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One of the men beside me laughs, shaking his head. “What the hell has gotten into you, shef?”
Another worker grins. “Must be a woman.”
The men laugh. Normally, I would shut it down. Instead, I look around at them. I look at the men who have worked for me for years, some of them long enough to know exactly how little I talk about my personal life. I think about Timur’s frustration, and this invisible line I’ve been toeing for years, not allowing myself to have anything good.
And something in me loosens.
“Yeah,” I say.
The laughter dies.
I wipe the back of my forearm across my forehead, leaving a streak of dirt across my skin.
“I found an amazing woman.”
Someone whistles. I almost smile, but in the distance the ambulance is pulling slowly out of the lot with one of my men inside, a man I’m responsible for; a man whose safety was my responsibility, whatever happens miles away in a courthouse.
“She’s changing our lives.”
The words settle over the group.
Our lives.
I don’t correct myself. For once, I don’t care that I’ve said too much. I don’t care that they can see exactly how much she means to me. Matty isn’t some distraction. She isn’t a weakness I’ve allowed myself to indulge in.
She’s become something else entirely.
Something I hadn’t known I needed.
I look at Timur; he isn’t smiling. His expression is unreadable, but I let my gaze drill into his, let the statement I just made very publicly sink in.
I need him to understand.
* * *
An hour later, my phone buzzes again. It’s Timur calling from the hospital; I’ve finished the handover and stayed to complete the incident paperwork. We’re closing early, and the new supervisor is checking the site before the men go home.
“Rob is stable. He’ll need surgery in a bit to repair his tibia, but otherwise it’s mostly bruising.”
The line between us is quiet for a few moments, neither of us knowing what to say next. As the morning wore on and the news of the trial sank in, the tension I’ve been carrying finally eased.
“That’s good to hear,” I finally say hoarsely. “I meant what I said earlier. Whatever his family needs; the regular avenues of workers’ comp, but make sure his mother and sister are provided for in Novosibirsk. Find out if there’s anything at all they need at this time.”
Timur murmurs in agreement. Around me, the men are calling out to one another as they head out for the day, high-vis jackets draped over their shoulders and hats in hand.
“About the trial,” Timur says, and the gruffness in his voice suddenly seems more feigned than instinctual. It hits me that today, this morning, wasn’t easy for him. Standing up to me. And as that realization sets in, I find myself proud of my little brother.
“I’m happy everything went well. And you’re right, Matilda is a very capable woman. Beaumont would’ve fucked this up.”
“Beaumont wanted us to give up.”
Another beat of silence. And then Timur says: “Then he didn’t know anything about the Borisovs. We don’t give up.”
There are so many meanings to be found beneath those words.
We aren’t men who apologize easily. Today I had to. In Timur’s voice, I hear his acknowledgement that Matty hasn’t been just some distraction, a tryst I dragged to Lake Placid for fun in the midst of a mess. That doesn’t make my failure here her responsibility.
And whatever was fractured in my chest these last weeks, the feeling that things were falling apart, that the empire was unbalanced and unmanageable, starts to knit itself together.
