Chapter Text
XII.
The future is a slow-moving monster, but it levels all the same.
When David loses his hands, when they become nothing more than just decorative props hanging off his arms, he becomes somewhat purposeless. They never quite heal right. Too unsteady for delicate mechanical work, too weak for anything more arduous than writing a check or holding a teacup. Charon without his boat is just a rudderless ghost. He tries not to harbor resentment for The Boss, who meted out his worst punishments to those who obeyed him the hardest, but he fails. It builds and builds and reaches a breaking point when The Fold is sold off to some trust fund kid, who turns his paradise into an underground barbershop.
One loss after the other – first his friends, and then his hands, and then his pleasures – and it gets too be a little too much.
One doesn’t exactly resign from The Bratva, but occasionally, one does get to retire. There’s precedent. He visits the boss’ private home, a nondescript brownstone in Brooklyn, just to show that he can. Finds him spending time with a woman with long, dark hair, soft, upturned eyes, and an unblemished throat. One of his little whores.
He is led to a room with floor to ceiling bookshelves and worn leather couches. Piles of books are on the ground, battered and earmarked. It’s a mess – a departure from the sterile, minimalist office in The Fold. Former office.
One wall is covered completely with photos from a life he never knew The Darkling led. Photos in Moscow, in Tuscany, in China, all with Alina. A shrine for what he had lost.
It would probably be good if I went home, Otets. I keep thinking of ways to kill you, which isn’t good for either of us, he says this in a tone one shade away from being a threat.
His boss doesn’t smile, but David could tell that after years of losing out to a rat they can’t seem to identify that he appreciates the honesty.
I could always kill you first, The Darkling says.
Yes, I suppose you could. I suppose if I valued my life, I would beg for it.
And you’d rather be in Russia than beg?
No, but perhaps if I were home, I’d remember how terrible life must have been for me to have chosen you instead.
As a parting gift, he offers The Darkling the knife – beautiful, delicate, mother of pearl, gleaming white behind a glass case. It’s inscribed with a verse from Richard Crashaw’s Out of Catullus:
Brightest Sol that dies to day.
Lives againe as blithe to morrow.
The Darkling, intelligent under all his cruelty, understands that it is not a taunt but a reminder. He nods and places the box on a shelf.
I suppose I should thank you for your years of service and loyalty.
No need, but perhaps you could let me borrow the jet for the last time?
The Darkling laughs at that. No. You can leave, but you don’t get to do it in style.
Russia – Yekaterinburg, home but still far from home – doesn’t answer any of his questions. It’s simply cold and damp and comforting in its ugliness, both in landscape and history. The Iset River is frozen in the dead of winter, and he walks along the embankment everyday for weeks. Ice in his breath, fingers aching in the frost, waiting for the darkness to clear and speaking to no one except for his doorman. Slipping back into the language feels a little bit like falling asleep for an insomniac – difficult, but almost always within reach.
One morning, he decides to come into an empty shop for some coffee. Music plays softly in the background, a song and a voice he recognizes. He finds it hilarious and heartbreaking that there are so many songs about his boss just casually being played all over the world.
The woman in the counter notices him frozen in the middle of the room and tells him in Russian. I hate to admit it, but it’s a good song. Alina Starkov, eh? My daughter adores her. Good, Russian girl too. Would you like a Napoleon, sir?
She’s mixed, actually. Half-Chinese, or so I hear. And yes, two Napoleon and raf, too, please. Hold old is your daughter?
Oh, she’s 16, just a little girl still.
She’s got good taste in music.
The woman laughs and asks him to wait for a couple of minutes as she prepares his coffee.
David sits at a table near a window and listens to Alina Starkov sing. It’s a slow one – just strings, bass and piano, almost haunting in its beautiful simplicity.
He tries to remember if he’s ever actually spoken with Alina in the entire time she had been in his orbit. Realizes he had been underground for so long; he barely had any memories beyond gray walls and blood on white floors. What is a man beyond what he remembers?
It was poison – how much power he had as the Otets’ executioner. Blinding. The loss of it is humbling. He is cold like the rest of the world; as broken as the next man.
Alina sings, I've been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night, and now I see daylight.
Her voice is beautiful. Was. Her voice was beautiful.
David watches the snow fall, and hopes for Alina Starkov’s peace, wherever she is. Hopes she stays hidden for the rest of her life, or for the rest of Alexander Morozova’s life. Whichever ends first.
When the woman serves him his coffee and his treat, he smiles. The charm is easier to slip back into than the language, and it takes him very little effort to convince her to come home with him.
He doesn’t take his time with her – careful but fast cuts that takes it easy on his mangled hands. The mess afterward is a surprise – The Darkling had spoiled him, truly, and for the first time since he arrived in Russia, he misses him. He cleans up as best he could and wraps the broken parts of her in the carpet. It’s a Persian rug, but he’s not all that attached to the furniture.
The next morning, he vacates the apartment without notice and gets into his car for the long drive back home to St. Petersburg. He wants to see his mother, maybe give her a kiss. Hopes the only thing he will ever break for the rest of his days is bread.
XIII.
It happens like this —
Ivan creates file after file of evidence, paints a pretty target on Alina Starkov’s throat. Every single phone call she had been in the room for, every strategy meeting she had sat in, every night she spent in the club, every time she could have taken a look at the boss’ emails, his texts, perhaps his call logs. How they coincide with nights the brothels are raided, nights the shipments from the north and the sea are fucked over. Even in the thick of it, he knows they are thin half-truths. He rationalizes it like a man who has killed too many people without facing consequence – careless and quick.
It takes two weeks to turn The Darkling. Just two, until the dark thread of rage around his hands turns into a knife. Passion is poisoned until there is no other choice. Almost too easy. In a rare moment of vulnerability after he is presented with all the evidence, the boss says, I knew it was too good to be true. Who could love men like us except for thieves and liars?
They didn’t even have to break into her apartment. The boss had a key to the front door. Her security recognizes them, and politely, politely, stands in the hallway to give them privacy.
They find Alina Starkov writing a song on the piano. Pencil tucked behind her ear, playing a furious melody. She was barefoot and her toes were painted a happy, bright yellow, an inconsequential detail that Ivan will not be able to forget in the months that follow.
Pretty song, The Darkling says, startling her out of her son g. She turns, the beginnings of a smile on her mouth. Until she sees Ivan there, murder in his eyes. Zoya, bored and eager for this to be finished. Fedyor, looking like he’s already regretting what they will do.
Confused, she goes, Sasha? What’s going on?
The Darkling throws the accusations that Ivan had put in his head at her feet, and Alina is too heartbroken, too unprepared to defend herself. In the end, all she had was this – I would never betray you, Sasha. What would I gain? Why would I lose you like that?
