Part One –
Crowns, Serpents and Hatred.
“There is poison in the fang of the serpent,
in the mouth of the fly and in the string of a scorpion;
but the wicked man is saturated with it.”
– Chanakya.
Prologue
Artyom Fattakhov
Six months after Elena left...
When I knocked on my Pakhan’s door for the fifth time today, I wasn’t surprised when there was again no answer.
“Knock again,” my wife, Roksana, whispered.
I obliged but the result remained the same as the other six times. Silence.
Roksana pressed a gentle hand to my arm. The touch was soft, casual. But the intimacy of her closeness, the warmth of her arm, were enough to ignite fire in my blood.
I pressed my hand to hers, holding her to me. Beneath my scarred and strong palm, Roksana’s hand felt as breakable as fine china. “Your worry is useless here, dorogaya. You’re only hurting yourself.”
She bit her lip.
I may have been thirty years old, but my cock still had the virility and brain of a fifteen-year-old boy who had just discovered his favorite tag on Pornhub. If my boss hadn’t been behind the wall, I might’ve fucked Roksana up against it.
Later, I told myself.
My wife remained oblivious to the filthiness of my thoughts, too lost in her worries. “Roman said it was…bad.” She raised her gray eyes to mine, so light in hue they were almost colorless. “What Kostya did to that man…”
Bad was an understatement.
I had never seen myself as a green sapling who wilted at the sight of violence and blood. I had been born and raised in the Bratva, had slept with both a knife and a teddy bear, and been tattooed before I had grown facial hair. I had seen everything this world had to offer…including what it did to women like my wife.
But what I had seen my Pakhan do…
That had chilled me to my bones.
I could still smell the blood, hear the screams. I doubted they would be something I would forget in a hurry.
When Roman had spotted the carnage, he had covered his mouth to hold back his vomit, too disgusted to even try and make a sarcastic comment. Even Dmitri, who had been closed off to the world and everything in it lately, had looked shaken. His icy façade cracked for just a moment before freezing back together.
I couldn’t tell Roksana. Not only because it would haunt her relentlessly and needlessly upset her, but because my brain still hadn’t properly comprehended what it had seen. To try and describe it in words would be impossible.
Instead, I tightened my grip on her hand. “Some things are best left untold, dorogaya.”
Roksana searched my expression, seeing more than I wanted to show. But she didn’t press. “It’s been almost seven months.” She didn’t need to specify what had happened seven months ago. There was only one event these days that all time centered around. “He’s not getting any better.”
No. If anything, he was getting worse.
“The only thing we can do is stay beside him,” I told her. “This is not a family that abandons each other.”
She smiled sadly. “Isn’t it?”
Roksana wasn’t born or raised in this world. She still couldn’t grasp some of the concepts that I considered my personal philosophy. But I knew she was thinking about Tatiana. About Elena. Perhaps even Dmitri, who had left the care of his son to Roksana.
“No,” I said.
She didn’t argue, but her expression told me how she felt.
I glanced back at the door, the only entrance and exit to my Pakhan’s quarters. If I had been born another man, perhaps I would’ve lamented over the symbolism of the locked door and how it represented the barricade between Konstantin and me.
But I was no poet, and this was no winding tale.
“I am going to check on Roman,” I told Roksana. “Please do not go into his room without me.”
I said please as a courtesy. My words were nothing but a demand.
Roksana nodded but her eyes wavered over Konstantin’s door. Her hand moved, almost going to her stomach, before she stopped and moved her arm back to her side.
She was too suspicious for her own good. She believed if she acknowledged the cells forming deep inside of her then they would disappear. I had told her repeatedly that miscarriages were normal and had very little to do with the mother, but her superstitious nature refused to accept a rational explanation.
I squeezed her hand once again, reminding her of my presence. She blinked up at me. “It may be time to consider doing a test,” I said carefully.
Her features pinched immediately. “Let’s not talk about that here.” As if Konstantin’s darkness would taint the flicker of light we had created between us.
“Later then.” I pressed a kiss to her lips, one she returned.
“I’m worried about him,” she murmured against me.
I released her hand and instead cupped her cheeks in each palm, forcing her to meet my eyes. Our noses pressed against each other, breaths mingling.
“Artyom.” Roksana pressed her hands against mine, locking us together in our embrace. “He is going to be like this forever.”
“Not forever. That is impossible.”
Emotions shifted behind her gray eyes, the color going from bright silver to dark asphalt as she processed her thoughts and tumbled through her feelings.
“Wouldn’t you mourn me forever?” she asked.
My entire body tightened. Fears I kept beneath a shield of denial threatened to overwhelm me. Even nearly seven years later, I could still see her so clearly in my mind: bowed over her bloodied, broken knees, clutching to the shattered bones with the might of a giant. She hadn’t screamed, but sometimes I wished she had. The silence had been haunting.
“What sort of question is that?”
Roksana didn’t balk at my refusal to answer the question. Instead, she said, “I would mourn you forever.” Her voice hardened. “I would slaughter those who took you from me and bring my wrath down upon New York.” She tapped on Konstantin’s door. “Perhaps in another life, that is me sitting behind that door, and it is Kostya standing out in the hallway, scarred by my rage.”
“What-ifs will get you nowhere,” I said, but her voice sank into me like a stone dropped into a pond.
If I was in Konstantin’s position and it had been Roksana…my Roksana…
There were no words to describe the terror I would impose upon the world.
“We have been together much longer, dorogaya,” I reasoned.
“We married after being together for less than a month,” was her reply.
Roksana, unfortunately, was correct. In fact, waiting more than a day had been a formality for Roksana’s sake. The moment I had laid eyes on her, the beautiful ballerina of Moscow, with the eyes of a dreamer and soul of an angel, I had been done for.
I would’ve married her to the bells of Swan Lake before knowing her name, if she had been Bratva.
“Konstantin and Elena are not married,” I said curtly. “He will not be like this forever. I will not allow it.”
Roksana shrugged sadly. “I don’t think that’s something either of us gets to decide.”