Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“That was wise.”
A man stands beside me. He is old, his tattoos faded and wrinkled, his hair wispy, his Russian accent still thick as the snow my father talks about in “The Old Country.” He offers a broad smile of yellowed teeth. “Maria’s one goal in life is to make sure people eat.”
“It’s how she shows love,” I say.
“It’s how Nikita grew to look like that.” The old man tips his chin toward the portly, bearded man across the room talking with Dmitri.
I can’t help but giggle.
“You are Eva, are you not?”
“I am.”
I’d seen the old man holding court in the corner of the room, the only other person aside from Evgeny whom people visited instead of the other way around. But Evgeny, swept up in the festivities, has yet to introduce me.
“I am Ivan,” he says, holding out his hand. His hand feels frail when I take it, his skin soft and thin.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I reply.
“I have heard much about you, koshecka.”
“You have?”
“Indeed.” His watery gaze turns toward Evgeny, both hands resting on his cane. “The boy needs someone like you. He was alone.”
“Have you known Evgeny a long time?”
“I knew Ev when he was only a gleam in his father’s eye. I earned my stars under his grandfather and served as his father’s second-in-command, as Dmitri does now.”
“He’s not alone,” I point out. “He has Vasya and Dmitri. And you?”
Ivan chuckles. “Oh, he comes to me for advice and to convince himself his choices are correct. But he won’t let anyone in. Not Dmitri, not Vasya. Not to those parts of himself that need someone to see them. To care for them. He’s hidden those since he was a boy.”
“When his mother passed away?”
Ivan nods his assent. “Partly. But to be pakhan, you must bury those parts of you. It is a job I never envied him, or his father, or his grandfather before him. We all bury parts of ourselves in this world, but to be pakhan, you must bury them so deeply that sometimes they are lost, and you become a shell of a person. A haunt. A dark specter. It was that way with his grandfather, and I saw it happen myself. His father, God rest him, found someone to share those deepest, darkest parts of him, and to lose her shattered him.”
The old man still stares at Evgeny, and I see regret in his eyes. It’s clear Ivan cares a great deal for him, and I suspect he still sees him as the boy who suffered so greatly. I can also tell he still sees himself as Evgeny’s protector, and I wonder if it’s a job Evgeny’s father gave him, one he still keeps, even now, old and tired as he is.
Evgeny turns from the man he’s speaking to, and our eyes meet as if he can feel me watching him. He smiles at me from across the room, the light in his gaze warm and soft. But the shadow remains, and I still don’t know why.
I had woken up to darkness outside the windows, having slept most of the day after my release from the hospital. Evgeny had been gone from the bed, and when I’d searched for him, I’d found him in his office again.
Except instead of the immaculate room I’d left, I stumbled into one torn apart. Lamps were shattered, books yanked from the shelves, everything on the desk swept to the floor, and curtains wrenched down to lie in a shredded heap.
I found Evgeny with his shirt hanging open, sitting on the floor and leaning heavily against the side of the desk, head down, one hand gripping a nearly empty bottle of vodka.
Nothing I said persuaded him to tell me what the hell had happened while I slept. And I had no idea what could turn the buttoned-up, severe man I knew into someone drunk and falling apart, someone who had ripped the room to shreds as if he’d turned into a wild animal in the hours we’d been apart.
Only half alert, Evgeny pulled me into his lap, one hand tangled in my hair, the other curled tight, possessive and protective, around the swell where our babies slept. He held me for what felt like hours, murmuring the words to old Russian lullabies, the vodka so strong on his breath I was afraid I’d get a contact buzz. He held me until he started snoring softly, his arms going slack, his head heavy on my shoulder.
It was all I could do, with the help of the guard trailing me, to get Evgeny up, undressed, and into his bed, especially while twenty weeks pregnant and with only one good arm. Then I stayed with him all night until he woke up, retching with his hangover.
Evgeny could be terrifying. The dark in him, the beastly, monstrous parts I’d seen, were like something out of a nightmare. But seeing him so wholly undone had frightened me even more.