Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 21802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Sidor paid off my parents’ house and brought me to America. We married the week after I turned twenty, in a civil ceremony that lasted less than ten minutes. He’d bought me a pretty white dress, and after we left the Cook County courthouse, he took me straight to Sergey Petrov’s house to meet my new family.
The conniving Petrovs made me long for the harsh winters and overt corruption of Volograd.
Tonight, a fall storm raged outside the hospital, and the rain pelted against the narrow slice of the window in Sidor’s room, driving against the glass like it wanted to break it and get at me. I shouldn’t have come. I’d thought if Sergey knew I visited each day, the loyal wife, he might take pity and help me, but there was no one here. No family, and certainly no friends.
I twisted the tissue in my hands until it began to shred.
There was a short, loud knock on the door, and I flinched like it had been gunfire. It swung open without waiting for my response, but perhaps they thought there was no one in the room except for Sidor, and he wasn’t going to object.
The man who came in was just too old to call a boy. He looked old enough to carry a gun, but too young to buy a drink. He was drenched, water dripping off the tips of his dark hair and falling on his leather jacket. His gaze swept the dim room as if searching for something specific, unfazed by the machines or the man being kept alive by them. When he found me sitting across from Sidor, surprise flickered in his eyes. As it faded, something else moved in.
It whispered of violence.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
There were plenty of people in Sidor’s life I hadn’t met. I didn’t need or want to know about the business he and his brothers were in. I’d seen enough, knowing he carried a gun to his meetings, and sometimes he came home with blood staining his clothes.
“Nikita Petrov,” the boy-man said, recognizing me.
He was attractive, and when he smiled, it flashed his dimples. He was probably used to the girls melting when he did it. I found his out-of-place grin unsettling.
“I knew Sidor,” he said.
He hadn’t really answered my question, and I wanted to correct his tense because, as I was painfully aware, my husband was still alive. The man stepped deeper into the room, leaving water pooled on the floor, and my pulse sped with his proximity. As he swiped a hand over his forehead to wipe away the rain, I caught the flash of something inside his open jacket. It was the dark handle of a gun.
Anxiety tightened my voice. “How do you know my husband?”
His gaze traveled slowly down the length of my body, before settling on the tissue I’d been twisting in my lap. I looked the part of the grieving wife, even thought I wasn’t. The only tears I’d cried tonight were for my situation.
Was it possible this man was family, and could tell Sergey I’d been here? It seemed unlikely. He gave off an adversarial vibe.
“We had a mutual friend.” Once again, he used the past tense, and it felt like a threat. His eyes were so dark they looked black.
“My husband doesn’t have friends.”
He laughed, but it was humorless. “I’m talking about Ivan Kovačević.”
My blank stare told him I didn’t recognize the name.
That wasn’t the response he was expecting, and he hesitated. “No?”
“Is he someone my husband works with? Sidor keeps his business separate from me.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re the one who does those sculptures and shit.” His dismissive tone felt calculated and surgical.
If he was hoping to get a rise out of me, he would fail. Sidor had said far worse. Even when my art started selling and I made a name for myself, he was quick to remind me how I came from nothing and would be nothing without his money.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I asked pointedly. The rain was pounding outside, and the crack of thunder set me further on edge.
“No.” His gaze drifted from me. He studied the machine’s clicking and the screen displaying Sidor’s vitals. His breathing fell into the same languid rhythm as the accordion flapping in the tube, the one that forced air into my husband’s lungs.
Meanwhile, I went short of breath. Malice seeped into the room like a cold draft. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it pressing on my skin.
“You think this is worse?” His attention snapped back to me abruptly. “He’s never going to wake up. I mean, fuck. That bullet should have killed him.”
It had, more or less. Sharp pinpricks needled up my spine. The longer I stared at the man across from me, the more I wondered if he’d been the one to pull the trigger.