Thursday was my birthday, and Ivan was so sweet. He came and met me at school again, outside my modern literature class. We went ice skating and drank hot cocoa afterward. He got me the most beautiful little book of verses by Chaucer, and he underlined the one that he said made him think of me. I’ll copy it here:
Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;
Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.
Only your word will heal the injury.
I thought that would be all—it was so lovely and perfect. But he also bought me a bottle of Opium perfume. All the girls are mad to have it, but it’s so difficult to get here. So I knew it must have been horribly expensive, and I said it was too much, he had to return it.
And he said, “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not returning it. You’re going to wear it every day and think of me whenever you do.”
And I couldn’t help keeping it because I loved it so much, but I was sure it was black market, and that he couldn’t possibly afford it. I think he must have stolen it. I don’t care if he did, but it’s part of the other side of him that he tries to keep hidden from me.
He ought to know that I don’t care what he’s done. I love him completely, every part of him, the good and the bad. I’m going to tell him that next time I see him. That he can tell me anything, because there’s nothing in the world that could make me love him the slightest particle less than I do.
When I came tonight from seeing him, Rashel was waiting in my room. She was playing with Polina, but I knew she was waiting there to talk to me because she never stays up that late.
So I said, “What is it?”
And she said I should stop sneaking out like that, that I was going to get caught, and Papa would be in a rage and I’d be in so much trouble.
And I said, “What can he do, kill me?”
I was just being flippant. Of course he wouldn’t kill me, though he would certainly rage, that part is true.
Maybe he’d even try to lock me in the room, but I can climb out the window if I have to.
Rashel doesn’t understand, because she’s such a little rule-follower, and she’s just too young.
She thinks if she just does everything perfectly the way Mama and Papa want that they’ll suddenly become some sort of storybook parents.
Not likely. If our family were in a storybook, Papa would be the miller in Rumplestilkstin who lies and says his daughter can spin straw into gold, so he can sell her to the king.
I know he’s trying to plot some match for me, trade me off like a prize heifer to some other Bratva family. Well, I won’t have it.
I’m not an object.
And the Lebedevs aren’t the heroes of any story. Rashel will realize that when she grows up.
Nadia read through the translated entry twice over.
It was so strange, seeing how her mother had the same conflicted feelings about her family legacy that Nadia was experiencing.
Being born into a mafia family was a strange business.
On the one hand, you were part of a clan with strong ties, strong loyalty, strong identity. You had power, wealth, success.
On the other hand, that money and influence always came at the cost of morally ambiguous choices. The farther back you went, the bloodier the history.
Yet, that history, that identity could not be denied. It was who Nadia was.
And as she well knew, her mother had bent to it eventually. She had made a match that pleased her family. Raised a child to perpetuate the legacy. And though she’d gotten the law degree she dreamed of, she’d used it to protect the family.
Something had happened to the wild romantic of the journal, to turn her into the strict, stern, conforming mother that Nadia had known.
Was it just time and age?
