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“I will say when it’s enough.” I yanked the bottle back, the liquor sloshing against the glass.
Boris eyed me, shaking his head. “What happened?”
I shoved the bottle to his face. “Shut up and drink with me.Eto moi prikaz.”
“You can’t order me to drink.”
“I am your pakhan,” I said bitterly. “I can order you to die.”
Slowly, Boris took the bottle from me and took a sip.
The sky was blurrier than usual as we stared across the empty pier. After leaving the penthouse, I had called Boris and had him drive me here, as far away from Elia as I could get. Even through the haze of liquor, I could still hear her pleading voice mixing with the ghost of Svetlana’s.
Let’s fly away together, Alyosha. Just you and me.
She had no idea what the fuck she had done to me.
“Drinking won’t make it go away, Alyosha.”
“I didn’t bring you here to talk!” I snapped, hating how I felt about the situation. What was she doing? What we did together had changed me, made me care, made me feel. And in a single sentence, she had made meremember.
I couldn’t deal with it. Almost the same exact words…The same exact pleading tone.
I upended the bottle, sucking down the liquor before Boris snatched it away.
“Enough!” He tossed it to the ground, shattering it into a million little pieces.
The haze of the alcohol enveloped me, and suddenly, I was ten years younger. Suddenly, I was watching that horrible night in my mind again—a night that I could never forget.
***
That night, I had gone so far as to make all of the necessary arrangements to leave the world that my father had built behind for the exact kind of life Elia had described. Except then, it was with Svetlana. She was beautiful, and she was the only woman that I loved until Elia stepped into my life.
I truly thought that she and I could live a life far away from the path that my father had laid out for me.
“Let’s fly away together, Aleks,” she had told me before that fateful night. “Just you and me.”
But we didn’t get very far. I closed my eyes, and I couldfeelFather’s rough hands dragging me out of the car. Boris had been with me then, and he was forced to watch with me as Father handed out his judgment.
I fought. Oh, I fought like I’d never fought before. I begged my father to let her go. Said that whatever sins I had committed, they were committed by me alone. Whatever punishment he would parcel out, it would be mine to bear.
That was the last night that I ever cried.
Svetlana had screamed when they pushed her to the ground. She kicked when they ripped her clothes from her. She reached for me, but Father kept me restrained so that our hands could never touch. Even as she reached for me in desperation, begging me to save her.
And then his brigadiers lined up behind her. One after another.
“Let this be a sharp lesson to you, Alyosha,” Father had snarled in my ear as he forced me to watch his men rape her while I struggled in vain to save her. “Never forget this.”
And when it was all over, Svetlana lay sobbing on the ground, bleeding between her legs. Bruises, cuts, and cigarette burns marred her face, arms, and legs. She had been so beautiful, and Father had ripped it all away. That was when Father added the final act of humiliation. He handed me a roll of bills and told me to pay her and thank her for being a good whore.
That night, I tried to drink myself to death. And I would’ve succeeded had Boris not been there.
Three months later, I was sent away to New York. I asked Father about her before I left. He simply shrugged and told me she’d disappeared to the streets like all whores did, and that she was in all likelihood, dead.
***
“Alyosha!” Boris shook me, and I returned to the present.
