Zariah
I have no words to express holding my husband, the fighter, as he cries. I’m clinging to cold, chiseled stone and his tears are falling like rain, dampening my hair. And then his tears turn into a roar. His hot muscles are on fire with rage. “Vassili, baby, you have to calm down.”
I hold onto him tighter. Jesus, we need you now, I’m silently praying. Vassili begins to push me away. With all the strength I have in me, I try to cling onto him, but can’t grasp him hard enough. He starts outside into the darkness, and I kick off my high heels to hurry after him.
“Vassili, wait, wait please,” I call out, almost slipping on the tile. I run across the mat and through the sliding glass doors.
The cement is warm beneath my feet. It’s truly one of those heat drenching nights, but I feel cold and alone. “Vassili, wait, baby!”
He doesn’t. He continues past the stretch of grass and fountains. And then stops at the beginning of the parking lot to pull out his phone. Vassili is calling someone, I can hear the faint sound of it connecting. My heart lurches in my throat with each ring. My eyes plead with his, but I swear that he sees straight through me as if I’m not even there anymore. My stomach turns over. This isn’t right. This isn’t right.
He says something in Russian. Since he is teaching our daughter, I decipher the words, and believe he just called his ‘father.’ That’s not right, he’s never called Anatoly ‘father.’
I listen as he makes a threat, “The next time I see you, you’re dead. If you allowed this shit to fucking happen,” Vassili stops speaking. “I will make due all those times I threatened to murder you with my bare hands, piz’da. You will be dead.” He clicks the off button and fists the iPhone in his hand, again.
A rush of blood crashes through me. Vassili was addressing Anatoly in a voicemail. Damn, I tell myself that Vassili is not like his father, not like anyone else in his family. Tears cloud my visions as he finally stands before me. Thank god, the night is warm, because now, I pull away from his touch. “You promised me, Vassili.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Zariah? I need you!”
“You need me? Hello, we are a team, we need each other, Vassili. You just threatened your father’s life! You can’t do that.” I want to hug him, but Vassili needs to understand a few things. I glare him in the eye. “You cannot threaten your father’s life, Vassili! He isn’t just any person. He might try to kill—”
“The fuck I can’t,” his harsh tone feels like a tornado against my skin. “If Anatoly had anything to do with what occurred tonight, then I will do what I said, Zar. I am a man of my word.”
“A man of your word?” I wipe the tears away and step closer to him. My body wavers, as my gaze seeks his. The darkness of his gaze is tangible, and it sends fear shooting through my spirit. I need to correct this now. Vassili is better than stooping to his father’s level. So, I make the discussion personal. “Vassili, you told me you didn’t want shit to do with what your family does! Vassili Karo Resnov, you promised to me, in my childhood bedroom, the day we broke up that you’d never allow yourself to become like them.”
“Dah! I promised.” He points a stiff hand. “I won’t. But I promise you, now, my beautiful wife, anybody touches my family gets what they deserve. Thus said, any other assurances I made will have to be forfeited, no matter what.”
I rub the tears from my face.
Malich steps outside. “Vassili, you need to go home with your wife.”
His voice is dead. Gone is the always smiling man who in his generous ways loves to cook for people. The man that will ask you what your favorite dish is, if he hasn’t perfected it, by the time you see him, he is a master of it by the next time. That man has disappeared. In his stead, is a man who looks just like the documentaries about … Anatoly Resnov. Someone so far gone, without a soul, that it scares me to look into his eyes. And what hurts the most? Vassili just agreed to become the same type of man. I clutch my chest. These two men are better than this.
“Go home you two,” Malich dismisses us.
“Nyet!” Vassili responds. “I will help rectify this.”
“You are a fighter, Vassili, not a murderer. I don’t fucking want your help, I don’t need it.” Malich turns around and heads back into the hospital.
“Listen to him,” I tell my husband. Although, for the first time, I believe that his uncle had tossed the words out at him. Malich wasn’t his usual proud self about Vassili’s fighting skills, no, that was a low blow.
***
My mother drives my car home, and I drive Vassili’s Mercedes. Though I’ve been praying within my mind for the last half an hour, I navigate the streets in silence. Vassili is ramrod still. He hasn’t spoken a single word to me since my mother and Natasha came outside. My heart is conflicted about him. He’s seated less than a foot away and I feel him growing even further from my heart.
“I’m sure that Yuri will be okay,” I try.
I only have the subtle rise of his broad chest to remind me that he has heard me, even if my words do not penetrate.
