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“A man of your position shouldn’t be carrying children on his hip,” she says sternly, narrowing her eyes at me like an old grandmother. I just laugh, smiling easily at her.
“We can make exceptions for today. I’ve been gone too long. Have you changed your hair? It looks very nice.”
Olga, a severe woman who keeps her iron-grey hair pulled tightly back at all times and scoffs at the invention of modern beauty treatments likesunscreenandmoisturizer, actually blushes, her cheekbones turning pink. She narrows her eyes, letting out a small huff as she waits for me to walk past. “Well, I suppose for today, we can make exceptions. But you shouldn’t spoil those girls, Viktor.”
“Well, I have a surprise for them.” I set them down as we walk inside the marble foyer, ruffling their blonde hair.
“A surprise!” Anika cries out, her blue eyes widening. “What is it, papa!”
“I’ll tell you over dinner. Dinnerisalmost ready, isn’t it? Go with Bianca. She’ll help you wash up,” I add, seeing the pretty, dark-haired servant who helps Olga with the girls appear in the doorway.
“I hope the surprise is a mother for those poor girls,” Olga says with pursed lips as I take off my shoes. “It’s been three years, Viktor. It’s time.”
I straighten, looking down at her. Olga is the only member of my staff I would ever allow to call me by my name, let alone speak to me as bluntly as she does. But with my own parents long dead and my wife gone three years past, Olga is the closest thing my children have to ababushka. And grudgingly, I’m fond of her too.
“In fact,” I say calmly, “it’s exactly that. I will be taking a wife shortly, and she’ll be here within a fortnight.”
A rare smile spreads across Olga’s face, the equivalent for her of a less restrained woman clapping her hands with glee. “A good Russian woman, like your late wife, I hope?”
Something inside of me tightens, a bitterness that, by this point, runs bone-deep in me. “I’m not sure I would call Vera agood woman,” I say sharply. “And I’m sorry to disappoint, Olga, but no.”
Olga frowns, her thick brows drawing together. “Then who is she?”
“Caterina Rossi,” I tell her coolly. “The late Don Rossi’s daughter and a widow. She will be a welcome addition to this house and a good mother to my daughters. I’m certain of it. She was raised in a mafia family. She’s acquainted with our—ways.”
Olga looks as if she wants to spit. “Theirways,” she snaps. “Not ours. An Italian woman, here, in my house? ARossi? Raising those sweet girls? Viktor, how could you--”
I feel my expression harden, my voice going cold. “It’smyhouse, Olga, and I’ll remind you of that only once. This is the Andreyev house,myhome, and those girls aremydaughters.” My jaw clenches as I glare down at her. “I allow you a great deal of freedom, for the way you’ve helped me in these past years. I owe you a great debt of gratitude for that, Olga Volkovna. But I will not hesitate to remind you of your place if need be.”
Olga seems to shrink back, her face paling slightly, and I have a moment’s guilt at speaking to her so harshly. But my life outside of this place is already full of conflict. I won’t have conflict bleeding into my own home.
“You will make Caterina feel at home here,” I say sternly. “You will respect her as my wife, as much as you ever did Vera. And you will help her to mothermydaughters and defer to her in all things. Am I understood?”
Olga straightens, her chin lifted. “Yes, sir,” she says stiffly, some of the warmth between us dissolved. I feel certain that it will return when things have calmed down. But for now, I feel a small pang of regret at its loss.
I stride past her, heading towards the dining room, where I can hear Anika and Yelena already chattering over the dinner table. A warmth spreads through me at the sound of their voices, followed by a faint pang of conscience.
I’ve been a part of the Bratva business since I was old enough to follow my father to meetings. I was always the heir, the one who would take over after him, and I always knew it. The deals we make have always been a part of my life, and I always thought very little of them—until I had my own daughters.
To many Bratva men, daughters are a liability, to be raised out of sight and married off quickly. But I’ve never felt that about my own girls. My Anika and Yelena are dear to me, and since their birth, I’ve felt that small, faint pang every time I’ve gone to broker a deal for the sale of the girls kept in our warehouses.
It doesn’t escape me any longer that they have families of their own, fathers who perhaps feel something of the same love for them that I have for my own daughters. I can’t help but think of the two daughters of the brigadiers, crouched in their cages, drugged and terrified.What would I do, I think, as I take my place at the head of the table,if someone tried to kidnap and sell my girls?
The answer to that is simple. I’d kill them in the worst possible way, slowly, so that they died screaming. I would teach them a new meaning of pain before they died, by my own hand, not one of my own brigadiers. Such a thing would never be tolerated.
But my way of life, the way of life that I was born into, consists of a few basic tenets that I have always understood. And one of those is that some are lucky.
Some are not.
The Irish have their guns. The Italians have their party drugs and their arms dealing with the Irish. And I have this.It’s not as morally grey as selling guns for rebellions in other countries or as sophisticated as high-end drugs for supermodels. I’m well aware of that. The Bratva traffic in flesh, and however I might try to justify it at times—that some of these girls have been pulled out of the gutter to be sold to sheiks, to live in palaces instead of roach-infested studio apartments, or that the men whose daughters were taken deserved to be punished—I know that there is very little moral high ground when it comes to selling women.
But it’s made a life for me, my family and for the men underneath me. It brought us out of the old country, where life and death exist on the same thin wire, and brought us here, where anything is possible.
My family has built an empire here, and nothing is going to take it away from me. Not even the pricking of my unstable conscience. I can feel some sympathy for the women who pass through our hands, but at the end of the day, nothing will change.
Some are lucky. Some are not.
I dig into the meal that Helen, the household cook, prepared for us. It’s delicious, and Anika and Yelena talk nonstop, chattering through mouthfuls of food. Normally I’d scold them for talking while eating, but tonight, I allow it, not only because I missed them and their bright chatter but also because I’m not entirely able to focus on it. My thoughts are tangled tonight, thinking about the girls at the warehouse tonight, about Colin Macgregor and Franco Bianchi cooling in the ground, about Caterina Rossi and how in less than two weeks, she’ll be in my bed.
