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It’s all too fucking good to be true.
My father was once in the same position I’m in now. He was sitting on the top of the world—respected businessman, fearedpahkanof a powerful Bratva, devoted husband and father.
And then it all came crashing down.
I was with him when the news reached us. Vadim brought it to our doorstep himself. I still remember the way my uncle hugged Fyodor first before he ever said a word. Almost as though he knew that his older brother would need to be held together.
“Brother,” he whispered, “be strong. The next few months will test you.”
I couldn’t hear the exact words Vadim used to tell Fyodor the details of what happened; I just saw my father’s legs buckle. I saw the color drain from his face. Before that moment, I had never seen him show so much as a single trace of weakness. And in seconds, he went from ruthless Bratvapahkanto a shattered shell of a man.
There was a lesson in that moment and it taught me one thing:we are all just one tragedy from our knees.
“You have done far more than I thought was possible.” Fyodor’s listless eyes grow a little brighter. “Leonid would have been proud.”
He doesn’t mention my brother often. Maybe that’s why it hits so hard when he does.
“That’s what I strive for every day,” I rasp. “To be the kind ofpahkanLeonid would have been if he’d only had the chance.”
Fyodor’s eyes glitter with unshed tears. “Leonid was smart and cunning. But he was a politician, not a titan. He would never have grown the Bratva like you have. Claim your victories for yourself, Ruslan, not for others.”
There are moments, like now, when I see flashes of the man he used to be. Thepahkanhe used to be. It ought to make me proud. Instead, it just makes me mourn for what he once had and lost.
“I should be going.”
He pushes up from his seat and I follow suit. I walk him to the elevators but before I can push in the access code to open the doors, he stops me with a hand to my shoulder.
He’s gotten stooped with age. There’s a slight hunch where once there was a steel spine. “Your mother would have been proud, too,” he adds softly.
I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Mama never cared for Bratva life. She cared aboutus; that was all.”
Fyodor nods in agreement. “That she did. The only thing she cared about was her family. Which is why she would have been so glad that you’ve found yours.”
I tense, racked with an immediate sense of anxiety. But before I can correct my father about the nature of my “family,” he makes eye contact. He stopped doing that so long ago that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be seen, reallyseenby him.
There were moments back in the dark days when it felt as though, whereOtetswas concerned, I had disappeared right alongside Mama and Leonid.
“Even as a child, you were always strong. Strong, stable, and capable. You are a better man than I, my son. And you will be a better father than I have been. Those children are lucky to have you.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. Thankfully, Fyodor doesn’t seem to require a response. He pats me around the neck like he used to do when I was a boy and gestures towards the access code pad.
“Now, you gonna let me out of this stuffy building or what?” he demands. I predict the next words out of his mouth before he says them. “I’ve been away too long from my gardens.”
And just like that, he’s back to the human ghost. A walking shell.
But even after he’s long gone, his words ring in my ears.Those children are lucky to have you.
So why do I feel like the lucky one?
60
RUSLAN
I’m thinking either Per Se or Le Bernadinefor lunch today. Emma’s partial to the latter but we ate there last week and I want to see her face when she tries theOysters & Pearlsdish. It’ll blow her mind.
But my appetite dies an instant death when I open my office door to find Adrik standing over Emma’s desk, leaning towards her with a sickening leer on his face.
Motherfucker.