The anger had been too great then, a dark wall that make all of them unable to separate lie from truth.
It’s Ivan who grabs her by the hair and pins her to the ground with a knee on her stomach. He is the one to present her throat to the boss.
He thought it was an honor.
Fedyor leaves the room to kill the guards, and Zoya takes Alina’s kicking feet into her hands. Breaks both of her ankles with the back of his gun to make her stop moving so much. Ivan doesn’t miss The Darkling’s flinch as she screams.
He crouches down and gets right in her face so her could watch fear flood her eyes and turn into helpless tears. He tells her, You take my livelihood from me, I take yours from you.
He strokes a hand over her face, wiping her tears away, before trailing gentle fingers over the delicate skin of her lovely, ivory throat. Feels the words, Sasha, don’t do this, please, I love you, before she can even breathe them out. She blinks up at him, with pleading, gentle eyes, like she’ll still forgive him if he stops right this second.
Ivan thinks, why is he hesitating?
Says, Quickly, Otets. Somebody’s probably heard her scream already.
A beat.
The Darkling pulls the knife out of his breast pocket; it had been resting over his thundering heart.
Alina begins to wail.
Sasha, please. Please, stop it.
Ivan punches her across the face to shut her up, and The Darkling doesn’t even blink before pulling his gun from where it’s holstered to the side of his chest and shooting him in the face. He’s lucky it’s just a graze.
The pop makes Alina scream, her hands snapping up to cover her face.
Ivan falls to the ground, clutching his cheek to keep the bleeding under control. The pain isn’t so bad. He’s more afraid to leave his DNA anywhere in this scene than actually dying.
What makes you think you can touch her?
Ivan snarls, blood dripping down to soak into the blue of his coat, but doesn’t say anything.
Zoya watches it all, ennui turning to fear, still holding Alina’s calves.
The Darkling turns back to his woman and presses a kiss over her already-swelling cheek as if to make it better. She only cries harder. Shh, my love, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, just hold still for me?
Sasha, please, I didn’t do anything, pleasse. Stop, stopstopstop.
He makes a sound of regret, and kisses her softly, on quivering lips, for the last time. Quiet now, malyshka, don’t move. It’ll be over soon.
The cut is careful, methodical, meant to bring as little pain as possible. She screams, making music to the very last second, until she loses consciousness – eyes rolling to the back of her head. Blood, gurgling and bright, rushes out of her neck and onto the pale pink carpet on the floor. It’s over in less than five minutes.
The silence that comes after is deafening.
The Darkling looks at his work in horror. Looks at her blood in his gloved hands like it’s a slap in the face that wakes him up. A garbled sound of grief escapes his own throat.
Ivan looks helplessly at Zoya as their boss weeps.
— this; a nightmare in Manhattan.
Except – the beginning, and not the end.
None of them, least of all Ivan, could have predicted the weight of The Darkling’s remorse. The regret, the sleepless nights. It becomes clear the he mistook The Darkling’s distraction as lust; it becomes clear that The Darkling himself made that same mistake. In the beginning of the reeling aftermath, he waits. For calls from policemen in their pocket. When none come, he begins making calls himself – unheard of, in their world. Hi, this is Alexander Morozova, has an Alina Starkov checked into your hospital? – but still walks, every day, emptyhanded. Free.
It becomes another crime that’s swept under the rug.
Ivan watches just how little the boss can’t take it:
Begins a killing spree that should have landed anyone in jail – and yet.
No repercussions.
No jail time.
Starts killing the police not because they keep raiding his brothels – but perhaps so they could slap handcuffs on him and throw away the key. Retribution. It never comes.
Eventually – Ivan stops being invited to meetings. His men are reassigned. Doors are closed in his face. He understands death is imminent.
A little too late, Fedyor points out: She wouldn’t have known about the hookers. The way she looked at him, Jesus – she wouldn’t have known he was selling women’s bodies for profit. How could she have known about the whorehouses?
And so before he dies, Ivan makes a bid for absolution.
It takes a bit of money, some amateurish spying, but he succeeds at bugging every single member of the brotherhood. Even his husband, even the boss. Phones, trackers, hacked cameras, the works. The organization is compact, a moving organism – and yet it costs him millions. He thinks, if I find the real rat, I can always make more money, enough for ten lifetimes, instead of just three. He tries solving the right problem in the wrong time.
He gathers enough information on his brat’ya to see the faint shape of the rat, just hiding under the shadow of The Darkling’s insurmountable grief. If he had been alive for longer, he would have found clarity, patterns, easy to spot under direct sunlight —
of credit card payments for gas stations not quite far from the Irish mob’s laundromat in Prospect Park.
of large sums of cash being moved by the Italians to a bank account under the name Pyotr Beznako.
of that bank account being used to make monthly mortgage payments to a hunting lodge near Glasgow, Montana.
— unfortunately, he is killed. His body is thrown in the Bermuda, his things and files and hard drives are put in storage.
And the rat continues to roam free.
XIV.
The Darkling has no power in Europe – and as such, none of them do. This becomes clear, quickly. In Dresden, he is just another man with money, swimming in a sea of equally wealthy men. The receptionist at Steigenberger Hotel de Saxe glances quickly at the tattoos not hidden by their shirt sleeves and coats, and very pointedly doesn’t call a manager to deal with their check-in. They are offered rooms and not suites – apologies, gentlemen. It’s a very busy month. – and Matthias watches as the boss gathers all his self-control to not to shoot her dead in the lobby.
He delights in watching the biggest shark in New York transform into a little fish. Loves watching the boss get knocked down a peg.
The Darkling says something, because he can apparently speak German – the man’s a Swiss army knife full of hidden abilities – and they are all given keycards to rooms in the third, sixth, and seventh floors. The present Vory all take rooms adjacent to the boss in the seventh, the rest of the goons scatter.
Matthias tries not to grin, looks at Mal, who is failing to do the same.
Absolutely fuck all power. Hilarious.
They are given less than half an hour to put away their things and shower off the hours of travel on their skin. In the privacy of his room, Matthias checks Nina’s Instagram. She’s still private, and neither her post count nor her followers and following have changed. He’s got the figures tattooed in the back of his eyes.
It’s pathetic but he’s tried seventeen different times to follow her, using a multitude of fake accounts over the last year and a half. She deleted every single one of his requests. And so, he resigns himself to simply watch as the numbers on her page shift and grow – swallowing the very shallow end of a particularly shitty stick.
He’s good at that – just watching.
He has not seen hair nor hide of Nina Zenic since she was a battered, swollen thing, asleep in a hospital bed. Nearly beaten to death by the man he still claims loyalty to. He’d been foolish to let her out of his sight at the hospital, but he had been shaken from watching her get tortured. It stung – knowing he couldn’t protect her from the Otets. Was desperate to protect her from everyone else.
