“No. But you must always act as though somebody is listening. Do you understand this?”
She nodded as he ran his hand through his hair, exacerbating his already exhausted appearance, but he continued to speak. “Kuzmich was running the prostitution ring in Coney Island and making a move to come back to Brighton Beach. Damir had ordered that I end that attempt, so I pushed him out. He shot at me because he was pissed, but it was my decision to retaliate. I made the decision not to give you any more information because there was no reason for you to know.”
The silence returned to stand between them before she spoke. “This blind trust is a lot to ask of me, Pavel. Did… Marie… Did she have trouble accepting something like this?”
“I was never arrested in Russia, but she understood the extent to which I would go to keep my family in power. And yes, she did have trouble accepting this life. At one point in our marriage, she’d planned to leave me, but I made sure that didn’t happen. She never did.”
“But it doesn’t have to be like this,” she pleaded. “I am not judging any of this. I just need more information so I can support you.”
“No,” he snapped, waving his beer. “You don’t. Some ignorance is necessary to keep you safe. You are just going to have to accept that.”
“To keep me safe or to protect yourself?” she asked, hints of her temper rising to the surface. “Every day since I arrived, you’ve demanded my obedience, but that’s just because you don’t trust me, do you?”
“Trust is a relative term,” he said, his own temper matching hers. “I have my sons to protect, too, and I’ll do anything to save them. If there is a threat to their safety, I will eliminate it. And I am a soldier in Damir’s army. It is my job to follow his orders, so stop this persistent nagging and go to bed. I’m not going to have this conversation.”
“But a prostitution ring? That had nothing to do with the boys. Seriously, Pavel. If he demanded that I be returned, would you do that, too? And Anton? Would you really send him back?”
“It will never come to that!” he dismissed, pointing his finger in her face. “Damir hasn’t asked for either of you because he believes I don’t want you. He’d only take you to hurt me, don’t you understand that? It’s always going to be like this, Zoya. All of this is who I am.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! I don’t understand any of this. I’ve never met two men who are as opposite as you and your brother, but here you are, trying to say that you’re the same. Why do you follow him so blindly? It can’t be the money. I’ve been with you long enough to know that you don’t care about that sort of thing.”
His temper finally erupting, Pavel slammed the beer on the counter hard enough to crack the glass, the bubbling amber liquid spilling across the counter to the floor. “Let it fucking go, Zoya,” he thundered. “I’ve told you that you’ll be safe. Start the process of becoming an American citizen, and that will make you even safer.”
“No!” She returned his anger without thinking through the consequences. “I mean, yes. You aren’t listening to me, and you aren’t answering my questions. I’ll start the process because I never want to go back, but that doesn’t solve this problem. Why don’t you just become a citizen, too? We have the house and you have other assets, and we’d be fine without him.”
Instead of shouting or demanding her submission, he turned away from her to stare out the window at the nighttime shadows bouncing across the sand. His temper was still apparent, but it didn’t matter. Without the answers to these questions, their relationship was doomed, so she stood her ground, crossing her arms to wait.
“It’s more complicated,” he roared with a whisper, his fists clenched in fury. “You’ve got to let this go, Zoya. Please.”
“I’ll never understand how complicated it is unless you tell me,” she said bravely. “Either I am part of your world, or I am not.”
When he turned back to her, a stranger faced her, and his expression was filled with so much anger and hatred that she was forced take a step away from him. He exploded. “It’s Yuri, dammit! He has the power to take Yuri away from me.”
“How could he do that?” she scoffed. “He’s your son. Not even the Russian courts would give him to Damir, he’s…” She stopped as he grabbed a pale green kitchen towel to clean up the beer. “What aren’t you telling me, Pavel?”
“Why would you want to hear this?” He threw the towel into the sink. “I was a horrible husband and threatened my wife’s parents so they turned their back on her when she needed them. She… she and Damir had an affair. I’m not his father, and Damir knows it.”
