Page 70 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

It’s never enough because it’s never her.

Akim’s waiting when I come out, settled in the chair by the door like he owns it, because these days he mostly does.

He’s been in charge of everything since about three months after she left, right about when I gave up hope of ever finding her.

I haven’t told him yet, but I’ll name him my beneficiary of everything.

Without an heir he’s the only one I trust to leave my legacy to.

“Volkov’s pushing the eastern line again. He says the docks past the rail yard were never ours to begin with. He wants a sit-down, or a war. Hard to tell which with Volkov.”

Once upon a time, that would’ve had me dressed and moving inside a minute. I’d have gone to Volkov myself, and he would’ve remembered the visit for the rest of his life.

Now I reach for the fresh bottle on the dresser and crack the seal, grunting, “Handle it.”

Akim looks up. “Handle it how?”

“However you like. You run everything else. Run that too.” I carry the vodka back to the bed and sit on the edge of it naked as a jaybird in winter.

But I feel him watching me, weighing me.

His judgment stays reserved to his thoughts, but I know he’s got them. Everyone does these days.

He pockets the phone and stands, but he stops at the door on his way out. “You know the threats stopped when she left,” he reminds me, probably with a dirty look of pride on his face. I can’t see; I’m not bothering to look up at him. “The Morozovs, the Chechens… You ever think about that?”

The night Raina and the boy disappeared, every enemy who’d been circling my door went with them, as if she was the thing they’d been coming for all along.

As if losing her made me too small to bother killing.

I don’t waste my breath responding to him because his point is that he tried to warn me and I ignored him. His “I told you so” is painful, too painful to accept. So I drink—a long gulp from the fresh bottle that will be empty by dinner.

“I think about it,” he says quietly, his final smack in the face, then he lets himself out.

I’m forty-five. Too old to start it over or find some willing woman and wait out another nine months for an heir I’d only ruin the way I’ve ruined everything else.

Akim should have it.

The name, the empire, the whole fucking thing. He wants it, he’s bled for it, and I’m no good to it anymore.

I turn the thought over and over in my head, waiting for it to feel like forfeit or concession.

But it doesn’t.

It feels like relief.

28

RAINA

“One more, pleeeeeease!” Felix hangs from the swing chains, grinning at me over his shoulder, pleading with me. I’ve never been one to be able to say no to him and it’s no different today. I have to get to the post before they close, but that smile is everything I live for now.

“One more,” I tell him, “then we’re going, because the post office shuts at five and we’ll be late.”

“Push me high!” he chants as he climbs back onto the swing and clasps the chains, leaning backward.

He’s five now and heavy enough that I have to really plant my feet and push hard to get him going. I love listening to his laughter and the giddy cheers he offers when I do just what he’s asking me to do.

So higher and higher he goes until the chains are going slack at the crest and he giggles relentlessly.