She pulled an Alina Starkov on him. Disappeared in the night.
If she had stayed in New York, he would have found her. He could only guess that she didn’t.
Matthias isn’t the Darkling. Possessed none of his psychopathic will nor his resources – he understood that Nina wanted to be left alone. Deserved to be left alone after what she had gone through. He wasn’t going to kill or torture or pull himself apart piece by piece just so he could see her again. The most he did was call her phone relentlessly until she changed her number.
It’s just - photos would do. Little assurances. It kills him that he is not privy to that anymore. He used to watch her sleep in his arms, now he can’t even get past Instagram. Even her icon is just a picture of a pile of waffles.
His entire life has been reduced to missing her – wishes could find perfection in someone else, so he could move forward – understands that if he hadn’t been such a coward that night in Hunts Point, perhaps he wouldn’t need to.
He just stood there. Watching her suffer. Watching her take blow after blow. Watching The Darkling use her as a human ashtray. A wave of nausea overtakes him as he remembers the smell of her burning flesh – is in the bathroom dry heaving before he could help himself.
What kind of a man is he? What kind of a man just stands there and watches?
He hadn’t even been able to drive her to the hospital – no, Dubrov did that – he’d been too busy finding out that she had been picked up in the home he had bought for her in the East Village. The one place she was supposed to be safe in. The men – he was told they had been Zoya’s – chose the perfect time too. He’d been out collecting payments in Hell’s Kitchen when they came. That meant they’ve been surveilling the house for weeks, knew her schedule, knew his.
Stupid fuck, he was. Can’t do anything right.
There are no secrets in the Bratva, Helvar. You should know that by now, The Darkling told him.
He didn’t sass. Didn’t talk back. Didn’t say – oh, yeah? No secrets? What about that rat you keep failing to find? He seems pretty good at keeping secrets. No, he stood there and took that too.
Matthias is self-loathing and sleep deprivation and he is rage and he is regret. Downs all the little bottles of whiskey in his room before he changes into a new suit, ties his overgrown hair to the back of his head, and heads to the hotel bar, where the rest of the men have already gathered to wait for The Darkling, probably still in his room jacking off to pictures of dead pigs. Fucking sadistic prick.
Drink? Nikolai Lantsov asks him. He’s a pretty boy who stinks of nepotism, and Matthias hates him too.
He nods all the same and tells the bartender to fix him an old fashioned. The bar is all modern – sharp edges and red upholstery and moody lighting. Packed with suits, and the buzzing of different languages. It reminds him of Wall Street bars – the polish of money and the gleam of expensive leather shoes.
You ready for this, Helvar? Because, I gotta tell you, I’m pumped up. My sword is sharp, my eyes are on the prize, I’m so excited, I’m getting a hard on.
It’s not a war, it’s us kidnapping a little girl with a broken throat.
Okay, dipshit downer, Jesus.
Matthias takes a sip of his drink – the bartender made it too sweet, fuck’s sake, can’t one thing be right – and hopes to a higher power that Nikolai learns to shut the fuck up. Except, Matthias never gets what he wants.
Mal joins them, wearing an especially good-looking three-piece pinstripe suit like he’s about to walk into a board room instead of a hospital room, and Lantsov tries the same bullshit going to war line on him. It also sinks like lead, which makes Matthias like Oretsev even more than he already does.
You both fucking suck. Why are you so tense?
Mal says, in a low tone, I’m not tense, I’m worried. If he loses his temper once in this trip and accidentally offs someone, we’re all fucked.
He’s not going to accidentally kill anyone. When was the last time you mothefuckers accidentally killed anyone? God, where is Genya? I miss talking to someone with half a brain and a sense of humor.
Look, Lantsov, Mal looks at the other patrons in the bar like a paranoid panther and decides to switch to code, speaking in rapid-fire broken Russian that makes Nikolai laugh and Matthias internally scramble. He’s not fluent. Some things don’t have a price, and he’s looking at a particularly beautiful piece of real estate. She’s a fixer upper sure, but he’s a shit negotiator, and he’s the one who took a sledgehammer to the goddamn porch, anyway. The agents might close down the viewing before we even get there.
Nikolai is still laughing when he finishes. He says, in proper Russian that makes Matthias’ head spin, The house has been secured, Oretsev. I’ve made calls, we’ve put in a down payment. You’re shitting your panties for no fucking reason. And you’re ruining my vibe too, which makes me want to punch you in the face.
Oh, yeah, I’m shaking in my boots, ye of outsourced brutality.
Lantsov grins, Alright, alright, shut up. But I’m serious. Shouldn’t you know the game by now?
Matthias asks in English, his shame, What game?
The game, man. In the end, he will win. Because Otets always wins. Always.
Matthias takes a sip of his drink to swallow down the bile forming in the back of his throat. The Darkling does always win – he has the empty house, the empty bed, and the empty future to prove it. What he wouldn’t give to see him lose – really lose – just this once.
XV.
They’ve been sent on a sham of an adventure, some assignment to look at a property in Poughkeepsie. I need a new house, away from all this bullshit, Otets said. Vague, unbecoming of a Vor, beneath her.
Zoya knows that this is the death she has been waiting for and is confused why she comes so willingly. Looks at Mal as he drives, remember him as a kid with too much hair, too tall for his age. He’d been eager to learn the ropes. Could shoot better than most of her other men at 17. Gifted, bright. Would have done well in life if he hadn’t had the displeasure of meeting her. Perhaps something in the military, she thought once.
Remember when we fucked the first time? She asks, just to get a rise out of him.
He hums. It was my 18th birthday.
It was? Remind me – were you drunk?
Not really, no. I had two drinks, I think.
Was I good?
He nods – doesn’t quite mean it. It stings Zoya’s ego, and if she had a gun, she would shoot him. It’s been her first line of defense ever since she rose to quote unquote prominence – a habit she gained from spending too much time in rooms with trigger happy men. Shoot first, regret and introspection later.
You were terrible, she says, aiming for the joke. It doesn’t land.
It was my first time, he explains. Got better, didn’t I?
Zoya shrugs. He did – she tailor made his tongue to her liking – but she wasn’t about to give her would be murderer a boost.
Not two hours into the drive, a long way off from Poughkeepsie, he makes a left on some unmarked road, and she ignores the spark of fear in her heart. They’re being tailed by two sedans – one black, another red. The cleanup crew, she assumes.
It’s quiet for a long while, the radio is on, the atmosphere is off, everything in Zoya’s body tells her to run. They’re in the middle of a forest somewhere, far enough away from the highway, and she wonders how far he’ll go before her life is over.
