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The words dropped like bombs within me.
The initial discomfort of being a stranger amongst friends was nothing compared to what I now felt in the frozen aftermath of her implication, my mouth drying out so completely that I nearly drowned my entire glass of wine in one gulp.
“Tanya,” Kuma Yasif hissed reproachfully, pulling away the bottle of vodka from in front of her.
I could see all of it, I was still there, but the whole of me felt so very absent suddenly, as if I were viewing it all through several layers of frosted glass.
“It is fair question!” Tanya snapped back, reaching forward to refill my glass eagerly, as if hoping that it might make me talk.
“We don’t consider it murder when it’s under contract,” Moira broke in quietly. “Papa Yerik was torpedo then, not Pakhan, and my husband says contract kills don’t count as murder because they aren’t a choice, just an obligation.” Her gaze flitted between everyone but me, looking for some affirmation. When none came, she lowered her gaze to the glass in her hands.
I said nothing, lifting the wine glass to my lips again and forcing myself to drink it more slowly this time.
“Of course, he does,” Ylena snorted, sarcasm filling the four words as if it were part and parcel to be expected. “You are so green, Moira, really. He probably just didn’t want to make you cry again. Grow up, I know that I—”
“You,” Kuma Yasif spoke up, her voice firm, “are bitch, Ylena. Putting on a pantsuit and involving yourself in politics that aren’t of our country does not make you wise and worldly. And you, Tanya, are just upset because Manya married the man who wouldn’t so much as give you a second glance no matter how much leg you flashed him. Want to talk about green, pah.” She huffed, silencing them even further with her scorn. “As if we all do not live with the things our husbands do. That is what Bratva wife is—what Bratva wife means. We clean and carry the mess and the scars that our husbands cannot, and Dmitry has nothing to do with that contract of his father’s.” Kuma Yasif stared down each girl in turn as if daring them to disagree.
And I surprised them all, and myself, by finding my voice again.
“If I had known this was going to be an episode of the “Housewives of Bratva Men,” I would have come better prepared,” I said drily, holding my glass out for a second refill. “If you wanted to know how sex between Dmitry and I was, surely there was a more direct way to ask?” My flinty, black gaze slid purposefully to Tanya, one perfectly manicured eyebrow raising as I channeled my inner-Dmitry.
The laughter around me and sudden surge back into conversation hid the shaking of my fingers around the wine glass stem. The bombs still went off within me, breaking and shattering what little assurance I’d entered with.I knew only two things: My husband had kept a secret from me … and my father-in-law was the man responsible for my mother’s death.
The three words carried with me for days now soured against the roof of my mouth.
