Vassili
Venice Beach
An hour earlier…
The Ukrainian who I’ve sparred with for almost fifteen years, Nestor, taps gloves with me. We’re in the cage at Vadim’s Gym. This is my first practice match since leaving Brazil. Adrenaline slams through my veins, on my toes I go, keeping a tight profile.
“Tighter, tighter,” Vadim, my trainer, shouts, “You ain’t champ no more, keep your chin down, elbows tight!”
My eyes narrow, although I keep my eyes on Nestor. I cock my head for him to make the first move. He punches at my chin. Air zips past as I move. I jab for his nose. My thirst for blood isn’t lost on him. In a split second, Nestor is saved from having to reconstruct his nose, while tucking his forearm in front of his face. I issue swift body shots to his lungs. If it weren’t for the gear he’s wearing, his ribs would’ve been slaughtered. He lurches to the left and the right, with each hit. Catching his footing, he comes back with a right hook that slides across my chin.
“Stay on him!” Vadim shouts in Russian. “Vassili, pen him.”
Then I catch him with a left, right, left. Nestor’s knees buckle, he grunts and slides back onto the ground.
“C’mon, brah,” I wave a gloved hand. “Get the fuck up, I’ll put you down again, I promise.”
“Don’t get cocky,” again, Vadim reminds me that I’m no longer the champ.
Nestor clenches the ground. I step back to my corner, not taking my eyes off him. Like a yoyo, Nestor jumps up to his feet. He shakes out the pain and disequilibrium.
We go back to our toes, chins down, fists at the ready. I let him feel me out and imagine Alvarez, no Karsoff, that motherfucker will be my next match. Might as well have ambitions. Nestor tosses a low kick toward my shin. It’s one of those filler movements to see where I’m at. Nestor thinks he’s closing in on me, bringing me back to the clench. The confidence is all in his eyes. He reaches low and targets my chin, my hands press the back of his neck, bringing his chest forward, my knee slams into his gut. The padding along his abdomen saves him from the type of “knee” that realigns organs in a fighter’s stomach.
“That’s what the fuck I like to see!” Yuri shouts out from the seating area.
While Nestor rests, Vadim gives me the body ropes for conditioning, and I know today, he wants to break my body down until I’m resurrected. Newer. Harder.
An hour later, Vadim grips the back of my neck. “You are a beast! Your comeback is now, Vassili. Your grandfather’s blood is on fire in your bones.”
I dip my head to his compliment. “Who am I murdering next?” My glare roams from him to Yuri. “I need a fucking date. I’m dying here.”
Yuri’s fat ass is damn near swallowing the folding chair. He sits forward. “Alvarez’s team hasn’t responded—”
“Fuck Alvarez, I want Karsoff. Put that shit on the calendar so I can go play tea with my daughter already.”
My cousin gives a huff as Vadim goes to the runner stroller were Natasha is currently sleeping. He smiles in at her. “Vassili, you got a win the weekend before last. Give people a chance to respond. And like you just said, enjoy your beautiful little girl.”
I grab the hand towel from Yuri, stretch it and pop him. “You, manage the fucking situation or I score my own fights.”
“Oh yeah?” Yuri’s voice raises until he looks over toward the stroller in concern. Nobody wakes my daughter. She has more guts than I do. He whispers through gritted teeth. “You called Alvarez out whole hardly standing on your own two feet in Brazil. Now you wanna step over him for Karsoff? Everyone calls me stupid, though.”
“Yeah, you are, mudak. Get me Karsoff or La—”
“This guy is out of his mind?” Yuri tells Vadim.
My coach glares at me while addressing Yuri. “He has aspirations. All he sees is getting the belt back—”
My fist slams against my chest. “My motherfucking belt.”
Vadim flicks my ear. “Close your cunt. Get the fuck outta here, Vassili. My other fighters love to talk shit when you stay a moment longer. And no matter how milyy—cute—Natasha is, that baby is also meaner than a—”
“Volk—wolf,” Yuri finishes.
“You’re the Godfather and you say that of my child?” My face is hard but my thick accent rings with laughter as Vadim agrees to his metaphor.
I grip the handles of the stroller and head past the workout gear.
“Yuri, anything on the email?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. Throwing a thumb over his shoulder, Yuri asks, “You want a ride? I’m parked in the alley.”
“Nyet. I parked a few blocks away. Natasha loves to watch the singers and dancers and shit, and I’ll get a little cool down.”
“Fuck? Kazen, you haven’t worked out enough?”
He heads toward the back of the gym, and I start for the Venice beach exit.