She wonders how she got here.
In Russia, she’d been educated in private schools. She came from a family prominent enough to have an ancestral home, to own a dacha in Siberia, to send her to America, to New York University. She was going to study French Literature and become a professor. Instead, she was pulled into the underworld by Nikolai Lantsov, a man she thought was the love of her life.
She was 19, bright eyed and sweet, full of romance and the Romantics.
It’s been a decade, give or take, and all she’s done is lose. Her innocence, her friends, his attention.
She thinks of all the lives she’s taken – so much death. She thought it was sexy. Drunk on power. Empowering, she thought. To bark orders. To pull on a trigger. To be used as a glorified flesh light by Nikolai and his cousin, a man whose name she couldn’t even whisper in the dark, not even in private, not even when he was inside her. At that time, it felt like a gift. She was in the innermost circle of the inner circle. A seat at the table. The only woman in charge.
Now, it makes her skin itch.
Such a shallow, empty life. She doesn’t even have a favorite ice cream flavor. A two-dimensional figure in her own story – always pretending to run deeper than she actually does. Here, in the end, she’s just a girl who misses the biting cold of Russian winters. Misses the smell of home – dust and onions. Misses the time when her life wasn’t in the hands of a boy whose hands had been empty until she placed a gun in it.
She’s near tears when Alina Starkov’s voice jumps out of the radio – and then, she begins to laugh.
Mal looks over to her, his eyes bright. You like this one?
She tells the truth because there’s no point in lying anymore, I love all her songs. Hell of a voice. Hell of a lyricist, too.
I love all her songs, too.
You do? Good. I still remember the first time I met her – I almost lost my shit. She was a lot smaller than I thought she would be. More covered up too.
I lived in the same orphanage as her.
You did?
Yeah, I think I told you once.
I don’t remember. Tell me again?
He does – tells her how he missed her by months. How he kept donating his Bratva money anonymously to Keramzin without knowing she’d been there. I like to think some of that drug money went into singing lessons, makes me feel better about myself. Or, I guess. It used to.
In the radio, Alina sings about a dangerous man, he’s so tall, and handsome as hell, he’s so bad but he does it so well.
Zoya snorts, Real subtle, Alina.
Were you guys friends, close – or?
She sighs, No. She tried, you know how she is. Real smiley, real friendly. Brought me homemade cookies once – they were amazing. Chocolate chip and dates. I think, in another life, we could have been the best of friends. But in this one, I don’t know, I was too jealous of her.
Jealous?
Yes. She looks at him and lets herself smile at her own imperfection. He loved her so easily, looked at her like – like the last gasp of breath in rolling waters. The last blast of warmth before an eternal winter. He only ever looked at me like – I don’t know. Like the girl Nik loved once and discarded, I guess. Scraps. Just, there, if he needed a cunt.
That’s real deep, Z.
Zoya smiles, I was a Lit major.
They let Alina finish her song before speaking again. A sign of respect, a bit late, but there all the same.
I want you to know, that I know what this is.
Zoya, come on –
No, Mal. Shut up. I want you to know that I know, and I want you to know that I do regret it. Alina. I stoked that fire, Mal. I fed him poison, too, it wasn’t just Ivan. I just – I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I just wanted to see if he would hurt her too. If he’d treat her like the rest of us – expendable, you know. I thought, I guess I thought, even if we were wrong, he’d get over it. I didn’t think it would ever be like this.
What he says next surprises Zoya, but not nearly as much as it should have.
I regret it too, he goes.
You weren’t there, it wasn’t your fault.
I think it might have been, Z. You were there because of me.
A beat. He says nothing else and lets his admission fester in the silence. Zoya looks at him, the hard set of his jaw, eyes resolutely watching on the road, avoiding her shrewd gaze. A rat and a coward. Perhaps, not as bright as she thought he was.
His betrayal crashes down and it’s like she’s watching the collapse of a great skyscraper without sound. A destruction without the screaming. No. Just a pit of darkness, of despair. In it is Fedyor with a knife stuck on his broken heart, Ivan drowning in the deep blue of the Bermuda, Mattias’ eyes as Nina takes an uppercut from The Darkling’s infamous left, Alina Starkov saying Sasha, please, I love you. Don’t do this.
Mal’s life flashes before her eyes too, like flip book drawings. The child, the teenager, the man. Smile growing smaller after each page, eyes growing harder. Wonders about the timeline of it all. Wonders which errands he had used as cover.
It really is too bad she doesn’t have a gun on her.
In my defense, he says, a fucking idiot of a man, I didn’t realize you fuckers would shift the blame on her so quickly.
He says this chuckling, chuckling, like it was all just a game. A bit nervous, a bit guilty – not enough. He shifts on his seat and readjusts his grip on the wheel.
She wasn’t supposed to get hurt, that wasn’t my intention – it was just supposed to be a little distraction. Something for the boss to do.
Of all the ridiculous things I’ve heard in my life, Zoya thinks. Betrayal is a gift, Malyen?
No, well – I mean – he was just too wrapped up in her. I’m sorry, but this is exactly what you wanted too, right? You just said so. You were jealous of her. I mean, there’s enough jealousy to go around.
They arrive in the spot before she could ask any more questions or say anything else, before she could truly bite – she realizes he probably timed this.
He pulls his gun out and points it right on her head. You won’t say anything, right?
This fucking idiot. Fucking idiot.
He leaves the car first and hauls her out with a hard grip around her arm. Her hands are cuffed behind her back and a gun is pointed in the back of her head as she is led to the north edge of the clearing. Everything is green and lush, just cold enough that she could imagine it was even colder. Off to her right, she spots a pretty lake. Thinks, this is a perfect place to die.
Mal continues to waste his breath, Z, I mean it, shut the fuck up about this. It’s almost done. Don’t ruin it any more than you already did.
Their tails park right behind Mal’s jeep, and out the driver’s seat of the black sedan comes The Darkling. In a suit, holding a Makarov pistol that looks tiny in his massive hands. He has a severe frown on his face, like killing her is a terrible inconvenience for him. She can’t decide if she hates him or loves him for showing up. The story of her life.
Zoya decides then – quick as lighting, barely did any thinking – that she will take Mal’s secret to her grave.
Her only regret is that she doesn’t get to see the kingdom fall with her own eyes.
Any last words, Zoya? He asks her.
I hope you suffer, Alexander. I hope you never find her.
A shot rings out, and Zoya Nazyalensky dies.
XVI.