“I don’t…” she stuttered as her mind spun in a thousand different directions. “How do you know that? Have you had any tests done? Or maybe Marie didn’t tell you the truth, Pavel. An angry woman will say a lot of things.”
“Damir was there when she told me that he wasn’t mine. My whole family was at the hospital to say goodbye to her. She was…” His pain was so obvious that her heart ached for him, but he needed to finish for both of their sakes. “She was heavily drugged. She never would have put Yuri in danger if she’d been thinking clearly.”
He paused to throw the broken bottle in the recycling bin, and when he continued, his voice sounded more like his own. “I confronted him, and he admitted to the affair. Katya confirmed it as well. I think even my mother knew. Everybody knew, except for me. The doctors and orderlies separated us, shaming me for fighting in front of my dying wife. Damir left, and she passed a few hours later without regaining consciousness.”
“But he has three sons of his own that he doesn’t want. Why would he take Yuri?”
“Of course he doesn’t want him; he only wants to use him to keep me in line. He’s a bastard, and he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a child, even one of his own.”
“How could she do that?” said Zoya bitterly. “What kind of woman would choose to sleep with that monster?”
“I didn’t support her when she needed me the most.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “I have no reason to judge her. I would have killed Damir with my bare hands, but my mother made me realize that I’d lose everything, including my sons. If I didn’t get arrested, too many members of our extended family would seek revenge on his behalf, or worse, the power vacuum would allow another family to start a war that we would all lose. She still had control over many of our assets, including the townhouse, and she put pressure on Damir to allow me to bring the boys to New York. By the time she died, I was making him too much money. He hasn’t demanded that Yuri return to Russia, but he will if I walk away from him. And the courts will agree with him.”
“Why didn’t you just give him the necklace years ago?” she asked. “If he was willing to sell me for the necklace, he would have given up the rights to Yuri over it.”
Pavel looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “The necklace? What necklace?”
“That one!” She pointed to his mother’s portrait. “You sent the emerald to Pavel when Anton and I came to New York. I heard you tell Anton the day I came.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Zoya. I’ve never had that necklace. Who told you that I did?”
“Jelena,” she insisted. “She said you paid for me with the necklace after you took it from your mother when she died.” Even as she spoke, she replayed the few conversations they’d had about the jewelry, but couldn’t come up with a single time where he’d ever actually admitted that he’d been in possession of the family heirloom.
“Stole it from my mother? Are you kidding? My mother died very suddenly. I didn’t even get there until the day of the funeral. He probably just didn’t want to share it with her and was making excuses to shut her up. Besides, I didn’t pay for you, Zoya. You were sent here because Damir didn’t want you, If we keep up with our pretense that you’re nothing more than a burden, you’ll be fine, at least until you can establish your citizenship.”
“I… I don’t understand,” she stumbled. “You didn’t bu
y me?”
“Of course not,” he raised his voice in indignation. “What kind of man do you think I am? All I have to do is keep Damir satisfied for a few more years. The older Yuri gets, the more difficult it will be for Damir to take him, and when he’s an adult, I’ll have more options.”
“But if you did a paternity test, you’d know for sure. Eight years ago, you would have had to rely on a blood test which might have been inconclusive since you’re brothers, but now you can have his DNA tested. It would tell you everything that you needed to know.”
“And hand my brother all of the evidence he needs to go to court? I can drag this out for years by refusing the test, and I don’t want to know. There has always been a question about who my father was. My mother… she was a free-spirited woman who lived by her own set of rules. Leo was the oldest of three brothers, and his name is on all of our birth certificates, but I’m convinced that our fathers could have been any one of them. They trusted each other with their lives, so it didn’t matter to them, but as you well know, Damir doesn’t deserve that level of trust.”
“But you have something to gain by finding the truth, Pavel,” she insisted. There had to be a solution to this. “Arguably, even Yuri will need to know someday.”
