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Dom and Tino join us, and together we retreat into Kirill’s room.
“You need some ice for your face,” I tell Kirill. “It’ll help with the swelling.”
He shakes his head and winces. “It’s fine. I’ve had worse. A lot worse.”
Dom presses his lips together, his nostrils flaring. “What did your father say? Did he accept your story about the watches?”
I frown. What watches?
“Yes, but he’ll only let it go if the watches have increased in value—if I’ve made him money. If I haven’t…”
“If you haven’t, what will he do?” Dom asks.
Kirill glances down at his left hand. “Then he’ll take a finger as payment.”
At first, I think I’ve misheard. “I’m sorry, what?”
Kirill repeats himself, and I shake my head, wondering what kind of hellish world I’ve found myself in.
“He’s going to cut off one of your fingers? One of his own son’s fingers?” I’m horrified.
“I doubt he will do it himself,” Kirill says. “He will get one of his goons to do it.”
“No! He can’t!”
Kirill seems to have accepted his fate. “Either that or I go back to Russia. I will lose a whole hand before I allow that to happen. I can’t?—”
Something dark crosses his features. It’s as though his mind has just taken him somewhere else.
He gives himself a shake. “It will be okay. I have to trust the watches will have made money. I know I have excellent taste. Then all will be well…except I no longer have them.”
“They’re just things. They don’t matter,” I say.
He gives me a sad smile. “It is hard to explain. Sometimes physical objects are important too.”
I lift my hand to my necklace and twist the pendant in my fingers. It does mean more to me than it just being a piece of metal. It’s something I cherish. I guess Kirill felt the same way about his watches.
I suddenly have the crazy idea that we should all leave, together, just get out of this crazy place and go and start a new life somewhere. I know it isn’t as easy as that, though. The guys have responsibilities to their families, and if Kirill’s father wants a finger in exchange for some stupid watches, he’d probably take Kirill’s head if he tried to escape him.
It occurs to me how much deeper these men’s lives run than I had ever given thought to before. I’d thought they were all about fucking and making my life a misery, but they’ve grown up in lives I can’t even imagine. I think of Dom cutting himself, and how angry and fucked up he is most of the time, and I realize he didn’t get that way from nothing. It’s a reaction to trauma.
Dom turns his attention to me.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he says. “We know what happened before you came to Verona Falls.”
My heart suddenly picks up pace. “What do you mean?”
“Your mom and Nataniele told us about the professor.”
They know? Fuck. They know what I did? Mom and Nataniele told them? How the fuck dare they do that? Each time I think they can’t possibly get any worse, can’t possibly let me down any more than they already have, they step things up a notch. My palms grow clammy. My feet seem to take root to the floor, but at the same time, the muscles in my thighs twitch as though they’re preparing to run.
Tino glances between us. “What are you talking about?”
Does Kirill know? If not, Tino is the only one who doesn’t know I tried to kill a man, and now that same man is still out there somewhere. I glance over at Kirill’s expression, trying to read in his eyes if he knows or not. The look he gives me is one of sympathy combined with a new kind of respect.
Yes, he knows. Dom must have told him.
I clamp my lips together and shake my head. I can’t say it out loud.
