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He pushes me out of his embrace and wipes a stale tear from my cheek. “This will all be a fever dream one day,” he murmurs, eyes twinkling. “When I’m Pakhan, and you are my Sovietnik, we’ll look back at this shitty apartment in the projects and laugh about the time when I was nothing but an errand boy and you were a prostitute.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Laugh? What part of this hellhole is funny?”
He chuckles. “Okay, maybe not laugh. But when we run the streets of New York, you dripping in diamonds and me with all of the super cars I can fit in the garage of our mansion, we’ll find the humor in it somewhere.”
I punch his shoulder and flop back onto the couch. “I don’t need diamonds. I need healthcare insurance and a boiler that doesn’t break down at the first hint of snow.”
Mak lays across me, flinging his muscular legs on my lap and reaching for the remote to put on a soccer game. “I’ll give you twenty boilers, my darling. And I’ll perform any operation you need myself.” He yawns, nestling his nose into the neck of his hoodie.
“Sounds like a fast way to die.”
I watch him as his eyes dart among the players, lids growing heavier by the second. Within minutes, his lips are slightly parted, and his breathing heavy. I gently slip the remote out of his hand and mute the game, flooding the apartment with an eerie silence.
Staring at my best friend, I study his features. The sharp angle of his cheekbone, the light freckles dusting his nose. The red scar interrupting the smooth skin on his forehead. Every line and curve of him is so familiar. They are all I’ve ever known. Guilt washes over me in waves, peppered with a feeling of unease.
Taking a deep breath, I pick my cell up from the coffee table and turn it on for the first time in two days. The screen bursts to life, followed by a barrage of missed call notifications from my boss.
Like him being a bottom-rung smuggler for the St. Petersburg Bratva, my job was only meant to be temporary. A small skeleton in my closet, not a whole fucking graveyard.
I need out.
* * *
I wake up with a jolt, a bright light shining in my eyes. I must have fallen asleep on the sofa too because I’m now tangled around Mak’s long limbs, tucked between his side and the back cushions.
“Relax,” Mak croaks, rubbing my forearm and pulling my head back onto his chest. “It’s just me.”
The bright light is his cell phone screen. Through bleary eyes, I can make out a jumbled wall of text. It takes me a few moments to realize it’s in Russian. “What’s wrong?”
“I gotta go.”
I groan into the fabric of his hoodie. “Again?”
“Sorry, Romy. You know how it is.” He lands a small peck on my forehead and slides himself from underneath me before tucking the edges of the tatty blanket around my body. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you soon.”
The wheels of the suitcase he never got to unpack roll across the floorboards. The front door clicks shut. I stare up at the ceiling, unblinking, until the drip, drip, dripping of the leaky kitchen sink lulls me back to sleep.
