puking when I got home. Darryl and Cai just sat with me while I…well, I didn’t even have to tell them. They just knew. And Cai, he’s four years younger than me, nearly six years younger than Darryl, but he’s smarter than us and the combined IQ of the whole household, ya know? So when things started to fall apart in the organization, the three of us knew the score.”

  I jerked a nod for him to continue when he squinted at me. My detachment was all pretense. I didn’t relate or understand. How could I grasp a ten-year-old being primed as an assassin or “enforcer”.

  “Anyhow, my dad was a good guy outside of all that. Which sounds weird, but he was. To all of us. Even Darryl. Which is why we never suspected he’d hurt Kaja or Cai.”

  He took a sip of his beer and set his jaw tight. I wanted to reach out to him but there was this canyon of distrust between us. While he continued to dwell on past memories, I waited, picking the label off my beer with a thumbnail and watching the shadows of his past relived in his face: a frown, a tremble of his jaw, a hard swallow.

  “Months after my grooming started, Briansky gets arrested, along with most of the high-level men. Fingers get pointed, and everyone blames Kaja—the Muslim Albanian. He’s not Russian—not one of us. There’s a split between my dad and Cai’s, everyone sure that Cai’s dad snitched on Briansky. My dad gets put in charge. And Cai gets a permanent place in our home. As a ‘guest’.”

  “Why wasn’t Kaja in protective custody?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “He wasn’t the informant,” I said.

  “Nope. But my dad had me shoot him anyway.”

  Jesus. “So, you killed Cai’s father, and he killed yours.”

  He chewed his lip so hard, I half expected blood to dribble out. He bowed his head and settled his eyes somewhere off in the corner. “My hands shook too badly. I shot Kaja—Uncle Kaja,” Peter emphasized with a chatter of teeth that wasn’t, I knew, a result of the rain and my A/C. “I hit him in the knee. Which was funny to everyone in the room. Big joke. Ha, ha. ‘Your son needs practice, Nikki’, and, ’He needs a smaller gun’. They ruffled my fucking hair, like it was so cute I missed. While Uncle Kaja is screaming and crying through a gag.”

  The shuddering breath Peter took at this point tugged my heart hard enough to pull me to him, wrapping my arms around his waist. Turned out he wasn’t as affectionate as I. He pushed me away.

  “You want to hear this or not?” Peter glared. I stepped back, hands raised. “I had to tell Cai this story, and it was a lot fucking harder to do that. I’ll manage, okay?”

  “Okay,” I acquiesced, estimating how brutal he really was. Impenetrable? Or was there something inherently good about him? How did someone come back from that with any kind of empathy for the world?

  He set his beer down. “Three nights later I find Cai sitting on the sofa, gun in his lap and my father in his favorite lounger, a bullet through his brain. I remember the playoffs on the TV so clearly. My dad’s team—the Dolphins vs. the Ravens. Dolphins were losing. Why isn’t dad yelling? Oh, might be that missing part of his head and face…”

  Peter—Age Twelve

  Peter’s faking laughter with Darryl as he opens the door, but the smell of blood and feces is enough of a blow to knock the smile off his face. It takes him a minute, maybe two, to comprehend what he sees.

  The Dolphins game is loud in the background, cheering crowds celebrating through clouds of blood and brains. Cai sitting on the sofa, calmly, legs crossed, with a gun three times bigger than his hand resting in his lap.

  “Police will be here soon I think, Rabbit,” Cai says, staring at Nikolai Dyachenko’s slack form.

  “Motherfuck! What did he do?” Darryl’s sandals clack across the living room as sirens grow closer. “Oh, shit. He’s dead. Shit! Shit. What’d you do, Cai?”

  Peter’s still trying to assimilate the scene before him when Darryl grabs the gun and Cai, jerking both off the couch. It’s not Peter’s first dead body, but that’s his father. His papa who just a few hours ago made him eat spinach. He’s maybe not thinking as quickly as he usually does. “Papa?” Peter says, staring at the corpse like it’ll stand up and grin, despite the cavern in its head.

  “We gotta go,” Darryl screams, grabbing Peter by the hair and jerking him toward the kitchen. The sirens are
practically on their doorstep by the time they all stumble out the back door, Darryl shoving Cai and yanking Peter the entire length of the lawn.

  “I turned myself in,” Cai says, still calm. It’s such a rational voice that it reaches in and flips Peter’s switch to on.

  “We’ll talk later,” Peter responds shakily, taking the gun as both he and Darryl physically shove Cai through the gate at the far end of the yard.

  “They’ll see,” Cai insists. “They’ll see he needed to die. Let me go back. They’ll see.”

  Fucking Cai and his logic. Peter can’t focus, can’t think about anything but getting away. He ignores the splatter of blood on his brother’s face, the chunks of something grey dangling in Cai’s black hair as they tear down the alley. “Cai, so help me,” he pants, “if you take one step to return, I’ll knock you out and carry you. Then we’ll all be fucked.”

  They run in silence after that, slowing down only so Darryl can find a car old enough to hotwire. It ends up being a relic from the 70’s or 80’s, a Camaro. Cai has to clamber over the center console to get in. Darryl’s already pulling a screwdriver out and working on starting it when Peter sits down.

  There’s a collective holding of breath while they drive past two police cars. The smell of onions and garlic fog the air as Peter and Darryl breathe out the pizza from just half an hour ago. Had it only been 30 minutes since his life was normal?

  “I drugged his drink, Rabbit. So it didn’t hurt.”

  “Not now, Cai.”

  “He killed my dad, Rabbit.”

  “I know,” Peter says. Darryl casts a sideways glance at Peter, gaze flickering on the gun.

  “Are you mad, Petya?” Cai asks, in that bizarrely innocent voice.

  “No, Cai. Never mad at you. Okay? Just don’t talk for a while—don’t say anything.” Darryl takes the gun and slides it under his own seat as he drives. Then he reaches over and grabs hold of Peter’s hand, squeezing it, before lacing their fingers together.