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He handed Luka a polished wooden board, upon which sat the most elegantly rustic loaf of Borodinsky bread he had ever seen. It was a dense loaf with a shiny, dark crust dotted with caraway seeds, cut into thick slices. Alongside it on the board were a couple of hard cheeses, pickles, mustard, lingonberries, and high-quality butter. The combined aromas made Luka feel right at home. He smiled at the memory of his own mother serving a lower-cost version of the same thing when he was a child. He enjoyed every bite of the bread course while he listened to the various conversations circulating.
“Da. Just finishing up another phase of the Roach operation,” answered Luka.
“You guys should bring a camera out there one of these days and snap some photos of the ghost town,” suggested Annika. “I bet it would make for some really spooky-cool pictures. Just make sure there’s, you know, not anything criminal in the background. No offense, Inessa.”
Inessa, who was diligently writing down every word, looked up with a smile. “None taken. Personally, I’m fine with never seeing that place ever again. But I’m a little biased, after Dasha and his slimeball brigade held me captive there.”
“I saw red in the desert that day,” said Andrei in a low growl beside her.
He and Luka locked eyes across the table. They exchanged subtle nods of understanding. Luka remembered the way Andrei had asked him to keep Dasha Turgenev alive long enough for Andrei to make the killing strike.
Luka watched his leader’s face soften when one of the twins made a loud cooing sound and batted his tiny palms on the table of his highchair. Next to him, his twin sister was nonchalantly mouthing a small chunk of apple without the peel. Her eyes were huge and wide, taking everything in. There were a lot of faces to look at. When she turned her gaze to Luka, her chubby, rosy little face brightened into a gummy grin. Luka couldn’t fight a smile in return. He understood why Andrei and Mikhail were so intensely protective of their lovers and families. The men lived on the edge of danger, with death always creeping around the corner to attack the unsuspecting. The women made life worth living and the bad guys worth fighting. The twins reminded them all that life was a great cycle, and that the future depended on their actions now, in the present. There was a legacy to preserve, not only for the Sokolov name but for the very real possibility of the twins one day leading the operation. For now, though, they were still working on their first words.
Throughout the meal, the men discussed the gritty details of their latest missions, interspersed with peals of contagious laughter or nonsense babble from the babies. It was an odd juxtaposition, but Luka rather enjoyed the unusual mood-lifter. The dining table was a uniting place for the inner rungs of the crime family. Luka spent most of his time working alone or alongside fellow enforcers who answered to him. He moved around the map checking in on Sokolov properties, doing a little roughing up if necessary. He tracked old enemies and traced the new ones. Sometimes, Luka even got to work with Inessa from a distance. After graduating college with a psychology degree, she was now collaborating with the men as a psychoanalyst, researcher, note-taker, and profiler. In and outside of meetings, she had a knack for recording important information, and she had learned how to codify it in a way so that almost nobody beyond the mafia’s reach would understand it. She compiled and analyzed intel about various enemies of the Sokolovs. Inessa drew up predictions of how she expected different targets to react in each scenario to determine the best mode of attack.
With Luka, she was able to offer an even more precise skill: helping him maximize the psychological impacts of his torture and interrogation sessions. She shared her knowledge about the factors that break someone down mentally and emotionally. She gave him tips on how each individual target might react to various methods of pain or duress. Luka considered himself an artist, but not an expert. He was a student. Even though his father had long passed and was no longer around to teach Luka, he continued to learn. The art of enforcement was ever evolving, and Luka relished every new morsel of knowledge. Anything to better serve the crime family.
“It’s such a pleasure to know we’ll never have to see Turgenev’s ugly face again,” said Mikhail. “Imagine following Andrei all the way from the motherland to Las Vegas, just to be cut down in a ghost town called Roach. I bet his soul is writhing in hell.”
“I hope it is,” Vadim said.
“I’m just happy to be out of there. Back where I belong,” said Inessa, looking to Andrei with a lovesick smile.
Polina came puttering into the dining room with a cart of new dishes. Inessa and Annika hopped up to help the cook arrange them on the table. The men dropped their bloodier conversation topics for Polina’s sake.
She stopped to lovingly pat the twins on their pudgy cheeks and kiss them on the forehead. Even though she was merely the Sokolovs’ hired live-in chef, she was also Inessa’s mother, which made her part of the family. That treasured role had only solidified when Annika announced her pregnancy. She had cut off the majority of her still-living family members after marrying Mikhail. Last Luka had heard, Annika was only in occasional contact with her own mother. Sensing there was a space to be filled, Polina had happily stepped up. She had doted on Annika during her pregnancy and become a massive help since the twins were born, too.
