Chapter 2

Branna

3 Weeks Earlier

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I didn’t really know Anastasia, but when things like these happen in the community, we have to band together. I lost my mother and little sister, too, albeit many years ago and in a war between the Irish and the Russians, who were constantly vying for control of Boston’s underworld.

I try not to let my thoughts go there, but I can’t help but see the scene play in my mind as I close my eyes. It was the first day of third grade and I couldn’t wait to run home and tell Mom all about my day. She always acted like what I had to say was the most interesting thing in the world, even if it was just going on and on about a picture I drew in arts and crafts or a new kid in my class. But that day, I had really exciting news for her. Alexei Sokolov was in my class. I didn’t know much about the Russians, other than that they were enemy number one of the O’Sullivan syndicate and that the elder Sokolov was the boss of the Bratva faction. They fought a lot, especially in the past few weeks, so this piece of news would definitely put me at the center of attention—for the afternoon, at least. I hadn’t had such a juicy piece of gossip since when Sinead, my little sister, took her first step while Mom had her back turned, making dinner. I was in such a hurry to get home and so I was so bummed when a traffic blockade held me up.

I remember pressing my face against the window impatiently, wanting whatever it was that was holding the school bus up to hurry up and be over. There were ten, maybe twelve, cop cars blocking the road. Their lightbars kept blinding me as the lights spun and the mechanical scream of their sirens deafened me. As my senses adjusted to the chaos, barely dampened at all by the bus walls, I could pick up on cold popping sounds and real screams—human screams.

That’s when I started to feel scared. Until then, I was fine. But when I heard the screams and the bad pops—the pops that always made Mom close the shutters and herd Sinead and me down to the windowless basement playroom—I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I hugged my backpack to my chest, burying my face in the hot pink plastic, and shook as I took gasping breaths in and out.

I didn’t stop shaking for a week. Not when they rerouted the school bus back to school. Not when Dad showed up at school hours later, with sad eyes and a hard face. Not when they put Sinead and Mom in the ground in matching black boxes decorated with intricate carvings and filled with crushed silk and rose petals.

I remember looking into Mom’s box and not being able to cry any more. Her face was as perfectly made up as every other day of her life, lashes and all, but so terribly still. Even the magical swirls and starbursts that danced from just under her left ear all the way down to the rounded curve of her shoulder, a mesmerizing pattern that had entranced me for as long as I could remember, had somehow lost their magic. Everything was flat, dull. Dead.

The next day, Dad took me with him to the meeting. I waited in a room with an attendant, one of the underboss’ wives, until Sean, Dad’s second in command, came to get me. I joined Dad in a large, dark room with stark fluorescent light glaring down on a long oak table. The Russians were there, too, and so was Alexei. I was told that the wars were over. The mafia rivals were uniting in a peacekeeping truce. And on my eighteenth birthday, I would marry Alexei Sokolov and seal the alliance by joining the families.

At eight years old, I was given the burden of stopping a gruesome rivalry, spanning decades, by marrying Alexei, a boy I didn’t even know. I stopped shaking.

I shake myself out of my reverie. Today isn’t about me, it isn’t about Sinead, and it isn’t about my mom. Today is about Anastasia and the loss of her mother and sister in a car accident.

Anastasia is one of the Russians and I should probably have arranged an escort to accompany me to go visit her. Truce or no truce, I am not entirely safe on their side of town until I married Alexei. Though I was well into nineteen, we still weren’t married. Four days before my eighteenth birthday and our planned wedding date, Alexei was shot. The bullet missed its target and sunk itself in his shoulder, but the wedding was called off until the Russians could ascertain that the would-be hitman was working for the Armenians and the Armenians alone. It took a while for them to believe the Irish had no part, because the Russians shoot first and ask later. Corpses don’t say much.

Still, this is an exceptional circumstance and I’m not going to overwhelm the poor girl with an armed associate glowering down over us, even if that’s what safety would demand.

I knock on Anastasia’s door. There’s no response and I don’t hear anything when I press my ear against the door. She doesn’t seem to be home. I decide to stop by Alexei’s place on the way back to make sure that he’s heard about Anastasia’s family. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been alone with a guy — they know to stay away. But Anastasia is, after all, his ex-girlfriend. He should know.

I bristle a little at the thought — Alexei may be technically off-limits, but the

reality is quite different. Because he isn’t the one who has to bleed on our wedding night, the rules about his social life are a lot more lax than the ones about mine.

With that bitter thought, I stomp up the steps to Alexei’s place and knock on the door. Alexei’s probably still at the gym and coming back soon, but it’s starting to drizzle and I’m not waiting out here until he gets back. I slide a hairclip out of my hair, jostle the lock a bit, and let myself into Alexei’s place. I grab a banana from the counter and toss myself down on the couch to wait.

Then I hear something from Alexei’s bedroom. A thump. There it is again. Thump-thump. Someone else is in the apartment. I get up from the couch as quietly as possible, instantly regretting having thrown myself down on it moments earlier. But I don’t think whoever it is heard me, because the thumping continues. Then there’s a man’s voice, but it’s so low that I can’t make out what he’s saying. A woman’s voice replies, also too low to make out any words. Then there’s a female sob and the male says something in a soothing voice. Anastasia must have come over to seek solace in Alexei after receiving the bad news. I decide to leave them alone. He knows her much better than I do and will surely do a better job of comforting her.  

But then I hear something else, just as I’m tip-toeing past the door to Alexei’s bedroom. A moan?

What. The. Fuck.

I rip open Alexei’s bedroom door and glare at Alexei and Anastasia, limbs entangled and very naked on Alexei’s bed. They’re on top of the sheets and I can see everything. Alexei’s muscled back before he twists his torso and stares back at me in horror. Anastasia’s suspiciously round, suspiciously pert, suspiciously large breasts, looking like twin basketballs straining forth under her Oompa Loompa tanned skin. Anastasia’s lips, colored with her signature Barbie pink lipstick, still formed in a round ‘O.’ A round ‘O’ from the pleasure my frickin’ fiancée was giving the little skank with each thrust of his strong hips, driving his cock deeper into her surely sopping wet pussy.

Whore.

But it’s not even her that I’m mad at, with her bottle-blonde, straw hair stuck to her forehead with sweat sex. No, it’s my fucking fiancée who’s fucking some cheap slut in his bed, maybe what would have been our bed very soon, depending on how we worked out the logistics of our marriage.

I barely even realize that I start yelling, I’m so mad. “How DARE you betray me? How DARE you fuck her, you asshole? I WAITED for you! I haven’t even KISSED a man—and you? You? YOU! UGGGHHHHHHH!”  

I’m so mad that I can’t come up with something clever to say or do, some way to make him feel some of the anger and frustration that I feel. So I walk over to the bed instead and smush my opened banana into his black satin bed sheets and really smear it in before spinning on my heel and running out. 

I know. Not my finest or most mature moment. Not even the most cutting response. A banana? Really? But what’s a girl to do?

By the time I get back to my house, I know that we are over. My eleven-year engagement to Alexei is over, because I am going to run away.

I can’t marry someone who betrayed me before we were ever even together in the first place.