The men speak English on the plane – the first real sign of a new dawn. It used to be that the Bratva was thick accents and confused mistranslations in public and Russian, always Russian, in private. Back when he mostly stayed States-side, he would go on runs with Lantsov and Ivan and occasionally Alexander – when he was still a human and not a god with a penchant for cruelty – in the Lower East Side and they would spend almost all their free time eavesdropping on American conversations, learning their rhythms and speech patterns. For all their effort, they ended up somewhere mid-atlantic. Almost British. Now, the chatter is filled with pretty, barely there r’s, nice and open a’s. The new men are soft, more Williamsburg than St. Petersburg. They ask the tall flight attendant for mojitos and wear Nikes with their cheap suits.
Just to be an asshole, Kaz leans over to the unfamiliar meathead across him and asks, what year did the USSR collapse?
The boy is wearing a snapback over his blonde hair, his green eyes red rimmed, his hands clean of tattoos. He is also rather confused, The – the – the USRR?
The USSR.
Right, yes. The collapse. The boy gulps, nervous. Uh, 19….69?
Is that right? 1969. Genya, hear that? That’s great.
She throws a handful of peanuts at his face, Kaz, stop torturing the kid. Would you excuse us a second, Frankie?
The kid flashes an embarrassed smile at him, so nice, and oh, so polite, and moves to sit with his friends. Kaz’s returning and frankly rather sarcastic smile drops from his face as he watches the boy slip carelessly into a taupe leather seat.
He tells Genya in Russian, I’m gone for two years and you fuckers start recruiting limp dick little boys? Where’d you find this one? Syracuse?
I love how your incompetent ass is sitting here, insulting the boss’ recruitment process.
Incompetent, wow. I gotta say, Gen, becoming a Vor has really changed you.
Genya shuts him up by handing him the iPad she’d been scribbling on. It was a hospital chart of a patient named Janine Doe – a name so predictable it could have only come from Hollywood fuckheads – from the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital. Signed by a name he’s been seeing on mortgage cheques and love letters for the last two years. Seeing it makes his heart stop. Reminds himself of a deleted text message he received two days prior and thinks, she’s in Sulzbach, they’re in Sulzbach, they are safe and surrounded by strawberries. He makes his fear appear as an ugly grin on the wrong side of grim.
Janine Doe, my god. No wonder I never found her. Who could have?
Genya hums, it took them two operations to fix her. Christ, I wonder if she ever woke up. This chart is an old one, from a year ago. That limp dick little boy couldn’t manage to hack into any of their new servers.
Guess I should be glad he’s not totally useless. This makes Genya chuckle. I should ask – how did you find our little songbird?
The lie slips so easily on his tongue, it worries him, I went as far as Krakow, you know. Even spoke to our friends in Zagreb. Nearly made it to fucking Moscow and all I ever got was that someone made inquiries about an ENT surgeon in Warsaw around the same time she disappeared.
His question makes Genya sigh, which is never a good thing. It wasn’t easy for us either. It was a lot of waiting around, but then Dubrov made a trip out West to meet with some suppliers. The weed is getting quite good in California, you know? But yes, long story short, we fucked up her manager a bit. He squealed.
Which one? Doesn’t she have four?
The hot one, with all the, Genya lifts her arms and makes spirals with her fingers over her head, curls.
Jesper Fahey.
Yes, Jesper. So, so, good looking. He’s dead now.
Her casual mention of manslaughter makes him want to hurl – a side effect of loving someone who lives and breathes the Hippocratic Oath – but he nods like he gets it. He fucking hates the Bratva. Of course he is. And we’re absolutely sure he was telling the truth? He holds up the iPad and gives it a shake. This is her?
Genya breathes out a quiet laugh, enjoying an inside joke he’d really rather not be in on, yes, absolutely sure.
He nods, and knows he comes off as pleased. Good, I’ve grown tired of this job. I’d be glad for a new one.
I’m not sure the Darkling will trust you with a new one, not after fucking this one up so badly.
He makes it seem like he’s offended and not absolutely overjoyed. Alright, first of all, I did not fuck this up. Zoya didn’t exactly pass me a blank check or give me a deadline. The assignment was and I quote, find the girl, we cut her throat open, she could have ended up in goddamn Thailand for all we knew.
Genya concedes with a grin, nodding like she understood. Understanding and grace. In a Vor.
The second sign of a new dawn.
XVII.
The call comes at three PM on one of Prieto Diaz’s hot, humid Sundays. Comes in through Nina’s personal cell, and not the office landline, which makes her certain before she even picks up the ringing, vibrating phone, that it is Alina. She’s the only person she knows who could be so careless with international call rates.
Her voice is an ugly, cracking thing, but hearing it for the second time in one week puts a hopeful smile on Nina’s tanned, freckled face.
Ninochka, my love, how are you? Alina asks.
Same old, went for a run on the beach this morning. A kid asked me if I was a diyosa.
Diyosa?
It means goddess in Filipino – or maybe Tagalog or Bicolano, I’m not super sure. I am sure, however, that I love this country.
This makes Alina laugh – still a difficulty but getting better by the minute.
Nina gets her caught up – the houses in Bicol, a province in the Philippines’ Southern Luzon region, is nearly finished. She’s been working with a charity called Habitat for Humanity for the past eight months – traded in her power suits for power tools – building homes for families in need in East Asian countries. She finds her work fulfilling and empowering and hates to admit that she’s ready for some Shake Shack and the opportunity to once again wear a turtleneck. Two more weeks, and I’ll be able to come home. I’ll swing by Dresden on my way back, sow some chaos in your life. It’s not like you’ve had enough of that.
Joking about it makes the years they’ve spent apart less painful, makes the horrors they faced easier to swallow. Once again, Nina basks in the happiness of finding someone with a similarly fucked up coping mechanism as she does.
Ah, might not be a good idea, Neenee. Chaos is already here.
Alina catches her up too. How the beautiful and brilliant Dr. Inej Ghafa came to the hospital suite one evening with a terrified and tear-stained face, asking if she wanted to accompany her to her father’s strawberry farm in Southern Hesse.
Dude, a strawberry farm? Nina interrupts, unable to help herself. Can this chick get any cooler?
Oh my shit, I know! But, wait, wait, Neenee, I’m not finished, you’re not gonna believe this –
One story about a deceptive boyfriend possibly working for the Russian Bratva – a concept they’re so painfully familiar with that they start dying laughing – a chaotic check-out process in the hospital – relatable content, truly – and a long train ride made better by Alina educating Inej on the genius and appeal of mid 2000s Jason Derulo – and Nina has tears in her eyes from laughing so hard.
I had to tell Inej all about Alexander in the process, though, which was less fun.
I swear to God, Alina, I have no idea how we find these fucked up men. Me, you, and Inej, we have got to get better boyfriends.