It was easy to feel isolated growing up in the mafia. Luka knew that feeling intimately himself. But Mikhail’s children had a much wider support net. They were surrounded by protection and care everywhere they went. They weren’t his children, but Luka felt bound to keep them safe.
As Polina laid down a dish of spicy, aromaticshashlik, the skewered hunks of beef sizzled in their herbed juices, glistening on the platter in front of Luka. Just like the black bread, this dish sent Luka spiraling back in time. It had been his favorite as a child, and one his mother saved for special occasions to cheer him up.
One such occasion happened to be the day Luka had first watched a man die.
He had been only thirteen years old, but he had been tagging along with his father on enforcement missions since he was old enough to ride shotgun. Over the years, he had witnessed tracking and stalking victims, kidnappings, beatings, interrogations, intimidation tactics, and more. His father had rarely forced him to participate at that age, but he had been along for the ride. He had been exposed to the raw underbelly of the state, driving all over the desert to watch his tall, dark grim reaper of a father destroy anyone in his path. But watching him actually kill a man in cold blood… that had been a monumental day for Luka,
It had been just a routine mission for his father, though. There had been no follow-up, no debriefing. Luka had watched a sharp blade slice a man’s throat from ear to ear. Young Luka had stood stunned, unable to move even as the blood pooled at the tip of his shoe. Luka’s father, along with his fellow members, had tossed the bloody corpse into the back of his van. Luka had been unceremoniously ordered into the car. His father had tossed his shoes in a dumpster and driven Luka back to the tiny house where they lived. Without explaining anything, he’d dropped Luka off on the front doorstep with no shoes and a traumatized expression. He had driven away to join his brothers in disposing of the body.
Luka had been barely able to ring the doorbell. His mother had come rushing out to collect him, ushered him into the house, cleaned him up, and sat him down at the modest dining table. She’d fed himshashlikthat night, along with his very first glass of wine. The pair of them had watched staticky reruns on the tiny kitchen counter television. Luka’s mother had talked to him, kissed and hugged him, and reminded him to keep eating as he’d thawed out from the terrifying event. Slowly, he had come back to reality with his mother’s affection. She was the perfect opposite of her husband. Luka’s father had been cold and detached, but his mother was endlessly patient and kind. She had smile lines around her mouth and tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her hands were soft. Her voice was softer. She was encouraging and accepting. If Luka needed space or just to sit in silence, she would give him that. If she sensed he needed her attention, she was all too happy to douse him in unconditional love. She was a balm for the daily suffering and fear he’d witnessed on the road with his father.
Luka’s father had taught him everything he knew, but without his mother he never would have even made it to adulthood. He understood now that bad people had to suffer or die to prevent good people from suffering and dying. He had to fight ugly battles to preserve the beauty of the world. Sometimes, it wasn’t that straightforward, but most of the time, it was.
“Luka, do you have everything we need for tonight?” Andrei spoke up.
The enforcer nodded. “I’ve got everything in the trunk of my car.”
“Well-secured?” Mikhail prompted.
“Da. Very well,” Luka answered.
The men took their time with dinner. It was nightfall by the time they left the table. They each climbed into their respective vehicle. Luka followed his brothers out of town toward the desert, heading back to Roach.
As the full moon glowed above, Luka heard a muffled shout and some thumping from the trunk of his car.The drugs must be wearing off,he thought. He merely turned up the volume of his radio and rolled the window down to enjoy the brisk night air.
CHAPTER8
KIRA
Kira sat curledup in the white papasan chair by the window. A floor lamp plucked from a secondhand shop illuminated the romance novel propped open on her lap. Kira was turning the page ever so gingerly, trying not to smudge the fresh red polish on her nails. The small apartment smelled like polish and acetone, so she had worked the old, rusty window open just a crack to let the odors dissipate. Every now and then she got a lovely fresh breath of evening air from outside. She could smell the tart-sweet scent of the ornamental flowering plum trees planted in a row along the back of her block within the fence line. Sometimes she even caught a whiff of spicy, buttery, garlicky food wafting from a restaurant a couple blocks over. The heart of the Strip pulsed close by, and soon Kira would join the rush herself.
