Petrovich Vodka is one of my least favorite places in the world. Which is why I avoid it like the plague. For the last five years I’ve been able to use my job as an excuse, but now that I no longer have a job, it’s getting tougher to find reasons not to go to the evil empire my father built from scratch.

I hobble to the large black SUV that waits for me at the street in front of my apartment building. The ankle to thigh brace that I have to wear for my knee makes it nearly impossible to maneuver. I can’t bend it, can’t drive, can’t exercise. What I can do is go to physical therapy, and other than one-night stands and a lot of television, that’s pretty much all I do these days. My life is an endless cycle of PT, puck bunnies, and Game of Thrones reruns.

Vanya, my father’s driver, exits the car and opens the back door for me. I’ve told him a hundred times that he doesn’t need to do that, but Vanya’s old school, he’s been with my dad since I was a small child. My dad modernizes what he has to, but the fact is he’s still a traditional Russian patriarch. He expects allegiance from his people, and Vanya, raised in the pre-wall-coming-down Soviet Union is more comfortable in that role anyway.

“Thanks, Vanya,” I tell him as I sit on the edge of the backseat then swing my braced leg into the car with the rest of me. I have to admit that this Escalade with all the seats adjusted to provide maximum legroom in the back is a real improvement over my Aston Martin for the time being.

After Vanya climbs into the driver’s seat he looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Your father asks that you call him, Mr. Petrovich.”

I sigh. I’ve been avoiding my dad for days now, but I can’t in front of Vanya, it would look bad and undermine my dad’s authority. He knows this, hence the reason he used Vanya to get to me. Fuck.

“Thanks,” I say as I take my phone out of my pocket and hit Dad’s speed dial number.

“Mikhail,” my dad answers.

“Hi. Vanya said you needed to speak to me?”

“How is the therapy going?”

I shift on the seat and look out the window, knowing what’s coming and wishing he’d just get to it already.

“It’s fine, Dad. Everything’s on schedule, no surprises so far. The new hip joint is stiff, but that’s better than if it were too loose. The ACL is healing like it’s supposed to.”

“Good. So you’ll be out of the brace in one month?”

He’s being disingenuous. I’m sure he has the exact date I can take the brace off entered in his calendar—probably with little stars and dollar signs drawn around it.

“Yeah, just about a month.”

“This is good. I have maintenance working on your office space now. The northwest corner suite, it has a small conference room attached and a full bathroom. Also, if you will have your physical therapist call me, I will make sure the building gym has any equipment you need installed. That way you can keep up with your rehabilitation.”

My heart rate picks up and I struggle to stay in control of the tone and volume of my voice.

“We’ve discussed this already, I’m not coming to work for the company.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my father scoffs. “You can’t play hockey anymore, this has always been our plan. Once you retired from hockey you would become the vice president of public relations. This is your destiny. It is past time for you to start taking a daily role in your company.” Then he digs the knife in deep and twists. “I will not be here forever to run it for you.”

Because here’s the thing, my father doesn’t consider Petrovich Vodka to be his company. He sees himself as the steward who is maintaining it for my brother and me. Everything he does is for us, which only makes things that much more difficult since I hate Petrovich Vodka. Everything about it. It stole my family from me, and I’d rather die than work there.

But I don’t feel like fighting with my father today so I pretty much brush him off.

“Ok, I’ll think about it. Have you talked to Dmitri this week?” Because every good sibling knows that the easiest way to get a parent off your back is to deflect to your moody younger brother.

“I had Katerina bring him food and she says he is locked in his studio painting like a madman. I’ll never understand how he can spend days on end doing nothing but slapping paint on canvases. But I commissioned him to paint a new piece for the lobby. Big. Twelve feet high. It will hang near the photo of you on the Olympic podium, and then everyone will know exactly who Petrovich is when they enter the building.”

My father is nothing if not enthusiastic about his sons. He doesn’t understand us, but he’s always proud of us.

“I’ll call Dmitri and check up on him, make sure he’s remembering to sleep and eat. But we’re almost to my PT appointment, Dad, I’d better go.”

We end the call and I sigh as I lean back against the leather seats. I’m tired of battling my father. And while I love him, the fact is that he’s never understood me, and isn’t too great at listening to me. He’s Russian, so of course he supported me when I played hockey, but the rest of the time he bulldozed through whatever wishes or hopes I might have had. He spent the majority of my childhood at work, building the corporation that he is determined Dmitri and I will take over, though neither one of us wants it. Him, because he loves his art and his freedom—me, because I know how our mother died.

Dmitri is too young to remember the days when our mother was alive. What things were like when she was still functional, before the constant tastings and corporate cocktail parties, and free samples of booze took hold of her and ate away at her soul until she was nothing but a shell of a human being.

But while Dmitri doesn’t remember, I do, and because of it, alcohol is the very last business I will ever work in. I have, in fact, refused to take money from my father at all since I entered the draft and went into the NHL my senior year in college. It all sits in a massive trust fund for me anyway.

But without hockey, who am I, and what am I doing with the rest of my life? It’s a question that haunts me day in and day out, and one that spreads a blanket of darkness over my soul. Because the idea of spending the next forty some odd years sitting in an office in the Petrovich building crushes me. Absolutely and completely crushes me. I can’t imagine anything more soul sucking, mind numbing, and heart wrenching than a corporate life at Petrovich Vodka.

Unfortunately, I don’t have another plan. And my time is running out.