“I believe you, seriously, but I’m done for the weekend,” Vassily protested, but he was not moving away. “Not in front of the Mob guys, Misha.”
I could hear the strain in Vassily’s voice. He looked over at me with feverish blue eyes.
Across from him, Mikhail shrugged and snorted the first line with a thick sound of satisfaction.
Lazarus shook his head. “Crazy Russkies.”
Beefbrick with the curly hair was far more interested. I watched him silently ask for clearance with arched eyebrows and a cock of his head towards toward the table. George Laguetta shook his head, a small grimace playing over his mouth and brow.
“You know, I need some fresh air.” I lifted my voice enough to be heard and stood, knees cracking, and smoothed my hands over my hair. “Vassily?”
Mikhail shot me a dark look, glancing between the pair of us as Vassily wavered. Crina had frozen awkwardly, her glass held in both hands like a shield between her and the room.
“Give my lines to someone else,” Vassily said. He moved towards me.
“That’s awfully generous. Ain’t like you, Zmechik.” Vanya waved a fat ringed hand.
Vassily canted his chin as he turned on the other man, and for a moment, his face was a long, hard, lean thing of pointed lines and arrogant authority. “Sure it is. I’m cutting down,” he said, in English. “So give them to someone else.”
“Hey, lighten up. Take one and leave the rest.” Vanya was nervous under Vassily’s eye, but his grin was still wet and toothy. The expression made me look at him in a different way. Pinpoint pupils, shrunk from anxiety. Fingers, fidgeting nervously in his lap. He was worried about something—and suddenly, the pieces clicked.
Those sons of bitches.
“The balcony, Vassily?” I shoved my chips towards Lev, who took them without question. He was watching the exchange with a pleasant blank face.
“Sure.” Vassily mimed a cigarette, but he was perspiring heavily.
I could see the sweat on his lip as I drew in against his side and linked an arm through his elbow. Up close, he smelled of barely suppressed desperation. As we withdrew, I looked back over my shoulder at Vanya and Mikhail, who were trying to pretend they hadn’t noticed the intervention.
Vassily heaved a huge sigh outside, drawing deeply of the sweaty sea air and shuddering on the exhalation. I reached up, rubbing briefly between his shoulder blades with awkward sympathy.
“Fuck,” Vassily said. He shook his head. “I feel like a french-fried asshole, Lexi.”
“You did the right thing.” I let my hand fall away. “They’re setting you up to fall.”
“Vanya? Nah, man… nah. It’s not like they shoved this shit up my nose. It’s my problem.” Vassily looked up from the railing, facing the shimmering boardwalk and the sea beyond. “This…coke thing started about eight, nine months ago. That’s how I got by in there. I dealt.”
“And used.” The realization weighed on me, and heavily. How had I not seen it? “And that is a setup, Vassily. They knew you’d use. They know what prison’s like. You should have told me.”
“How could I tell you?” Vassily threw a hand up, his speech harsh with frustration. “I knew what the fuck you’d say.”
That stung. I frowned. “What I’d say? I’d have told you the truth, but I’d have been there for you during the recovery. I—”
“No. I knew you’d chew my ass out like you did this morning.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth again. Am I wrong?”
“No. Fuck. No. You’re not, because you’re never fucking wrong. That’s the fucking problem, Alexi.” Vassily turned on me. In the nighttime heat, he was sweating even more than he had been inside. Forehead, cheeks, throat. His hair was stuck flat to his scalp. “You always have to be right.”
His words dried me out, making me brittle and sharp. His change in demeanor was disorienting, and my fists clenched by my thighs. “What do you expect me to do? Lie? Encourage you? Watch you destroy yourself without trying to help?”
“Listen. You never just listen to me.” Vassily’s brow furrowed. “I was wrong, man. You have changed. You don’t fucking listen to a word I say anymore.”
For a second, I honestly didn’t know what to say to him in reply. He’d slammed the door in my face, cut off my ability to respond with anything believable. He knew as well as I did that it was impossible to deny a negative. “That’s ridiculous. Vassily, you’ve hardly been home. You haven’t told me anything. You didn’t talk to me about any of this while you were in, and you’ve hardly spoken to me since you were released, and I…”
I had been fighting. Fighting and fighting to fulfill the contract our Avtoritet had assigned me. “You haven’t been there. There hasn’t been time to tell you, and you haven’t asked, while I’ve been out on the streets getting injured, getting shot at. Working my ass off. I had another guy try to kill me today and I had one in my home yesterday. You didn’t even bother to find out why.”
Vassily turned back to glare at the ocean and fumbled at his pocket for his cigarettes. He said nothing.
“Vanya supplied you in prison, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Vassily grunted. He lit his smoke with a gold Zippo, breathing a cloud of green-smelling smoke into the dirty breeze. I adroitly sidestepped as it gusted towards me. “Him and Mikhail. They supplied for me and the boys inside.”
“They want you to have this habit. It serves their interests to have you hooked.” Beyond telling him the truth, I had no idea what to say to him. The truth was real, and he had a real problem.
“You don’t understand,” Vassily replied.
“So help me understand,” I said, exasperated. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with you.”
“No shit.” He turned on me, eyes blazing. “All you’re thinking about is the fucking coke.”
“No. I’m not thinking about the coke, Vassily. I’m thinking about you.” My face flushed hot. My temper has never been the best, and it was rising quickly. “You accused me of not listening. So I’m listening. Now talk.”
He paused for several long seconds, lips twitching, and then turned back towards the railing. “I can’t. Not ’til I know if what the guys are saying about you is true. About your dad.”
My gut chilled. “What part of it?”
“All of it.” His eyes flicked across, then back. “I know you hated his guts, Lexi, but Misha says you took him down in front of everyone. Drilled his knees out and killed him with a hammer. Is that true?”
“Not in front of everyone.” My eyes narrowed. What was he getting at? “In private. The others heard secondhand about it.”
“What about the drill and hammer part?”
I couldn’t lie to him. “That was true.”
“That’s a real shitty way to kill someone, Lexi.” Vassily’s tone turned accusatory. “There ain’t nothing bad enough for someone to need to die like that. Even your dad.”
“Yes. There is.” I leaned in to him. Something savage and hot wound every muscle in my face until they sang. “There are things that are that bad. He made his choices, and they led him to that point.”
“No.” He chuffed, almost laughing, but it was bitter. “There ain’t no justifying that kind of bullshit. You hated him, but he was still your dad.”
“He was never my father,” I replied, coldly. “And just because yours was a decent man and you lost him doesn’t give you the right to judge how I dealt with mine.”
“Choices, huh? Well, you fucking chose to get wrapped up in Lev’s bullshit. You don’t know what that’s like, to not have a choice.”
“You shut the hell up,” I said. “Now. You’re the one that said no one crammed that first hit up your nose.”