When you meet a man you judge him by his clothes, when you leave, you judge him by his heart. —Russian Proverb
HE SCARED ME. HIS ENTIRE PRESENCE felt… angry, tense. And he also reminded me of someone, something, I wasn’t entirely sure what, maybe it was just the way he moved about the room. He moved like a predator, like he was faking a calm on the outside while a war was being fought on the inside.
“Sit.” Phoenix was leaning back against the white leather couch, his legs propped up on the table, everything about his position appeared relaxed but his face was tight, his eyes piercing right through me. He ran a hand through his semi-buzzed hair and bit out a curse before muttering something in Italian and standing. “You know what? I’ll stand for this. I think I need to stand.”
I sat on the other end of the couch and folded my hands in my lap.
“Wine.” He said without looking at me. “I thought it might be better than coffee.”
“Better for me or you?”
“Both.” He turned on his heel, hiding a smirk from me as he cursed again and then finally sat down, leaning forward on his knees. “I’ll say it once, not twice, so you need to listen and wait to ask questions until the end. It’s the only way I’ll get through this. Know that talking about my past isn’t just something I don’t like doing, it’s something I don’t do, not for anyone but my wife, and only because I love her and know it helps heal wounds that would otherwise fester if she didn’t kiss the darkness away.”
“You know, I think I’ll drink first.” I reached for the wine waiting on the table, gulped down four swallows then set it back.
“Better?” Phoenix asked.
“No.”
He laughed, it sounded funny on him, like he wasn’t used to it. He inclined his head toward me. “There’s a lot of darkness in this world, a lot of bad… for a long time, my family was a part of it. Unlike the Russian mafia, the Italians have a pretty strict set of rules that run our organization. One of them being that in the beginning of our formation, we were to never involve ourselves with drugs or prostitution.”
I snorted. “So what? You just involved yourself in money laundering? Extortion?”
He smiled. “Would it surprise you to know that most of our families own legitimate companies?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then surprise.” He shrugged. “Our family is not what it used to be, the five families have been forced to change with the times, but when I was younger… my family, the De Langes were the most hated because we were willing to do anything for a profit. And my father, noticing that we were losing the respect of the other bosses as well as money, decided to do something… different.”
I had an idea what different meant, but wanted to hear him say it.
“Prostitution rings and drugs… both of which he involved himself so heavily in that he not only got hooked on his own product but started selling girls, their virginity, to the highest bidder. He…” Phoenix coughed, then hung his head. “He tried to sell my stepsister. And by the time I was ten, I’d seen more evil than people have seen in a life time. It was my comfort, all I knew. Darkness was my blanket, my sanctuary. It became my temple, because I knew if it didn’t, he would kill me for it. There are things you don’t need to know, but what you do need to know is that at one point, my father, did, in fact, sell his own daughter.”
My stomach clenched, like I was going to puke. “Why would he do that?”
“Money. Always money.” Phoenix said in a bitter voice. “I of course didn’t know of her existence until I took over the Nicolasi Family just this last year. Secrets, as I said, are what I deal in. Luca Nicolasi was one of the most well known bosses in the five families, and he left everything to me, but he did business in secrets, he has so many people by the balls, people you wouldn’t even—” He stood abruptly. “He has what I call Black Folders on hundreds of individuals.”
Phoenix walked over to black messenger bag and pulled out a sleek black folder, then dropped it right on the table next to my wine. It wasn’t very thick, the folder, but it was daunting, almost like opening it would unlock things I wasn’t sure should be known.
“Truth, always comes out.” Phoenix towered over me. He was lithe, muscular, intimidating, and dark, so very dark. “One of the greatest lies you will ever believe is that you can sin in silence and get away with it. Because most of the time silence is the loudest, it demands to be known, to be heard.” He sighed and leaned down opening the first page of the folder.
I leaned over, my heart slamming against my chest.
It was a picture of me.
And beneath it was a name.
Maya De Lange.
It was me, but there was a different name. I knew my father wasn’t really my father, but… that would mean. I glanced up at Phoenix. “You’re my brother?”
He winced, as if the word held nothing but pain for him.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “I don’t…” My eyes felt blurry, my body heavy.
“Lay down.” He instructed in a soft voice. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Promise.”
“I have a terrifying brother,” I muttered as my mouth filled with cotton, a whooshing sound caused me to close my eyes.
“Thanks for the compliment,” he chuckled.
