1
Dmitry
Black was the color of sickness, of bruising, of death.
Black was the color worn by the well-wishers, who paraded up and down the lines of pews as if in competition to see who could showcase their grief the loudest. From the oldest baba to the youngest of girls, tears poured down their faces, and the songs in the background were a kind of haunting melody meant to see their old Pakhan into the afterlife.
I watched it all coldly, without comment, feeling the heavy weight of all the eyes focused on me. My suit was immaculate, my hair slicked back away from my face in a style that I so very rarely wore. There was no blood on either my shirt or my suit despite what had seemed like the rivers that I had scrubbed out from under my nails earlier that morning.
I had followed the coordinates from the GPS the night that my father had been shot all the way to the location the SUVs had come from. Breaking through the doors, I’d found myself in the nest of what had, at the time, been an Italian hideout. It was a safehouse, and one that had been in regular use if the tech inside was anything to go by.
What I had found was exactly what I was expecting.
Italians. Their blood still felt as if it were staining my hands, their screams echoing in my ears from how I had been forced to cut them down. I took no delight in torture, not like some others I knew with similar titles to my own. Though I enjoyed the violence. It quenched that thirst for vengeance. I lived for the fear in the eyes of those who had crossed me and the thrill that came with forcing them to submit to my will.
I hadn’t wasted time that afternoon though. I’d taken care of who needed to be taken care of, until there was one man left among the half-dozen bodies. His skin had been notably absent of ink, with diamonds glittering off his wrist—indications that he was the one in charge. He was the only one that I had kept alive, working him over until the features of his face became indistinguishable from tenderized beef flank steak.
It was only then, after I had forcefully pried all knowledge he possessed from his unwilling frame, that I allowed him to follow his comrades to the grave.
I could still feel his heartbeat beneath my fingertips, as uneven as it had been faint. Its unsteady thrum had been more honest than any of the wailing and crying now filling the church. It had been raw and real because of his knowledge that there was no longer any need for begging or pretense; he had just wanted the pain to be over and to be allowed to slip into that dark nothing that awaited him.
I had granted him that.
Did it make me a monster if those broken cries filling the church didn’t move me?
As a boy I had found cries of grief haunting and visceral. Here, they only served to set my teeth on edge.
“Dmitry?” a small voice muttered from beside me. Manya’s warm fingers worked through my own and curled over the backs of my knuckles to offer some solace.
She looked quizzically up at me, her black eyes full of question and concern. Neither of which I answered. She had been there when I had finally trudged into the house Shura had relocated her to, covered in blood stale and fresh alike. She had watched silently as it sloughed off my skin beneath the shower head, so bright a crimson that it looked fresh again. She was here now, my supportive wife dressed in a black as dark as her expressive eyes.
I lifted an eyebrow, my gaze moving from her to the gathering masses, watching their ever-rotating procession once more.
“Why are they watching you like that?” Manya whispered. She had sidled closer to me, and I could feel the gusted heat of her breath against my ear. Her words were obviously meant for me and me alone, but my bark of annoyance was loud.
I stared at her with a blank expression pulled tightly over my features. “They are looking for weakness, for space to slither in and place doubt,” I whispered darkly, her silver hair puffing slightly with each word.They were looking to challenge me. The air was rank with the threat radiated from each lingering glance.
“Your father—” she started, only to be cut off by the manner that my fingers gripped hers almost too tightly in response.
“My father, Manya, is dead,” I replied, the words devoid of any emotion. It was a harsh reminder both for myself and for her.
Like my words had been a calling card, one guest belonging to the multitude of lingering glances broke away from the congregated bodies, jackknifing right in our direction. His scars almost outnumbered his tattoos, and his one brown eye glittered in a way that defied the other sightless pale one.
“Dmitry Koalistia,” he greeted, only once he was no more than four feet away. “My condolences on the loss of your father, of our Pakhan. I’ve come and my offer of services.” He trailed off there, his pinched lips tightening even further as he looked around at the stage as it had been set. I could see the derision on his face at all those passing the coffin or watching on idly. He spat onto the floor by his feet. “Tch. The fact that these people, these men, call themselves Bratva and yet ignore tradition . . .” His voice was raised just enough to be sure to be heard by the closest funeral-goers.
“They will bend knee when it is appropriate, I’m sure.” I muttered it as if I couldn’t care less, but the violence behind the words was still evident: It was in the way I bit off the consonants and spat my vowels, the Russian accent so heavy I might as well have been speaking in it.
The anger that seized me was different. It was cold and alien, freezing my insides like ice over frigid water. It was scaring Manya, this cold indifference. I could feel it from the way she watched me, as if she were waiting for me to explode. I was imploding instead, my demeanor a carefully controlled mask that didn’t so much as shift.
“Da,” the man agreed, though his face made it clear that he disagreed with my assessment. His eye was still sharp though, sizing up those still watching as if he were about to very well call them out here at the funeral. I didn’t have to have held the title myself to know that he was a torpedo: his entire demeanor screamed it.
He was a finely tuned weapon, waiting to be fired.
“I appreciate your condolences,” I said after another minute of silence. “You will have to see me after this is settled and he is back in the earth, nyet? You come . . . we discuss business.”
The white, filed points of his teeth were visible for a brief second before he inclined his head respectfully and headed off. He wasn’t the first of the family to have come and pledged his loyalty so informally and he would not be the last. But he had been the most public and, therefore, the most watched.
Manya’s fingers tightened in mine again, her thumb brushing against the heel of my hand as if to remind me that she was there. As if that was something that I was capable of doing: forgetting her.