“No, he doesn’t!” He turned on her with his unveiled furor returning to the surface. “There is nothing to be gained by destroying his identify, and I forbid you to talk to him about it, ever. Besides, what would I do? Call Frederic Koblentz to run the test? This secret would be shared with half of Brighton Beach before dinner. I have little in this life that has any true meaning to me, but my sons are mine, no matter what the tests show, and I will continue to work for my brother if that’s what it takes to keep them safe.”
As the full realization of what he said sank in, she grew quiet, staring at him and trying to find the words. “Let’s talk about all of this in the morning,” he said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “I need a shower and a few hours of sleep before I can go any further.”
“Koblentz,” she said softly. “The doctor’s last name is Koblentz?”
“Yes, I told you that. You’ve met him twice, for God’s sake. Why are you worried about that tonight?”
“No, Pavel,” she said, shaking her head. “You never introduced me. Koblentz. Frederic Koblentz works for Damir. I heard that name over and over again when I was in St. Petersburg. He provides Damir with all sorts of information, but I never made the connection.”
Pavel’s grim expression heightened her anxiety, and she added hesitantly, “Are you going to… to hurt him? I know that I need to trust you, but violence and murder, that’s a hard, hard trust to give away.”
“He’s harmless,” dismissed Pavel. “I’ve known that Damir had his spies in Brighton Beach since before I arrived. Hell, I recruited half of them, but I didn’t know about Frederic. As a matter of fact, I convinced myself that you were one when you first arrived, but it does explain why it’s been so easy to convince Damir of our problems. Frederic hasn’t exactly seen you in your most cooperative form. But he’s probably done us a favor, and now that we know, we can feed Damir even more misinformation about Yuri, too.”
Too much life-changing information was coming to her at once, and she sat on the kitchen chair, rubbing her forehead as Pavel continued to speak. “Sacha Belsky is probably the most serious threat to us right now. I know what kind of power he’s been given, because I created that job and gave him all of those tools. If I could kill anybody, it would be him, then I could put a man in there who I can trust.”
“Belsky’s an idiot,” she said with a shake of her head. “He has very little idea what’s going on and relies on others to do his work. You’re better off with him in that job than somebody who could really make your life miserable.”
“Do you think he could be bought off?” Pavel asked seriously. “I have contacts in Russia who could approach him.”
“No,” she dismissed slowly. “He’s loyal to Damir and too stupid to think for himself, but I bet his wife could be bought for the cost of an airplane ticket, protection, and a visa to start life over in America. These men talk openly in front of women as though we have no brains. I’m sure that she knows a great deal on him that might buy you some leverage for manipulating him.”
“You seem to understand a lot about Damir’s business,” he said warily. “What else do you know?”
“I have everything you need, Pavel,” she said confidently. “Between the two of us, we have enough information to change this balance of power for good, and when we have control of our own lives in America, Yuri will be safe. I assure you; Damir can be defeated.”
Chapter 20
For days, they sat at the kitchen table with large sheets of paper and colored pens, laying out their combined knowledge of Damir’s complex hierarchy and categorizing his most loyal soldiers. Pavel added the details of the import-export venture that he’d started in America and manipulated the new information into his business plan. Although his shell company had the air of a legal, tax-paying American entity, his success still relied on Damir’s connections.
“We can start abandoning Damir’s early efforts in New York and put our focus on the import-export side,” said Pavel. “Even expand into cyber security. That’s the real future, and those businesses will remain uniquely mine. Just understand, Zoya, as long as we keep paying him, he won’t realize it right away, but sooner or later, he will come for us. I don’t know, five… ten years… he’ll become suspicious as we grow richer. He’s no fool, but with any luck at all, it’ll be too late for him to do anything about it.”