The last thing I registered before my body gave in to the darkness.
I blinked my eyes and winced as a man I’d only seen once had a flashlight pointed in my eyes. I pushed his arm away as tears filled my vision.
“Russians don’t cry.” He said it with a small smile and then tilted his head to the side. “Are you okay, Maya?”
“Yeah.” I pressed my hands to my temples as Sergio slowly helped me to a sitting position in the couch. “Where’s Phoenix?”
“Here.” Phoenix said from somewhere behind me, soon he appeared next to Sergio with coffee. “I added whiskey.”
I pressed my lips together in a smile. “Smart man.”
“My wife thinks so. That’s all that matters.” Phoenix’s voice was still gruff, he and Sergio shared a look.
“She’s fine.” Sergio stood. “Just a little… stressed.”
“No shit.” Phoenix muttered. “I still can’t believe you’re here, why are you here?”
“I felt left out.” Sergio shrugged. “And it’s time.”
Phoenix swallowed, looked away, then slapped Sergio on the arm just as the door to my apartment burst open revealing a bleeding Nikolai and Italians.
“Not on the couch!” Chase shouted. “It’s white!”
“Who the hell cares?” Tex fired back. “Dead is dead! Save the couch or save the Russian?”
They all paused, like actually paused as if they were contemplating keeping the white couch pristine.
“What!” I shrieked, as Nikolai nearly collapsed against the floor.
“Sorry.” Nixon grabbed Nikolai. “Old habits and all that.”
“Damn it, let me sit!” Nikolai yelled, his face was bloody, his mouth swollen.
I lunged for him, but Sergio grabbed my arm. “Let me patch him up first, stop the bleeding and give him something for the pain.”
“But—”
“Maya.” Sergio shook his head once. “He knows. Believe me. And out of all these schmucks I’m the only one who actually has any medical knowledge that won’t end up making Nikolai look like Frankenstein.”
“Ha ha.” Chase winked in my direction. “Tell me it wouldn’t be hilarious if we had to start calling him that?”
Nikolai muttered a string of curses then tried to lean against the counter as blood dripped from a wound on his arm.
“I can walk.” He grumbled half shoving half stumbling past the counter top and nearly falling into Sergio’s arms in a brave effort to avoid the white couch.
Our eyes locked.
I knew why he would avoid it.
Because the blood on white made him sick—it was his thing, we all had them, and it hit me, in that moment, that maybe he was just as traumatized over our joint past as I was.
“Here.” I quickly moved to his side and helped Sergio take him into the bedroom—my bedroom. It’s where he belonged, with me, on my bed. Once he was positioned over the bed, I grabbed one of the red Afghans from the chair and tossed it over the white duvet in an effort to make sure he didn’t see his own blood on the white—I didn’t want to add emotional stress to his already physically stressed state.
“Sergio.” Nikolai said his name like an angry curse. “Why the hell do I have six Italians in my home?”
“Seven.” Sergio said in a bored tone just as Phoenix walked into the room with a large boxy briefcase, handed it to him and walked out. “Technically there are seven of us. Eight if you count Maya.” He winked.
“Phoenix told you.” Nikolai’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry I was not here for you during that time.”
“That’s okay.” I sat next to him on the bed and held his bloody hand. “You were too busy getting beat up.”
“And by the looks of it.” Sergio tore the rest of Nikolai’s shirt with his hands. “Shot at.”
“What!” I shrieked, grasping Nik’s hand with more intensity than necessary.
“I’m fine,” he assured me. “It went clean through.”
“What the hell?” Sergio leaned down to examine the wound I guessed, then cursed again. “How did a simple bullet wound tear?”
“They beat the shit out of me and I tried to fight back. How else do you think it tore open?”
Sergio ignored him and placed the box on the floor, opened it, and pulled out a syringe.
My eyes widened, maybe too much because Sergio smirked in my direction. “Don’t worry I’m not killing him, just giving him a nice dose of morphine that should make him dream of unicorns and shit.”
“I don’t need morphine,” Nik grumbled as sweat started pouring down his temples.
I nodded to Sergio. “Give it to him.”
“Maya I don’t need—” He hissed as Sergio jabbed a needle into the inside of Nik’s elbow. “I hate drugs.”
“Always good when a doctor that invented his own special drugs actually hates them. That way you won’t ever become an addict,” Sergio said helpfully. “Now, you were only shot once, but I’m thinking…” His hands moved to Nik’s chest and ran down. “Two broken ribs?”
