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Chuckling, I shake my head. “Father said that’s having children.”
Running a hand over his face, Milos sighs deeper. “I’m ready for mine and Celia’s children. Nikita is too damn old to be as aggravating as he is.”
“Nikita will get away with what he thinks he can get away with. Worry about your Celia. Don’t worry about Nikita.” The expression that comes over his face at the mention of Celia sends a shiver down my spine. Once again I’m grateful I’ll never feel whatever it was. More than four years Milos has been a slave to the need, hunger he feels for Celia. I don’t understand it and I pray that I never do. I never want to be beholden to the whims and emotions of a woman. Nothing sounds more hellish. Watching him go through the agony of her absence the last four years clinched my resolve to never allow it to happen to me.
Nikita teased him when he found Milos listening to her recordings. I cannot bring myself to. The way her voice soothes him is something I cannot tease him for. If I wasn’t sure he would shoot me for it, I’ve considered playing her voice when I have to tell him something that will piss him off. “I don’t mind going. There’s always that option.”
“No, that isn’t an option. I need you here. Any closer to resolving our issue with the FBI agent?”
There’s something in his voice. “No. Why?”
“You still haven’t read her file.” It’s not a question.
A bellow of sound fills the whole damn condo. Milos rolls his eyes as Nikita calls out his name again. Nikita is forever loud and demanding of attention. As the baby in our family we would have thought he got enough attention from our mother, who doted on him—apparently not.
“Here already?” Nikita mutters the moment he sees me.
Nikita often resents the closeness between Milos and me. Until he remembers it isn’t something either of us has control over. I’m only ten months younger than Milos. We’ve been as close as twins since I was born. Mother says we slept together in the same crib, then the same room, refusing to be separated from each other.
It wasn’t until Milos was fifteen that we slept in different bedrooms. Neither one of us liked the idea of me walking in on him fucking our mother’s best friend.
“He is.” Milos nods at him. “Aleksander and I have been talking about you. Let me dial into Vasily and the others.” Our afternoon discussion on Mondays is one we all sit in on. Our brothers in Philadelphia didn’t feel so far away when we spoke weekly.
Milos gets down to the heart of what today is about. After we settle Nikita, Vasily will break the news to our brothers that it will be marriages for all of us.
“Nikita, we’ve discussed this. You will marry her and you’ll do it without being an asshole about it,” Milos growls. He doesn’t do a good job of hiding his glance at his watch.
“How come you get to pick your bride?” Nikita throws his glass against the wall in frustration.
I’m splashed by the vodka and am glad I poured another glass of it over an espresso. I exhale the smoke of my cigar, focusing on the flavor over my annoyance with Nikita. “Because he’s the fuckingpakhan. Being born first has its rewards. He also happens to have a hard-on for an effective chess piece. You’re marrying to secure your own piece.”
It's a fact that Celia is an effective piece as the daughter of the Don of the Outfit. It didn’t matter that she was a bastard, her father Carlo touted her as his often enough to make the linking of our family and his a formal consolidation of power through marriage. We’ve held our place in Chicago over the last fifteen years through very careful planning and alliances. However, in truth Milos is only marrying her because he’s obsessed with her.
“Fuck all, enough with this stratagems bullshit. You’re sending me to New York with Gregori’s family on my own. I should know every fucking thing happening.”
“As our uncle, Gregori’s offer to solidify family power by a marriage between us makes sense.” Milos sighs.
“To a fucking cousin, we aren’t hillbillies, for fuck’s sake! And why the fuck are we entertaining solidifying power by marriage whenweare more powerful?” Nikita stands to pour himself another drink as a maid comes scurrying in to clean his mess.
I laugh at his outrage. “She’s the adopted daughter of our cousin. They got her out of an orphanage in Mexico, you know that. God knows they never let the poor girl or anyone else forget it. It’s hardly inbreeding. Your children won’t come out with a tail.”
“Fuck you then, you marry her.” Nikita growls.
“If you throw that fucking glass, I’ll make you pick up every shard with your pretty face,” Milos warns him.
He grits his teeth. Milos doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean. While it’s been a dozen years or so since Milos has used his fists on Nikita, he won’t hesitate to do it again. “The girl is too young. She’s also short, fat, and completely unremarkable. I want to pick my own bride.”
“Every women you have brought home has been unacceptable. They are bottle blondes with fake big tits, fake teeth, fake hair, fake everything. Your child would be more likely to come out with a tail from a woman whose body is made up of seventy-five percent plastic.” Milos rolls his eyes.
“I know Grigori asked for it to be Aleksander. I’m aware I’m just thederzhatel obshchaka.Yes, I can do it there, but we’ll have to encrypt then encrypt times three, and even then there is no guarantee it will protect what I’ve done and need to do. Why are you sending me instead?”
As thederzhatel obshchaka—the bookkeeper—he collects and launders our money so we appear clean. Nikita keeps track of every penny made and where it goes. It is such a large and important role there’s a reason he only has the running of a smaller restaurant as an additional responsibility.
“Aleksander is not simply my number two, we are joined in our thoughts and intentions. Everyone knows I cannot do what I do without him. While he will never inherit—unless Celia gives me nothing but girls—Aleksander is fine with that. We know that—no one else does. Every once in a while when he’s drunk, he mumbles shit about forever being second to me. To see who we catch with the fly on the hook. It’s how we came to lose Ilya and Dima.”
I get up, refilling my vodka. “A few times Ivan and Artem have joked Grigori would love to have me, only it never came to anything. They never pressed it.”
Now I’m wondering if I should have set a trap for them sooner. If I had nipped this shit in the bud years ago, they wouldn’t think it was an option to kill Milos. Guilt grows within me.