Partners, Alina corrects her. Nina smiles at her consideration. Such a sweetheart, her best friend is. Her reunion with Hanne had been lovely but bittersweet. She found that she could not love again so soon, not after Matthias, and they parted ways in JFK with hugs, thank you’s and see you soon’s. Nina spent her entire flight to Manila crying and exchanging whispered voice messages with Alina on Instagram.
So, I’ll change my flight to Sulzbach then? You think you’ll still be there in two weeks? I’ll be a perfect saint and leave all the chaos-sowing to Inej, I promise.
Oh, yes, it’s lovely here. I might never leave.
XVIII.
Alina spends her mornings teaching Walter how to play the piano and afternoons making jam with Helene. The first few days in Sulzbach are sun-soaked and full of little pleasures – breathing in sweet air tinged with the smell of ripe strawberries, her father breaking out the old dad jokes to make their American guest laugh, and her mother, softened and mulled in her older years, tracing the scar under Alina’s chin and saying, gleefully, my daughter is a good doctor, isn’t she?
One morning, Inej overhears piano notes from the living room —
Walt, she hears Alina tell her soft-spoken father one day, you’re a natural.
Her father replies, music is just like strawberries – easy to ruin with heavy fingers.
— and it makes her wonder why she so rarely visits her lovely, loving parents. Wonders why this visit is so markedly different from the rest. Decides perhaps that it is Alina, who shines so brightly it forces the people in her orbit to do the same.
In the evenings, they work on her speech. What made Alina’s surgery a particularly tough one was Inej’s decision to retain her entire voice box. It would have been easier to make cuts. Indeed, a total laryngectomy would have been the simpler route, but Inej wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she removed the parts of Alina that allowed her to be an artist. Even Renoir didn’t let his ankylosis stop him from painting.
She ruled out the placement of a stoma, dismissed the idea of a voice prosthesis, and told the hospital board and Alina’s management that she will make the impossible possible for their one in a million talent. No, she’ll never be perfect again, but she will have a voice. It will be her voice.
Inej shows up every day for Alina; makes sure that her conviction didn’t ultimately become a lie.
After their exercises, they talk. Alina shows her music that she missed through her residency, Arctic Monkeys, Hozier, Ariana Grande. Inej shares stories.
I’m a really big fan of you, you know. Huge Aligator. Inej blames the comfort of home for finally giving her the courage to say it.
Alina is delighted. You are? Oh my shit, Nejie. That’s adorable.
Is it? It doesn’t read stalker-ish?
Oh no. I’ve had actual stalkers before. You’re not even close.
Oh good, I was worri – wait, you have actual, real life stalkers?
Yes, I have stalkers who break into my house and crazy ex-boyfriends who cut my throat and ruin my entire career. Celebrities, we’re just like you.
They share a laugh and take sips of their jasmine tea. Alina tells Inej that her best friend Nina Zenic – a gorgeous redhead she’s only ever met through Facetime calls – might come for a visit on her way back to the States after a months-long philanthropic mission in the Philippines in a week. Alina makes noises about hotels but Inej waves her off. My parents would love to have her. They’re empty nesters, there’s nothing they love more than noisy women making a ruckus. Reminds them of my teenage years.
The mention of teenage years prompts Alina to play a Katy Perry song. Says, I never had normal teenage experiences. Not to be woe-is-me about it, I loved my life, but that huge, teenage love affair? Never had it. My first love had been Alexander. You?
Well, I was a nerd in high school. So. No.
Alina’s voice cracks mid-laugh, and she winces as she takes another sip of her tea. Little losses with little wins. This is her life now. Inej gives her arm a reassuring squeeze.
They spend a minute in silence, just smiling at one another. Theirs is a sisterhood found in truly terrible, pigsty, dogshit of a situation, and Inej knows, in her heart of hearts, that she will love Alina Starkov for the rest of her life as the younger sister she never had.
I gotta say something – promise not to judge.
Go ahead.
Is it fucked up that I still kinda miss him?
Well, yes. Alina, he did cut your throat open.
Alina grins, but it twists into a puzzled, self-effacing smile. Right? What’s wrong with me?
Like you said, he’s your first love. It’ll pass, eventually.
Does it really?
Inej thinks of her man – the man she calls Francis – and the passion and love and gentleness they share with one another. She wasn’t exactly a virginal saint when they had met; he wasn’t her first love or anything even close. She’s been through heartbreaks and bad breakups and men who up and change their minds in the middle of nowhere. She thinks of the way Francis likes fried eggs, and fixes the sink without her having to ask, and the way he sometimes slips into a Russian accent when he’s been drinking. It’s become rather clear in the past couple of days, hearing Alina’s story and slamming it up against how they’d met, that she probably doesn’t even know who he really is.
And yet – she thinks of the way she waits for his good night texts to come through from wherever he is in the world, and how they always do.
She decides honesty is the way to go, even if lies are occasionally a kiss and not a sledgehammer.
It does, and then you’ll find someone, somewhere, who will be better for you. Perhaps someone less adept with knives, eh?
The next morning, Inej finds Alina sitting in the living room by herself, sitting on the piano bench. She is staring motionless at a crumpled music sheet, tears streaming down her face, staining the blue of the front of her sleep shirt. Her left hand is poised mid-air over the keys, as if willing the music to come to her, and her hand is wrapped loosely around her neck.
Inej knows grief when she sees it – she’s a doctor, after all – and leaves Alina to sit and get to know her pain.
There are good days and bad days with Alina Starkov, and the good is just enough to outweigh the bad.
XIX.
They park the cars strategically – near all exit points – which are also guarded by their men. The Darkling tells them, we don’t want her slipping away now, not when she’s so close. He is quiet in the walk up to the hospital, but then he’s always quiet these days. Mal chances a glance at him, and his face betrays no emotion – there is none of the tension, fear, excitement that Mal himself feels.
It reminds him that they may both care about the same girl, but only one of them truly loves her. It reminds him that the boss is a man he should be terrified of.
He ignores the voice in his head that says he will be found out. No, no. It’s been years and – he’s not even a suspicious figure. It pays to keep your head down.
Genya is already waiting at the entrance with the Bratva’s favorite disappearing act. The Darkling greets Kaz Brekker with a nod and a handshake.
Been a while, he says, his tone dark. Thought you might have ended up dead.
Still breathing, Otets. We both know that the only thing that can kill me is you.
Hmm. You look well, where have you been? Don’t try and lie.
Mostly Paris, I’ve got a girl.
This makes The Darkling almost smile. He says, good for you.
Kaz asks to stay behind and guard with the rest of the men, which The Darkling agrees to. Tells Dubrov, he tries to leave, kill him. It makes Kaz grin and Lantsov laugh. Even the boss’ shoulders shake as he walks away.
