He frowned a moment, before his brow smoothed, and he turned the bacon again. “Fine. Just needed to clear my head.”
About what?“It’s stressful, I imagine, having to stay here, not being able to help. You’re usually a man of action.”
“Yeah.” He was looking down at the pan, rather than her, and something was off.
“You didn’t come back to bed.” She worked a hopeful lilt into her voice. MoreI wish you had, rather thanwhy the bloody hell didn’t you?
“I went down to the gym,” he said, and lifted the bacon out onto a paper towel, one slice at a time. “Again,” he added, before she could.
“It’s a lovely gym. I saw it through the doors when we came back yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
What’s wrong?She wanted to ask. Somethingis, and you’re scaring me.
It was a deeply unsettling feeling, one made worse by the fact that her constant anxiety had lessened once she’d confessed to Cass. Things were supposed to be better!
“Toly.”
He lifted his head again, finally. The incoming sunlight turned his eyes a rich, black-flecked amber. His expression gave away nothing…but she could read tension in it. Thought she could. Or perhaps her imagination was getting the best of her.
She said, “Why did you leave the bratva?”
Downward twitch of his mouth. A stilling of his chest, as his breath caught, a silent but unmistakeable betrayal of nerves.
“I know they’re terrible,” she went on. “I know there’s every sort of reason to leave them…but you didn’t exactly turn to a life of sedate, suburban lawfulness, darling.” She smiled, and his nostrils flared as he exhaled, at least a little relieved. “The Lean Dogs aren’t choir boys. I don’t think it was the…well, thecriminalaspect of it all that pushed you away…” She twirled a hand, inviting him to explain.
He considered for a moment. A long moment. Put the skillet back on the hob and added the diced potatoes. They hissed loudly, and sent up a wall of steam between them. Through it, he said, “It’s not like the Lean Dogs. It’s not…united.”
She frowned. “Not a brotherhood, you mean?”
“No.” The steam cleared, and his eyes had darkened, haunted and unfocused, now, as he slipped backward into memory. “It’s not.”
~*~
“What did you say?”
The man tied to the chair looked like a child in that moment, small, hunched, shivering, tears coursing down his face. He was trying valiantly not to sob openly, which meant that he snorted and spluttered, snot and saliva showering out in a cloud made visible by the single overhead lightbulb.
Toly sat half a room away, crouched on top of a metal desk, fingers drumming a silent rhythm on the inside of his thigh. He’d tried sitting in a chair, and slouching against the wall already, so restless he wanted to pull his own hair out. This situation, this whole night, had turned so horribly sideways, and biting his tongue was making his skin crawl. He kept looking at the faces of the others in the shadows, searching for signs of disgust, praying one of them would tell Oleg to back the fuck off. None of them did. He was going to have to do it, wasn’t he?
In some ways, the disaster currently playing out in a storeroom off the back of Oleg’s dingy apartment had begun a week ago, in a chance bodega meeting.
In the ways that counted most, it had started the evening Andrei called Toly into his study and said, “I’m sending you to America.” Just that. No pleasantries, no preamble. He’d lifted his brows, after, in challenge, daring Toly to resist or ask why. As the bottom of his stomach had plummeted toward his boots, Toly hadn’t wanted to ask for his Pakhan’s reasoning. Everyone in the bratva knew that cousin Oleg was in New York, fucking up the mafia’s chances of impressing anyone over there. Just as they knew that being sent there to serve under him was a demotion. A punishment. It meant you’d displeased Andrei: not enough to warrant killing, but enough to want you gone. And Oleg was always in need of fresh meat, making up for what he lacked in competence with sheer numbers.
Toly was not someone who told his Pakhanno, so he went to his room, and he packed his meager belongings, and booked a flight to New York, routed through Paris.
He’d gone to see Misha first, though, starving for some sort of explanation. “What did I do wrong? How can I work my way back to Moscow?”
Misha had sighed, and looked sorry for him, and that was worse than anger. He’d clapped one of his big hands on Toly’s shoulder and squeezed. “You know you aren’t happy here,bratishka.”
“I am.” It hadn’t felt like a lie, because he’d had no idea what happiness felt like. A good joke could get a grin out of him, and there was a certain satisfaction in a hit well-executed…but happiness? His mother had claimed she found it up in the clouds, three drinks deep, a pill on the back of her tongue, waiting to be swallowed. But that had only been a chemical facsimile, a way to cope with the ugly truth of her life. The real thing had never crossed his path, and he hadn’t been able to envision any other sort of life.
Butunhappiness was standing there while Misha gave him a glum smile and said, “It isn’t anything you’ve done wrong. I promise. You know Andrei.”
Capricious, finicky, quick to anger. Unreasonable. Maybe he thought Toly could be of some real help to Oleg, get the New York family turned around.
But that hope had been dashed the moment he arrived at the apartment block above the laundromat, and got his first look at Oleg. Skinny, greasy, in stained clothes, and clearly high on coke, the American Pakhan had laughed in Toly’s face and said, “My sweet cousin, sending me children! Go play ball in the street with the other brats, little boy. I don’t have time for you.”
