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Apparently, teaching the gang some manners was going well until some of the gang’s friends showed up, and Dad and Uncle Kristian had to escape quickly. That’s where the motorcycle came in. Dad was driving and Uncle Kristian was on the back, and they crashed on a wet and slippery side street.
Switching to English, Kristian mutters, “Shout at me if you want to. I know you’re mad at me for getting your dad all fucked up.”
I stare at him in silence for a long time. My uncle is lean, muscular, and fast. I’ve seen him swimming in our pool and working out without his shirt plenty of times to know that his body is a weapon. He escapes from trouble before it has a chance to touch him.
Dad, though? Dad’s tough and strong and leads our family, but his strength is being our unshakable rock. He weathers trouble and withstands storms, but sometimes he takes damage in the process. Lately, he’s been taking a lot of damage, and it hurts my heart to see it. It was devastating for me to see Dad in misery and pain day after day. It must have been devastating for Uncle Kristian, too. The two of them have always been inseparable.
Behind me, I can hear Dad joking with a nurse that he’s fine and he walked off worse injuries as a young man. For the first time in months, he sounds happy.
I fix my uncle with a severe look, as if he’s the sixteen-year-old and not me. “Dad’s oncologist is appalled that he’s only just recovered from cancer treatment, yet he’s running around at night crashing motorcycles. Did you at least show thosemudakiwho’s boss around here?”
The ghost of a smile touches Uncle Kristian’s lips. “Princess. Troian and I had them on their knees swearing to be good little boys until their shithead friends showed up.”
I don’t like seeing my dad surrounded by medical staff yet again, but at least this time, it’s for something I know he’ll get better from. He seems enlivened by the experience, like racing around on a motorcycle was the adventure he needed to feel like himself again, which was probably Uncle Kristian’s intention all along.
If Uncle Kristian knows one thing better than anyone else, it’s how to feel alive.
Chessa will be angry with him for a week straight, though she won’t dare say anything to his face. I haven’t forgotten how my uncle stepped up as the head of this family and kept the business running while Dad was too ill to get out of bed. He kept me going, too. I had to be strong for Chessa and my brothers and sisters, but Uncle Kristian was strong for me.
I tilt my chin up and smile at my uncle. “Then what do I have to be angry with you about?”
A smile breaks over my uncle’s face. He laughs and then winces in pain. “Oh, fuck.”
Uncle Kristian’s black shirt is sticking to his chest with what I presume is blood. His tattered black suit jacket is draped around his shoulders like he can’t lift his arms to put it on properly.
I step forward and peel his jacket and shirt back from the right side of his chest and see semi-dried blood over nasty scrapes. The deeper gashes are still bleeding. He must have slid across the gravel on his shoulder. “That looks painful.”
“My shoulder feels like it’s on fire,” he mutters, wincing as he lifts it carefully to test the damage.
“Come on, I’ll take you back to our place and clean you up. I’ve already said goodnight to Dad.”
“What would I do without you, princess?” he asks as he follows me down the corridor.
The house is silent when we get home because I drove my four youngest siblings to their Aunt Eleanor’s before going to the hospital. I take Uncle Kristian to the kitchen and get the first aid kit from out of a drawer.
He tries to take it from me. “I can do it. I’m used to patching myself up.”
I hold the kit out of his reach. “One-handed? You’ll make a mess of yourself. Sit down and let me do it for you.”
Uncle Kristian sits down on the kitchen table with an expression of resignation, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips. “If I had been driving, we wouldn’t have crashed. Your father hasn’t been on a motorcycle in decades.”
“Then why did you let him drive?” I ask, opening the kit on the table and pulling out antiseptic, tweezers, cotton pads, and bandages.
Uncle Kristian flicks me a dark look from beneath his lashes. “Are you serious? There are only two people in this world who I let order me around. One of them is the total boss of me in every way. I live for them. I would die for them.” He touches beneath my chin. “The other is my brother.”
After sixteen years of being as close to Uncle Kristian as I am my own father, I’m aware that he’s not exaggerating when he says he would do just about anything for me. Uncle Kristian bought me my first handgun and my first pair of diamond earrings. The handgun came first, of course. Handguns always come first in the Belyaev family. My father is dependable with an iron will, but Uncle Kristian is the one who makes me feel alive and pushes me to be better, stronger, braver.
I shake the antiseptic bottle and smile. “You can charm me all you want. I’m still going to cleanse every single one of your cuts.”
He shrugs out of his jacket. “You delight in torturing me, my sweet little niece.”
I put down the bottle and help unbutton his shirt. Uncle Kristian often gets into fights and accidents, so this is a dance we’ve done many times before. I peel what’s left of it from his shoulders and wince in sympathy at what I see. His entire right shoulder is scraped and bleeding, and there are pieces of gravel stuck in the cuts. Still, compared to Dad’s multiple fractures and concussion, he got off lightly.
There’s a silver chain around his neck, the same one he always wears, and I reach behind his neck with both hands to unfasten the clasp. “Did you know Dad’s been saying you should settle down?”
Dad’s been saying it more and more since his diagnosis. Uncle Kristian is his heir, and Dad believes aPakhanshould be a family man. According to Dad, a leader who is a father is more thoughtful in his decisions because he understands the value of other people’s children.
Uncle Kristian gazes at me through the blond fringe that’s falling into his eyes. “Oh? Why should I?”