Mal watches them, suspicious, wondering why they’re so friendly. The boss is never friendly to anybody. Wonders, paranoid and afraid, am I missing something? He’s never spent much time with Kaz Brekker – he only knows him through his reputation. Wonders if he will be a figure he’ll need to consider in his plans. The man’s eyes pass over him as he moves to join the rest of the Vory behind The Darkling. They narrow slightly, filled with a message Mal doesn’t have the ability to untangle. Perhaps it isn’t even a message but a warning.
Fear sours the excitement in Mal’s stomach.
They wear gloves to hide their tattoos from the pretty young receptionist who knows where Alina’s room is. The Darkling’s last obstacle. She smiles, young and blonde, and asks for names and IDs – they gave her fakes, too good to be so easily spotted. Even in Germany.
Danke, Herr Kirigan. She tells the boss, and continues on in German. I’m afraid Ms. Starkov checked out of the therapy center a week ago. A small vacation, she said. She’ll be back in a few weeks to continue her treatment.
Beside him, Matthias’ entire body tenses. Lantsov’s eyebrows curl inward, and immediately, he moves to position himself behind his cousin. The same man who told them Otets would never accidentally kill anyone now had his hands braced to contain an outburst.
Mal just stands there, looking at the receptionist, who appears confused at the sudden drop in temperature. He thinks, can’t we be done with this already? Jesus. How many times can she disappear? Clever little thing. He is unable to help the grin that blooms on his face – careless – and Lantsov, eyes quick and anticipating a nightmare, sees it. Sees it.
For the first time in a long while, someone is looking at him with suspicion.
Mal’s face drops and his eyes go to the floor.
Is surprised to hear the Darkling say, oh, that’s alright. It’s our fault for not calling in advance. Perhaps I could leave my number and you can give me a call once Alina comes back?
Apologies, sir, but I’m afraid I’m not authorized to do that.
Of course, of course. Alright. I’ll give her a call instead.
That might be best, sir.
They leave the hospital empty-handed. It’s Matthias who calls off the guards, Genya who calls the pilots. The Darkling remains unreadable, impenetrable. He disappears with Kaz Brekker and Nikolai, they take one of the cars.
There is lead in the pit of Mal’s stomach – remembering the look on Nikolai’s face in the lobby. Remembering Kaz Brekker’s all-knowing, bottomless brown eyes.
Feels as though there’s a noose tightening around his neck. His hands instinctively wrap around his throat.
What happened in there? Genya asks, worried.
Someone told Alina we were coming. She’s not here.
Mal pipes in, The receptionist said she was coming back in a few weeks, though.
Matthias snorts at that. She’s not coming back, Oretsev. This is it.
XX.
They settle into a bench in Beutler Park, away from the prying eyes of their brothers, and crack open a fresh pack of the American Spirit menthols all three of them love so much. They each light up, lean back, and watch the cigarette smoke float into the air.
There’s nothing to say. They are so far away from home. Their hands are stained with so much blood. All the decisions – good and bad – led them here. Alexander’s defeat.
And he does look quite defeated. Here – under the sunlight of Germany, jetlagged and lonely. Nik fights the strong urge to reach out and give him a hug, some sort of comfort, but it would read as weak – and Kaz is around. For the first time since Zoya’s death, he allows himself to resent everything that The Bratva has taken from him but most of all this: real brotherhood, the ability to reach out to this man, who is the only real family he has in this side of the world, and show him that he is still loved.
When the silence is broken, it’s Alexander who does it.
Alina – she had so much music inside of her. Melodies and words, they just came to her, and she’d sing and sing and sing, all day. And when she wasn’t singing, she’d let someone else take over. Filled the house with it – so much music.
He pauses, as if hearing it. Closes his eyes and confesses, I can’t – I can’t listen to a goddamn thing without thinking of her.
Nik wonders what that would be like – an entire life avoiding music to escape an inescapable mistake. There are billboards of her in the side of Hell’s Kitchen buildings – advertising a long-gone, long-postponed tour that will never materialize.
A beat. And Alexander continues, The music, it used to help. Help me. This work, it makes sleep such a difficulty. All those lives we take, lives we ruin. Wet work. The way they would scream. She used to sing me lullabies, at night, to help me fall asleep.
I wish I could tell her – that I’m sorry. It kills me that I can’t. Kills me that her last memory of me is that night that I cut her throat open. I don’t know why I find destruction so easy and trust, so hard.
Nik notices that Kaz’s eyes are closed, lips pulled into his mouth. He wonders if this is also making him want to cry. The grief here, the desolation – it makes everything inside Nik clench. He looks at his cousin, who looks at the ground, existing in the past and the present, both of which break his heart, unable to see a future that won’t level him.
XXI.
The next words Alexander speaks are so soft, so quiet, that they can only ever exist here.
I hate New York. It’s so quiet without her.
XXII.
The Darkling never makes it back to the planes.
Never makes it back home either. When they land in New York, Lantsov uses his Harvard-educated brain and her organizational skills to break apart the New York City branch of the Russian Bratva. Flexes his little baby venture capitalist skills. Thanks to the boss’ free reign killing spree, they have very few enemies left. Having no sharks in the water meant they can bleed pretty freely.
They work out of a brownstone in Brooklyn that Genya doesn’t recognize, and before making all his decisions, Lantsov picks up a burner phone and calls someone named Sasha.
Genya is not consulted on which businesses would be sold to which crime families. Only knows that the drugs were offered at half the price to the O’Briens of the Irish mob. Reparations.
The boss does love a good apology, Lantsov tells her.
Genya couldn’t say she was all that surprised about the turn of events after Germany but one afternoon, she expresses a worry –
She, like the rest of the Vor – the rest of the organization, really – spent most of their teenage years and adult lives running jobs for the Bratva. They have no hobbies, no marketable skills. Most had no college degrees or even high school diplomas.
You have to give them futures, Nik, she says, they’re our brothers.
He goes to another room to make a call, comes back with a huge grin on his face.
Alright, well, get on it.
She starts slow.
The lower level members are given pretty significant six figure paydays. The enforcers get a bit extra – like Dubrov, who gets a full ride to the University of Washington. The fucker studies Aeronautics – a fact that never fails to make Genya grin like a proud mom.
Matthias is given millions that come in duffel bags and as a reward for his years of unrelenting loyalty, they give him an adorable Siberian Husky. When Genya shows up on his doorstep with the puppy, she gets to see Matthias smile for the first time in years. It lights a fire of happiness in her heart.
The little shit is cuddling the puppy on his chest when he says, I’m getting a dog? Dubrov got to go to college!
Oh, you’re complaining are you, Matthias?
