We pulled up to my building and parked in the shadows. I didn’t wait for Sashko—I got out, slammed the door, and stalked toward the entrance.
He caught up without saying anything. The stairwell stank of cigarettes and paint thinner. We climbed to the second floor, boots echoing against metal and tile, and I unlocked the door with knuckles still smeared in dried blood.
Then he stepped inside, halted just past the threshold, and let out a low whistle.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, eyes sweeping across the destruction. “You redecorating or exorcising demons?”
I stepped over the broken glass and didn’t look back. “Don’t ask questions. Just bring the vodka from the fridge.”
18
One Way or Another
—Maksym—
One bottle later, we were slumped across from each other at the kitchen table, both in track pants and sweat-stained white tank tops, looking like the saddest bastards. The air was dense with smoke and the ashtray between us overflowed with the stubs of half-smoked cigarettes.
Sashko’s eyes were glassy, his jaw slack, his cigarette clinging to his bottom lip like it had a death wish. He lit a new one with the dying ember of the last and exhaled slow.
“You know,” he slurred, lifting his shot glass with the reverence of a priest at confession, “you’re like a br— brother to me.”
I raised an eyebrow, narrowing my eyes. “I don’t have brothers.”
“Don’t give a fuckkk,” he said, sloshing half the vodka onto the table as he downed it. “You’re still mine. Blood of the fucked-up covenant. Mafia baptism or some shit. I’d go to war for you. I’d tattoo your name on my ass.”
“Please don’t,” I muttered, squinting at him with a mix of disbelief and secondhand shame, dragging my palm down my face like I could wipe the image from my brain.
He squinted at me like I was two people and both of them annoyed him.“I love you, suka. Like trench brothers. Like if you bleed, I bleed. That kind of love. Deep. Ugly. Forever.”
I snorted, stubbed out my cigarette with a little too much force. “You’re an idiot.”
“But I’m your idiot,” he said, grinning, and leaned over the table to grab the back of my neck, yanking me forward so our foreheads knocked together. “Brotherhood, blyad. Fucking sacred.”
We stayed like that for a beat, both reeking of smoke and sweat and liquor, and then burst out laughing like lunatics.
“But seriously,” he said, tone dipping. “What happe— what happened? What the hell’s going on with you?”
I picked up the bottle, tilted it, took a long swallow. My throat burned.
“I’m going to kill Pakhan.”
He snorted vodka out of his nose and grabbed a paper towel. “Shit, warn a guy. Big ambition. You and every other miserable fuck with a conscience.”
“Next time you won’t be able to stop me.”
Sashko leaned in, elbows digging into the table, eyes narrowing. “Okay, but why now? What finally snapped in that sociopathic head of yours? Did he insult your tattoos?”
I didn’t blink.
“He kidnapped my sister when she was three. And sold her.”
The room went dead. Sashko froze mid-drag. Smoke curled between us like a noose tightening.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I staggered to my feet and wandered out to the wrecked living room, crunching over broken glass and splintered wood. The folder was still on the floor, half-buried under a toppled chair. I bent down, grabbed it with shaking hands, the pages gaping open like a fresh wound. I tossed it down in front of him.
