Page 63 of Sexting My Bratva Boss

Despite everything I’ve done to build this empire, the most satisfying work for me is often the actualbuilding.Not watching numbers rack up in the accounts; but watching men struggle, make a living, earn their lives.

When their boss shows up in steel-toed boots instead of Italian leather, it’s because he needs the pain. The distraction. The weight of something in his hands that isn’t her.

I don’t think of Audrey at first.

I slam the hammer down again and again, pounding rebar and ego beneath the blows. I lose track of time. The sun climbs. My back aches, my shirt sticks to my skin. It’s only when one of the foremen calls for a break that I stop.

That’s when I see him.

A small boy. Six, maybe seven. Standing beside one of the men I recognize—Aleksy, a welder with twenty years in. The boy has dark hair, cut unevenly, and big brown eyes that take in everything. He’s holding a sandwich in one hand and a toy truck in the other.

Something about him coils around my ribs and squeezes.

He looks too much like Mikhail.

My little brother was thin as a rail. Always hungry, always smiling. He had a way of making a game out of nothing; one time, I brought him home a dented metal truck someone had thrown out. He treated it like it was made of gold. I watched him fall asleep with it clutched to his chest.

And then I left.

I told him I’d be back. I promised him America would change everything, even our mother—she’d be kinder, I’d whispered. She’d be able to love us.

I didn’t get the chance to return in time.

Mikhail had died the winter after I left. Pneumonia. No medicine, despite the money I was sending back. Nothing like what I would eventually be able to send, but it was more than anything she—or her boyfriends—ever made. Should have been more than enough for Mikhail to be seen at the hospital if she’d cared enough to take him.

She said it like she was ordering groceries. Like my brother’s life was just one more debt she didn’t want to pay.

I nod to the boy.

Aleksy notices. “This is Emil,” he says, pride in his voice. “My youngest. The school called in a half day.” The flick of his eyes to his boy, the large hand on Emil’s shoulder—I understand easily that as proud as Aleksy is, he’s nervous.

I have a reputation, after all.

Crouching beside the boy, I offer him a piece of rebar, like a sword. He beams at me and takes it in both hands.

For a second, I imagine a different life. One where Mikhail made it, where I went back in time. One where we both lived like kings..

I leave the site late in the afternoon, after making sure Aleksy gets an envelope for his boy. Inside: tuition for the next three years, and a card with a number he can call if anything ever happens to his family.

“Anything,” I say.

Aleksy nods, eyes misting. “Yes, sir.”

But instead of going back to the townhouse, I go to her place.Our place,the voice whispers, and I try to shake it off, not wanting to think about what it means—that I think of that country house as a home. As somewhere I belong.

I don’t park directly outside but pull around the corner and walk.

Old habits. Ones I can’t seem to break now that I know there’s something more, something hidden, happening in the city. I haven’t forgotten Giuseppe’s blessing, or his warning; somewhere, someone is trying to take him down.

And it seems they’re testing my territory as well to pit us against one another. I wonder if they’ve found out that the two most dangerous men in the city know.

Through the diamond-paned window, I see her silhouette on the couch. She’s curled on her side, a blanket pulled up, the TV casting a soft glow across her face.

She’s asleep again, exhausted no doubt. I take a twisted pleasure in that: she wants to work, wants to be useful, but I wonder how long that will really last. The pregnancy is draining her, our child growing strong. It makes me want to carry hereverywhere. To wrap her up in cashmere and seal the doors and make sure nothing ever touches her again.

I should go inside.

But I don’t.