No, I’m saying I got a dog, who is perfect and beautiful, and Dubrov gets to sit in a classroom learning physics. Obviously, I won this one.
He names the dog Trassel. Leaves New York not long after to visit Sweden and see his grandma. He goes on to move to Washington too. A little place called Westport right next to the ocean. Last she hears, he becomes a king crab fisherman.
Occasionally, a very bearded version of him shows up on Dubrov’s Instagram.
Kaz is also given piles of money. She asks Lantsov if she can give him the boss’ Paris flat as a gift, but he refuses. It’s occupied, he says. Give him Lisbon instead. Little vacation home for him and the Missus. None of them were invited to the wedding, but Genya doesn’t take offense.
They only find out that Kaz got married when he flies into New York to help Nikolai go through Ivan and Fedyor’s things, which had been placed in storage.
Kaz doesn’t ring the bell, doesn’t even knock. He simply saunters into the brownstone as if he’s been there many times before. Gives Genya a kiss on the cheek as a hello. The limp is – not there, it’s nonexistent. He’s gotten huge – all that French pastry. His arms look so jacked that if he decides to take a swing at someone tonight, Genya knew it would hurt.
Lantsov is the first to notice the ring – gleaming gold on his friend’s left hand.
What the fuck? And I didn’t get to be best man? Who was it? Sasha?
Kaz shook his head, chuckling a bit at his ridiculousness, No. I haven’t seen Sasha since Dresden.
Who was it?
A very nice man named Walter.
They don’t bring her to the facility, asks her to watch the house instead. Stuck with so much free time, Genya decides to make a lasagna. Loses hours in the chopping and the sautéing and the mixing, but the ragu needs a slow and low simmer, so she sets a timer and leaves it to explore the house. She’s only really been in the kitchen – they’ve been working on the dining table – and the living room – they’ve been using the couches for sleep.
She goes upstairs first. There’s a rather large master bedroom with pine green walls, warm wood, and a California king. Its occupant is big on books – there are piles and piles of it, on the floor, on the mid-century furniture, crammed on top of the dresser. On the far side of the wall facing spotless windows is a grand piano. It smelled like dark cherries and cigarette smoke. Something in her gut tells her that exploring this room would have repercussions, so she turns around and goes into the less interesting guest bedrooms – there are two, and they are beige walls and white wood. Smells like a hotel room. Antiseptic. Devoid of all personality.
Downstairs, there’s a room filled with more books. She just assumed this house was Nik’s but no, no – walking around the library makes it clear exactly whose it is. There – taking up an entire wall – are photos upon photos of The Darkling and his lovely Alina.
Genya’s jaw drops – and looks at every single one. Just to get it. She was still in the outer circle when Alina had been in the boss’ life and she never got to see what it looked like – the kind of love that made a kingdom worthless.
There’s a photo of them in a ski lodge – probably the one in Aspen that she had been eying for herself – her boss in one of his custom suits and Alina in a lion onesie laughing so hard she was crying. He was leaning back on the couch, drink in hand, arm wrapped around her middle, pulling her close to his chest. His face was hidden behind her lion mane. They looked like – a couple. A young couple. Happy. Genya wonders who took the photo.
She finds a little surprise – a photo of Lantsov with Alina. She looked like every bit the superstar that she is – shiny eyeshadow, sparkling outfit, a bit sweaty, holding up both of her middle fingers. They’re backstage somewhere, and Lantsov looked, well, high. She tries to imagine The Darkling holding a camera to take this and a funny feeling passes through her. She almost wants to go eww.
There are others, too – of trips she never knew The Darkling had taken. There’s one of him in a black coat, wearing earmuffs, and holding a woman’s purse. He’s in The Great Wall of China and the miserable look on his face makes Genya laugh.
A blurred snapshot of Alina in an autumn day, smiling in a convertible, dark hair whipping in the air.
A polaroid of a lake, still under the afternoon sun. Alina’s tiny head poking just above the water. Another of her in a gingham swimsuit, making a kissy face at the camera.
An older woman with graying black hair and dark eyes cradling Alina’s head into her neck. In front of them, a pink-frosted birthday cake with lit candles.
Alina, balancing a cup of gelato on top of her head, sitting in front of the Trevi Fountain.
The Darkling, flashing a huge, beautiful smile that breaks her heart. Out of his usual suits, in a t-shirt, a t-shirt, looking so young with his hair covered in purple wildflowers.
A whole life – sitting here. Gathering dust.
The boss always had such a big, imposing presence – he seemed to always be there even when he wasn’t. Always looked at her with all-knowing eyes, like he could see all of her fears and had no qualms about exploiting them for his gain. He was – a monster, really.
She’s surprised to find out that outside of the Bratva – he was a just a man. Human. Did human things. Was someone’s boyfriend.
Her alarm sounds and she pulls away, walks in a daze back to the kitchen. Builds the lasagna and bakes it – doesn’t eat a single bite of it. She fills up with more memories, instead. Goes back to the pictures, unable to resist its gravity.
She falls asleep in the library that night, on one of the leather couches. Lantsov and Kaz don’t return– it makes her wonder what they found in Ivan and Fedyor’s things. Wonders if it’s as good a treasure as what she found in the room.
For Mal, she asks if she could give him a house right here in New York. Maybe give him the grass operations, now that it’s going legal, it would be a lucrative and clean business for him.
Lantsov looks at her for a long time after she speaks – long enough that she has to stop herself from patting an insecure hand over her face. Asks instead, what? What the fuck are you looking at?
He doesn’t say anything for a beat, and then he snaps out of it. He strokes a hand over his mouth and clears his throat. No, I got Oretsev, you can move on.
Oh, alright. He’s getting something good, then?
Yeah, he’ll get what he deserves.
She never asks – but she never sees Mal Oretsev ever again. He never gets in touch. There’s nothing on him in the books, either. Perhaps he joined The Darkling at wherever it is he’s been hiding at. He’s always been a lowkey favorite.
As for her – well, she’s given 10 million and yes, the lodge in Aspen, and an entire residential building in Bushwick. You know what they say about New York landlords, he said, try not to be an asshole to these people.
When the work is finished – Lantsov drives her over to her new place and gives her a long hug. There’s a soft haze over his eyes, and she’s scared he might start crying.
Well, Gen, I guess this is it.
Where will you go?
I’ll go see the boss, tell him about the good we did here.
She nods, thinks before she speaks – the quality that made her a Vor, or an ex-Vor now – but says it anyway, Is he doing okay? This is – this is what he really wanted?
Lantsov gives her a reassuring smile, He’s doing alright.
He squeezes her arm and turns to go back to the car. Doesn’t look back.
Genya stands on the stoop of her new future for a long time, not quite ready to begin.