Nik was silent and then, “One black eye, three broken ribs on my right side, possible internal bleeding, a pissed off kidney, and a giant gaping wound where I got shot. That’s it. See?” He tried to get up, but fell back onto the bed and wheezed out. “I’m fine.”
“Doctors are always the worst patients.” Sergio grabbed another needle and jabbed it into Nik’s neck, within seconds he was slumping back and then sleeping.
“What did you give him?” I asked in a panicked voice. I was surrounded by Italian mafia, and as much as I wanted to trust them, because Nik did, because my sister had, I was still apprehensive. There were seven of them, seven huge terrifying men in my apartment. What if they decided we weren’t worth it? It’s not like I wasn’t aware of what Nikolai did now, or what my father had done to them, to Andi.
“Hey,” Sergio drew my attention back to him. “Why don’t you help me wash off the blood so I can see where he needs to stitch?”
“He?”
“I highly doubt a surgeon as talented as Nikolai is going to want someone who dropped out of his fourth year of med school sewing him up. Besides, I’m hoping it doesn’t look as bad once we get him cleaned up.”
I nodded my head and went to the bathroom to grab a warm wet cloth, then made my way back into the bedroom and started softly wiping away the blood on Nikolai’s side.
We worked in silence. I washed blood and Sergio did small sutures over a few cuts while simultaneously examining the bruising already forming across Nikolai’s body.
After a few minutes of companionable silence. Sergio spoke. “She would have loved you.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Do you think… it’s possible to miss someone you never really knew?”
Sergio’s hands froze. “Yes. I do. I think it’s possible to miss someone simply from hearing memories from other people, knowing what that person was like, seeing someone talk about them as their faces light up with pleasure or excitement almost like the person is still breathing—living.” He cleared his throat and started working again. “It’s okay to feel loss, even though you weren’t a part of her life.” His eyes met mine. “I know if the situation were reversed, she’d feel the same way about you. She’d mourn you—because blood is blood, Maya. And we’re all human… very breakable, most of us already broken, and she knew that better than anyone I’d ever met. She looked at the world like it deserves to be looked at.”
“How?”
“With respect… with beauty.”
A single tear ran down my face. I tried to wipe it away but Sergio grabbed my hand. “It’s harder for those left behind then it is for those who leave. Just know… she laughed a lot, and drove me insane.”
I licked my dry lips, a smile forming across them. “This world needs more laughter.”
“It really does.” He agreed as we both stared at Nikolai. “And he’s going to need you…”
“He has me.”
“Does he?” Sergio’s eyes narrowed. “He’s a killer.”
“So are you.”
“The very hands he uses to give life—he takes. You’ll have to turn a blind eye… because it will always be in his blood.”
“What will?”
Sergio shrugged. “Once you are in this life, you don’t walk away, even when you want to. It follows you, tempts you, beckons you, promises you the world. He will always be mafia. So, I’d leave now if it’s too much. I can make you disappear, and because of Andi, I’m going to give you that option.” He stood. “You’d be in Canada by midnight, or Mexico if that’s your preference, a house by the ocean, a new identity, passport, a new life, just say the word.”
“But Nikolai—”
“He stays. This offer is for you. Not for him.”
Panicked, I stared at Nikolai and stood, it was what he’d wanted for me, for us, to disappear, for me to be safe, but I didn’t want safe if it meant I was away from him.
“My father, he will keep coming after Nik? After me?”
Sergio didn’t answer.
“What would Andi do?”
Again no answer, he simply stared, his crystal blue eyes blazing holes through me.
I swallowed, straightening my shoulders and whispered, “If he stays. I stay.”
“Thank God.” Nikolai said in a hoarse voice. “And Sergio, leave before I kick your ass.”
“Hah,” Sergio pulled out a needle and thread. “In your position you’re more likely to fall on your ass and look stupid in front of the girl you love.” He handed the needle to Nikolai. “I’ll let you do the honors.”
“Thanks.” He grumbled, “And Sergio?”
Sergio turned.
“Stab me with a needle again and I’m ripping out your throat while you’re awake.”
“Huh.” Sergio nodded approvingly. “Propranolol, didn’t know you were a fan.”
“Out.” Nikolai made a weird growling noise.
Sergio shut the door and yelled back. “You’re welcome!”