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I clapped my hand to my mouth. I’d suddenly realized why Konstantin had never mentioned any brothers. The cold and the bitter wind that whipped at us were forgotten: they were nothing, now.
“They made us watch as they gunned down all of our relatives and threw the bodies into the river. Then it was our turn. The leader of the gang didn’t do it himself. He got his teenage son, a fat, obnoxious little prick, to do the killing, said it was a rite of passage—one day, the gang would belong to him. And the little bastard was happy to help.”
“He started with my youngest brother, Pavel. My father was begging, pleading. He knew he’d made a mistake, he knew he’d given up everything, for nothing, he didn’t even care that he was going to die, he just wanted them to let his children live. But the teenager shot Pavel, right in front of him. And then he shot Stefan. And then he got me to kneel down on the edge of the bridge, because it was my turn. I knelt down. I didn’t cry. I knew my father would want me to be strong. I could hear my mother sobbing. I heard the shot and there was pain, and then I was falling….”
Konstantin put his hand to the back of his head. “The teenager who shot me had been drinking our vodka, and he was showing off. He was laughing and joking, taunting my father, and his hand was shaking from the cold. The gun must have moved away just a little as it fired. The bullet only scraped my scalp.”
He shook his head. “It shouldn’t have mattered. The fall should have killed me. It nearly did: my head hit a chunk of ice as I went into the water—”—he pushed back his hair and showed me the scar on his forehead—”—that’s how I got this. But somehow, I survived. I floated there for a few minutes. I was in shock: I didn’t even notice the cold. Then a body fell from the bridge. My mother. And finally, another. My father.”
“I wanted to swim over to them. I knew they were dead, but I just wanted to hold them. But I knew the gang might look down and see me so I just had to float there, playing dead, until I heard their car drive away.”
“I started to come out of my daze. I looked around. I was floating in a mass of bodies: everyone I’d ever cared about was dead around me, The cold began to sink in and it was….” He shook his head. “It was cold like I’d never known it. The only reason the water wasn’t freezing was that it was moving. Every time it slowed, I could feel the ice crystals trying to form around me. But the air was even colder. When the wind blew on my wet skin... agony, like a knife cutting down to the bone.”
I suddenly understood why he’d brought me to this freezing place. This wasn’t a story that could be told at the mansion, or in the warmth of a bar. He’d needed to feel at least a hint of that brutal cold. He felt so guilty, for having survived, that he’d needed to punish himself just to be able to keep talking.
“The air was so cold, so painful, I just wanted to sink under the surface to get away from it,” he said. “Letting go would feel so good. But….” He turned to me. “I could feel this.” He showed me his ring. “It was my father’s. He gave it to me on the way to the river, when he thought they’d only kill him. And my mother, just before they shot her, she pressed her necklace into my hand. Now, those two things were all that was left of our empire. And I was the only Gulyev left.” He looked at me and the pain in his eyes was heartbreaking. “They were all dead. My entire family was dead. If I let myself die….”
“There’d be nothing left,” I whispered, my vision swimming with tears.
“So I made a decision. A promise. And I swam to the bank, pushing my way through their bodies. I hauled myself out and started walking. It was several miles into town, crunching through the snow. By rights, the cold should have killed me. But I wouldn’t let myself stop walking.”
“I finally found shelter in a bus station on the outskirts of town. The next morning, everything sunk in. I had no money, no home, and if the gang found out I was alive, they’d kill me. But I’d decided: I was going to take back everything they’d stolen from me. So I took a different name and began.”
“I had to start at the very bottom of the Bratva, as a gutter rat picking pockets. I lived on food other people threw away. But I worked my way up. Built my own gang and started taking my family’s territory back one street at a time. It was ten years before I dared to take the name Konstantin Gulyev again. Another five, and I’d taken our half of the city back. Then I came to New York. And….”
