Page 3 of The Bratva’s Monster

His desk is, of course, probably the worst of it. Pens and papers in random piles, dirty magazines sticking out of the drawers, and candy and food wrappers in random spots. I open one of them to find it filled to the very top with porn magazines. The top one is just from last month. The cover is of a dark-haired girl with a big, fake ass straddling a motorcycle. I didn’t know they still sold actual hard copies of these things.

I decide to sit down to get at most of this and start moving some of the papers to one side, and that’s when I see it. In the gold frame my mother gave me when we were married is our wedding photo. We’re both younger, happier. The gray in his hair had just started to come in, but you can barely see it in this picture. And I’m young, skinny, and barely twenty-one, smiling into the camera with a bright smile, my eyes glowing aquamarine and my sunshine blonde hair in a pixie cut.

Four years. That’s all it takes for a marriage to completely come apart. And now my hair has grown out, my hips have widened, and he’s dead. Gunned down in some stupid Bratva thing that I don’t even get to know the details of. That I might not have known anything about in the first place if his best friend didn’t happen to be the brother of the new Pakhan.

My eyes start to burn with tears and I do my best to force back a sob, but it just doesn’t work. Before I know it, I’m weeping. There it is. Tears, finally. Even though now that I think of it all, I really don’t want to cry for him. Not anymore.

“Dammit,” I curse at myself. I shouldn’t be crying for him, but I am. And I have been off and on since the night he died. He was a shit husband to me…

But I guess I still loved him. A part of me has even died with him now that he’s gone. I don’t know if it’s a part that I’ll miss.

“Get it together,” I whisper to myself.

I look over at the row of filing cabinets against the wall. Maybe I should start there. Go through and see if there are any bank accounts I didn’t know about or something along those lines. Despite his gambling habit, I’m fine as far as money, but if there’s anything that he’s managed to hoard away somehow, I should probably know about it. I can’t live off his savings for the rest of my life.

I get up and try to open one drawer, then another, then a third. They all stay shut, the contents making echoey metal noises as I rattle the cabinet. Of course, I need a key.

Forget it. I can’t do this now.

I leave his office and go into the living room, turning on the television. I don’t know what I was thinking trying to do that tonight. I’m just too fragile right now, I guess.

I lean back on the couch as network television drones on from the large 4k television that he bought the last time he won big on a prize fight or the horses. Who knows? At least that time, we got something out of it that we could keep.

Over the years, I’ve found mink coats gone from my closet, diamond rings and necklaces gone from my jewelry boxes. And all with the promise that I’ll get them back once he hits big again. It was always, “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll make it up to you…”

My thoughts stop as I focus on the screen. The scene before me is a parking lot and the Hudson River flows in the darkness behind it. Police tape blocks off the damp lot and sidewalks…

“It’s been nearly a month since the gangland shooting on the Upper West Side and the police still have no suspects…” The newscaster’s voice narrates as the video shows uniformed officers walking around the scene, some of them taking photos, others collecting evidence.

That’s it. That’s where he died. I sit up slowly as the scene plays out in front of me. The newscaster’s going on and on about crime in the city. I don’t give a fuck about any of that.

I think I know where that dock is and the newscaster’s not giving me anything since the story is old. Fuck. I pull out my phone and bring up a map of all the docks in Manhattan.

I flip through photo after photo until I find the shot of the one that looks the most like what I just saw on the screen. That’s it.

That’s where Gedeon died.

And a crazy idea starts to form in my mind.

Maybe if I knew why, how, and where he was killed… Maybe I can find closure? Or something that will make this okay?

Before I really know what I’m doing, I stand up, grab my jacket from its place on the loveseat, and I leave.

An icy, rainy mix hits my face like little icicles as I get out of the car. Fucking springtime in the city is only made worse by the cold air coming in off the river. I’ve parked my car by the curb, just a few steps from the parking lot.

The police tape is gone. I imagine the bullets and every trace of anything else telling of what happened here a month ago are too. I stand at the edge of the lot and suddenly, I realize I don’t know what I’m doing here.

What am I hoping to find? His body riddled with bullets in the middle of the parking lines? Chalk outlines and blood stains like in the movies? I pull my jacket collar up as an icy breeze rushes by me and I take a breath. Closure is here, where he died. It has to be. I can’t get it anywhere else. There must be something here that will give me… I don’t know. Something.

I walk onto the asphalt, my eyes looking around at the pavement. It hasn’t rained in a day or so, but it still looks a little shiny and wet under the streetlights.

I start to wonder, what were his last thoughts? Where was he standing when the gunshots started? Was he thinking of me when he died?

I get to the center of the lot and I stop. Looking up at the buildings in front and to one side of me, I feel exposed. Like someone could be watching my every move from one of those broken windows way at the top of one of them.

This was stupid. I turn and walk back toward the Hudson River and to the patch of grass just behind me. As I sit on the cement curb between the lot and the grass, I lament silently. I can’t believe I left the warmth of my home just to stand in the cold and⁠—

The toe of my boot brushes against something slippery, and I look down. It’s a coin. Actually, it looks like a penny that’s been marred by the rain.