***
At home, my mother’s eyes are filled with sorrow as she heads to the nursery with Natasha. I close the double doors to our master suite, and turn around. Vassili is seated on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I say kneeling down before him. My head goes to his lap, and I cry into it, reminiscing on a time not so long ago, Vassili hated to see my tears, sad or happy. He’d kiss them away. Malich’s family is his family. Not Anatoly. And my husband still isn’t over the abandonment by his mother at the hands of his father. It’s in my heart to get the truth through to his thick skull but Vassili doesn’t listen. Somewhere within him, he has to know that Malich is grieving, too, and that he doesn’t have to take actions into his own hands.
“Stop, crying, Zariah.” Vassili’s thick, Russian accent breaks through the silence. There’s no heart in his voice, but he says the words, “I fucking hate it when you cry.”
Up until tonight, we’ve yet to be in a situation where I saw tears in Vassili’s eyes. Even when he mentions morsels of time with his mother in the past, he seemed angrier at her and her situation that sympathetic. His dark gaze is glossed.
“Get in bed,” he nudges his head.
Damn, his apathetic tone, and the way his jaw is sculpted in a marble scowl, warns me that there’s nothing left for us tonight.
“Vassili—”
“Zariah, take your ass to bed!”
I sit back on my heels, before him. “Talk to me.”
He sits there, muscles stacked on muscles, glaring down at me like I’m one of his broken ribs. “There’s nothing for us to fucking talk about, girl. Everything I told you outside the hospital, I meant it. If you feel it needs to be reiterated, we can chat tomorrow.”
My arms fold. Vassili has never had such a nonchalant demeanor. “We are a team,” I tell him, reaching up. I try to place my waist between his legs, and kiss him. He pushes my hands down with such quick movements I hadn’t even seen them coming. Though there’s no pain in his touch. I’ve never felt so hurt in my life.
“Girl, we are a team when I say so. And right now, isn’t the time. I’ve told you some shit because I wanted to have you.” His calloused thumb clasps my chin, and his voice is sarcastic. “Dah. I made promises that I hoped to fucking God I would never have to break, like I won’t join teams with my father. Shit, that one’s probably the only one I knew would be true. But if Anatoly sanctioned what happened tonight, like I already told you,” he says gripping my chin, “I am going to deal with it.”
Danushka consumes my mind. She said Horace was sweet, kind. Everything she didn’t expect in a man of her own nationality. ‘Russian men are ruthless, they don’t give a fuck about anything but themselves…’ she had told me one day, angry that Horace wasn’t splitting his time from his many companies with his new wife.
Only with Horace, he had never been put in the situation to choose.
What’s more important?
Your wife?
Or, in Vassili’s case, revenge?
Just as I had told Danny too, I speak up, ready to fight for my marriage. “Baby, you can’t. Vengeance is like a seed, it sets roots. Talk to me, Vassili! Please!”
He starts to push me away. I clasp my hands onto his belt, and hold on for dear life. Sex can’t fix us, but dammit, right now, it’s the only thing I have of him.
“I don’t want to fucking hurt you!” He screams into my face. Seems like the death grip I have on his belt is all I have of him. Vassili could slap me across the room, push me down on my ass, but he doesn’t. I quickly undo his belt buckle and pull out his cock.
He eyes me with a dead gaze as my mouth goes to his dick. I suck for all I’m worth, for all the love we have. My lips wrap around his cock, and I’m banging it to the back of my throat faster than someone can shout ‘Mississippi!’ Using sex to my advantage is a new thing for me, and I hope to God it isn’t a new normal. It’s dysfunctional and most certainly not how you save a marriage, but for right now, it’s working. Vassili grips the back of my neck. He grunts his approval and forces my head up and down. My tonsils are bruised by the strength of his erection, and I suck vigorously.
Vassili massages the base of his cock, since there’s no way I can suck his XL dick all the way down my throat. I’m already gagging as it is. He then pushes off the bed, and I’m back on my ass, onto the plush pile carpet, with him on top of me.
He starts to unbuckle his belt. I push up my skirt.
“Put that ass in my face,” he growls.
I tug off my panties in a flash, reach up to kiss him, but Vassili twirls his index finger. I turn over to my hands and knees. He enters my pussy with such force that my back arches.
“Fuck,” I grit through my teeth. My walls begin to drench down on his cock as he clasps the back of my neck. He works his thumb into my ass. It feels good, gets my pussy quivering for more, but I guess that’s all the motherfucker will offer in the form of foreplay, tonight. And I know that once this false closeness we have ends, I won’t be crying tears of ecstasy, I’ll be crying for my husband to open up, and talk to me again.