During those long hours, she’d learned more about his work than she’d ever thought possible, but that wasn’t the only dramatic change. After several stressful conversations with Linda and Steven, the four of them had established a full-time return for the boys in mid-November. With five people living under one roof, she shared with him her plans to remodel the house, and a contingency of Russian contractors were prepared to tear out the kitchen cabinets and bathrooms and renovate the third floor attic to create two extra bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bath. In the spring, the ground would be broken for the new sunporch, giving the boys a place to play and allowing the dining room to return to its original purpose.
The day Linda delivered the boys for the last time was bound to be challenging for everybody, but Zoya was prepared. Dressed in a conservative chocolate-brown pencil skirt and a plain beige blouse, Zoya opened the door well past lunchtime. “Good afternoon, Linda,” she said with a smile, purposefully withholding any nasty comments about her hours-long late arrival. “I’m glad to see you.”
Linda turned up the corner of her mouth, speaking in rapid English with a snarl, before turning on her heels and crawling into her car like a weasel. There was no way Pavel would translate, so Zoya turned to the little boy. “What did she just say, Slavic?”
Slavic didn’t miss a beat. “She said thank you.”
“Good man, Slavic,” said Pavel, patting his head. “You’re learning.”
“I need to understand more English,” mumbled Zoya, as the boys ran to the living room where Anton immediately dropped his bunny on the floor. “This is getting ridiculous.”
“You aren’t always going to have the last word,” warned Pavel. “That was very hard for her to do. She’s going to miss them a lot.”
“Yeah, well, how well do you know me?” she replied.
“There’s a hurricane warning tonight,” said Yuri excitedly. “I heard about it on the way over here. Can we have a fire in the fireplace if we lose power?”
“A hurricane?” repeated Zoya anxiously. “You watch the news every night, Pavel. Why didn’t you say something to me?”
“It’s only a hurricane watch, not a warning,” he said patiently. “It’s just a tropical storm, miles out in the ocean, and it isn’t expected to turn. We aren’t going to get anything more than a little wind and rain with a rough surf.” Grabbing the remote from Sla
vic’s hand, he added, “And I’m watching the football game.”
“That’s not fair, Papa!” Slavic shouted, making a jump for the TV box. “I had it first!”
In the kitchen, Anton and Yuri stood on a chair that they’d dragged to the pantry, arguing over a box of cookies. Yuri held them out of Anton’s reach, but the smaller boy wasn’t giving up without a fight. “But a hurricane,” she said, frowning at the news and the growing chaos. “That’s a big deal. It could be dangerous.”
“Relax, Zoya,” Pavel said with a sigh, pushing on the top of his oldest son’s head to keep him on the floor. “We have our own little hurricane going on right here. The news channels over-sensationalize these things. We’ll have localized flooding and might lose power, but we have everything we need to survive the siege.”
She stared nervously out the back window as Pavel lay down on the couch, both of them ignoring the growing battle in the kitchen. “Stop doing that!” shouted Yuri as Anton succeeded in pushing him off the chair and forcing him to abandon the cookies. “You can’t always have everything you want.”
“Stop, both of you!” roared Pavel without taking his gaze off the television. With Yuri in hot pursuit, Anton gleefully ran into the living room with his prize, leaping to land on Pavel’s stomach. He wasn’t expecting it, taking the full impact of the heavy preschooler. “We have everything we need except for a little peace and quiet,” he huffed, getting off the couch. Turning the giggling little boy upside down, he roared with mock indignation. “So help me, I’m going to chop up all of these children into tiny pieces and make a pot of hurricane soup. It’s the only way I’m going to get any peace.”
With a quick twisting of alliances, Yuri flung himself against his father in a mock effort to save Anton, and Slavic laughed before joining the battle. “Help me, Zoya,” Pavel pleaded as the boys coordinated their attack. “They’re winning, again. I can’t take them all.”
“You do have a way of winding them all up, but at least it’s not just before bedtime. I’m living with four stubborn Petruskenkov men and you’re on your own. I’m going to do the dishes, then I’m going to spend the next few hours making sure the ocean doesn’t end up in my kitchen.”
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