Outside, the sun blazes across the beach. And not one spot along the coast is left as families and couples enjoy the beautiful summer day. I start for the trail, and head off in a jog. Off in the distance, a young Michael Jackson wannabe is gathering a crowd. My baby girl will wake up soon. This is how you wake up a bully without getting into a world of trouble… music.
The boy, panhandling about twenty yards away, has the moves to boot.
The umbrella is shielding Natasha, but she kicks out her foot. Her baby shoe somersaults into the air. She’s awake.
“Girl, do you know how much I spend on your shoes?” My tone is even more playful as I stop to retrieve the expensive, stylish tennis shoe that Zariah always complains about. She purchases those ugly “stride” shoes, mentioning how they assist in walking but our baby is too pretty for that.
The name brand tennis shoe is wedged into the sand. When I turn around, there’s a man standing before the stroller, sliding open the partition. In a flash, I’m there.
“Who the fuck…” The threat is lodged in my throat.
A pair of eyes the same as mine smile back at me.
Grigor! One of my many little brothers is donning a power-suit. He looks ready for Wall Street, but here he is in Venice, California. I grip his lapel. “Why are you here?”
“No hug, brother?” The idiot still has the silly smile on his face.
“Daddy! Daddyyyy!” Natasha pounds a fist onto the table before her. Organic fruit puffs tremble with each hit.
“Oh, she is beautiful.” Grigor reaches out, and I slap his hand. He bares his teeth, shaking out the pain in his hand. “It never fails, Vassili. You don’t have to be so rude.”
“Fuck You. Just because your cunt of a mother was such a simple piece of pussy doesn’t mean you have to be —”
Grigor interrupts my comment with a dose of seriousness. “Vassili, dad wants to talk to you.”
“Where’s Semion?” I ask of my father’s sister’s son. Of all the damn kids Anatoly had, he only wanted me for the bratva. And he only utilizes that ugly fuck, Semion, as his lap dog. There has to be logic in that Semion is so fucking ugly, you’d have to be crazier than the devil to cross him.
“At the car.” Grigor nudges his head to the side. Along the tiny street is a Maybach. My cousin, Semion’s enormous square head bobs as he leans against the side of the car. Noticing the back of a head, which must belong to my father, I keep it pushing.
“You came a long way for nothing, brat—brother,” I toss over my shoulder.
It’s a quarter after twelve, and I need to shower and dress. Natasha and I have our routine, she takes her two-hour nap, during my training, including the drive to and from Vadim’s gym. Usually I play hard with my child in the afternoon, because Zariah will complain if our girl refuses to fall asleep on time. We’ll be pushing it as it is to pick up Zariah by 2pm.
Natasha is pointing to seagulls squawking in the water as I jog past. At least, she will get a good night’s sleep, waking up early. Now, I’ll have to improvise to wash off all this sweat. Grigor’s impromptu arrival throws me off my game for a moment, and I almost pass the street that I parked on. In Venice, with all the million-dollar homes and tiny streets lining the ocean, one could get lost. But I owned a home in the area, prior to marrying and settling down.
At Park Street, I move the stroller off the pathway since the street I parked off, the sidewalk doesn’t connect with the pathway. The wheels navigate over the sand for a moment before wedging into the ground.
“Where you wanna go for lunch, beautiful, huh?” I ask.
“Daddy, da-daddy,” she slobbers.
“Oh, you’re happy today, no teething?” I unlatch her from the seat, hoist her on my arm, folding up the stroller, and then heft that beneath my other arm. “Daddy stinks, sweetheart,” I tell her as she begins to slobber on my shoulder.
We head through the sand, and onto the sidewalk. I lean the stroller against the front side door of my Mercedes SUV, open the backdoor, and place Natasha in her car seat. While climbing into my car, I glance back at my beautiful daughter and my mind is on the woman who made her so gorgeous. Zariah.
***
Forty-five minutes later, the sweat has salted against my muscles and my damp shirt clings to my chest. “Dad’s a fuc—Dad’s a mess,” I tell Natasha as I place her on my hip and we enter the kitchen.
“Eat, eat,” she growls.
“Yes, this is where we eat, but not yet, girl. Let me shower,” I tell her, a little too excited to hold on a conversation with my child. There was a time I could go days without talking, but the baby’s book Zariah read, I snuck a peek at a few pages, and learned the more I talk to Natasha the more vocalized and intelligent she will become. Of course, my daughter will become an MMA fighter like her father, but there will be times I prefer her to use her words and not her fists. “You want French fries?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay, baby girl, we will get those French fries, but don’t fight me if we aren’t at the restaurant soon enough.”
I start down the hall to the front of the house where the double staircase is. My hand just grazes the carved wood staircase when I hear a noise. Someone is in my house!