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7
Mandy
Ivaguely heard the phone on Shura’s dashboard go off as I continued to stare out of the passenger window.
We’d been driving for only ten minutes, my attention more on the direction we were going than whatever conversation Shura had attempted to strike up with me. Maybe I should have been more grateful, but honestly, I was still reeling from the recent chaos that had descended into my life. The lights outside had begun to blur together, my vision hazier from a lack of focus than the alcohol pumping through my system.
“Da,” Shura’s voice cut through my reverie, drawing my eyes to where he was now white-knuckling the steering wheel. “Da,” he repeated, his voice even more tense. Without warning, he spun the wheel with one hand, turning the car in a sudden V.
“What the fuck,” I cursed, my hands shooting out to grab either side of my seat.
He drove off in the opposite direction without so much as a passing glance to the multitude of horns being laid on around us. He didn’t spare me a passing glance either, hanging up the phone and stepping further on the gas pedal as we shot off past the traffic. The lines in his face had deepened, his jaw set with what looked like a combination of fury and worry. The sight made my stomach drop.
“What was the call about?” My voice was threadbare in the humming interior of the car, just barely above a whisper. I almost wanted to close my eyes in order to prepare myself for what I was about to hear, but I couldn’t.
“Dmitry,” he answered shortly.
It was one word and I wanted to shout at him to ask what the fuck that meant, but the words were stuck in my throat.Wouldn’t that be a good thing? If something had happened to him, wouldn’t that free me of my obligation? Shouldn’t I be rejoicing?
Instead my stomach twisted in further knots, my teeth clenching as Shura made another hairpin turn, the houses around us becoming less well-made and lower-income suburban.
Fuck. I didn’t want him to die. Not to release me, nor to allow me to pretend to go back to a normal life . . . not even to avenge my mother. His words from dinner stuck to me like rice to seaweed paper, increasing my guilt. He hadn’t killed my mother.And fuck it all if I weren’t fucking attracted to him.
He was bossy, abrasive, and full of himself . . . but something about the way he looked at me and the scar just beneath his right eyebrow made me want to know more about him. It made me curious. Something about the way his lips pushed into mine made me wonder what would have happened if I had let him keep going instead of pushing him away. . . .
“Is he . . . okay?” My voice was a whisper in the humming interior of the car. The way I paused made the choice of wording stand out starkly in the middle of my hitched breath.Is he alive?I’d meant to say.
Shura glanced at me, an unreadable expression passing across his eyes before he nodded. “Da. He’s alive. Had a run-in, we go to him now.”
His Russian accent was all the heavier for how upset he was, skipping over English words as many of our elders did so frequently, without even bothering to pause and correct himself. The car slowed as we entered a new neighborhood; the number of people out on the street at this hour was a reliable indication of what part of town we were in.
I tried to soften my relieved sigh, but it still sounded in the car.
“You stay in car,” he ordered as the car slowed to a crawl, finally pulling up in front of a small duplex. “Not a place for you to get out. Not a place for you to go inside. Wait here. Doors locked.” He said it all so quickly as if he just expected me to follow.
I snorted, opening my own door and getting out despite his words, ignoring the sudden glances to my fancy dress that stood out so starkly against the drab streets.
“I said stay in car,” Shura hissed as he rounded the hood of the car, falling into step with me as we approached the front of the duplex door.
“Da, and he said he’d be home within the hour,” I snapped back, throwing my hair over my shoulder and lifting the skirt of my dress to walk up the steps after him. I almost ran into his back as he paused at the door, looking over his shoulder back at me with an unreadable expression.
“Careful,Mandy,” he intoned. “Wives only nag when they care.”
Though his voice was low, his meaning was clear. I’d been called out. I’d shown too much interest, too obviously, in front of him specifically. This man who called himself Dmitry’s best friend. My face heated all over again, an uncomfortable rash building beneath my skin. The door opened and Shura stepped through without another word.
I was hot on his heels, biting back my retort that would have likely come out like nonsensical gibberish—when I saw him.
Dmitry was coming out of a back room, his head still turned half to the side to answer whoever was behind him, and my feet stopped in their tracks. Not because I was having some earth-shattering revelation or because of any emotion I was prepared to feel, but because of the shock of the state that he was in.
The expensive suit he had been wearing was torn in multiple places, with blood, dirt, and I didn’t even know what else staining almost every available inch of it. His shaggy hair stood at odd ends, and his entire form was seemingly rumpled and disheveled. But it was the blood that was so very obviously his that got me. It oozed still freshly out of the cuts and bruises covering his skin.
He looked like he’d just crawled out of a bear den.
I moved past Shura without realizing it. A strangled sort of noise left my throat as I crossed the room, and that was what brought his gaze to me.
His eyebrows lifted, and some expression passed over his features as if he weren’t sure why I was walking up to him like that. Very suddenly he resembled a wounded animal, as if he were afraid I was going to attack him, and I knew that it wasn’t this instance that had given him that wariness. The fact that he carried it within him made my stomach turn.
“Manya,” he greeted me slowly as I moved closer and stopped just in front of him, my eyes running over him more carefully. I catalogued every injury. “Careful, you might make me think you worried about me.”
