Page 50 of Unwritten Vows
Derrick
Liza stops crying soon after I force myself to sit up. She pushes me back down, places all the rags back in the correct areas, and then lies beside me. She hugs my arm in her own and rubs a rag full of frozen ice over my strained ligaments with the other.
The numbness in my muscles sets in along with the Ibuprofen, and soon I’m more comfortable than I’ve been in weeks. Since the last time I laid with Liza, actually.
I must drift off at some point, because when I crack my eyes open, it’s dark.
Liza sleeps beside me, her breath soft on my shoulder, the rags she used earlier flat and lukewarm on my chest. I feel so much better, somehow, and lift my hand to her face, letting the wet rag on my left side slide off my shoulder and onto the floor.
But a moment later, I realize where I am, and my eyes flick past her and to the guard standing at the doorway.
He leans against the wall with his eyes glued to his phone.
Yaroslav must be giving this the green light. There’s no way the guards would be so unconcerned if he hadn’t told them to let us be. I turn back to Liza with some hope, at least. My old ego returns and I know that if he’s allowing this… I can win him over. I’m sure of it.
The next time I wake up, however, that assertion is tested.
“Time to go, Derrick Stepinov. You can stay alive for now. That’s about all I can promise you.”
Liza stands with him, looking groggy, and the mattress next to me is warm. She was here all night.
“Of course,” I say, feeling sick with pain as soon as I move. I keep my face completely impassive, though, not showing a thing as I sit up slowly. “I wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome.”
Her father simply grunts and nods, before leading me out.
Leaving is as awful as I expect. I have to keep my shit together and at least attempt to show a strong facade; I walk out with my head held high, hoping that the saunter in my gait will make up for how slow I’m going and any lingering pain in my expression.
I tell Liza to stand back and she actually listens, which is a welcome change. Perhaps she’s finally realizing that she can’t show concern for me in front of all these dangerous men. Whether either of us like it or not, it shows weakness to accept her help and her concern.
But it doesn’t show weakness to do what I really want to do when I grab her to me before I walk down the steps, making as much of a show out of squeezing her waist as possible and turning her to face me. These guys aren’t going to shoot me unless her father orders them to, and I know he won’t.
She gives me a desperate look. Just for a moment, I give her the same, before I kiss her hard. She kisses me back, and it’s worth a possible bullet to the chest just for the soul she pours into it.
“I’m not giving up. And neither are you. Okay?”
She breathes in, holds it for a moment, and then answers on the exhale. “Okay.”
*****
I’m dropped unceremoniously in front of my father’s Rhode Island mansion, very unsure of what the fuck I’m going to do with this monstrosity of an estate.
My father, wanting the best and most gaudy of everything, went all out for the items he thought would be most impressive to own, but didn’t focus much on taste.
No one comes to the door, and my anxiety quickly turns into apathy as I walk through the grand entrance.
It’s quieter than normal, but clean, indicating that at least someone on my staff has been showing up to work throughout all of this insanity.
The guards are part of the life, all made men, and they know that if they don’t show up, they’re risking their own lives as well as the lives of their family’s.
They also know that in this time of transition they will either show undying loyalty to me or be swiftly put down.
With the way I’m feeling right now, I won’t even blink an eye if that’s necessary.
So now, I’m left with a skeleton staff and a laundry list of ex-employee notifications. I hit the erase button on the message indicator because I really don’t care who has stayed.
“You look like you’re asleep on your feet,” comes a voice to my right. I knew she was there before she spoke, and thought she’d be one of the few who had stayed anyway.
“Hello, Irina.” Irina has been a kitchen hand since she was 16-years-old, so she came on when I was a 9-year-old boy. She’s always been like my big sister, minus the years-long childhood crush I had on her.
“Hello Mr. Stepinov.”
I look back at her with an eyebrow raised.
“What? You’re the new underboss. We’ve all been practicing what we would call you.”
“How about Derrick?” I ask warily.
“My vote was ‘lead prick,’ but no one else agreed.” She smirks.
“You really do look like you need some help just standing there. I can tell you’ve had a good beating, but I can’t tell if it was all from days ago, when you disappeared after you were almost killed by some crazy person in the basement of that sketchy club.
” Now it’s her turn to raise an eyebrow.
It’s pretty obvious that she believes exactly none of what I’ve told the press.
But I can’t tell her the truth. I’ve told too many people already.
“I should really go get some rest, I suppose,” I say, even though my stomach is growling.
I don’t want to sit in the kitchen and have anyone digging for information into what happened.
It’s likely the staff here knows that my father and I weren’t exactly the picture of familial love, so they’ll all wonder if it was really me.
They’ll all wonder what really went down, and I’m not prepared to fake a story yet.
“Oh, well would you like something delivered to your room?”
“No, thank you, Irina, that’ll be all.”
She knows better than to argue with me. She curtsies and walks away.
I don’t go to my bedroom. I go straight to my father’s old office. My adrenaline has finally kicked in, and suddenly it feels like I have an impossible amount of work to do with barely any time to do it.
Everything was set for my father to take over after Divny left this earthly realm, but although we had a lot of failsafes in place for me as well, I’m sure there are more strings that other ambitious characters could pull if they tried.
Also, Divny might be sick and on drugs that confuse him, but he does have periods of lucidity.
If anyone suspects me of doing something to my father, which is likely the case, they could get in his ear and have him sign something while my guys aren’t around.
It’s dog-eat-dog in this fucking business, and my particular Bratva family is always hungry.
We have been known to eat our own on more than one occasion.
I open the door and look up, and suddenly a wash of memories hits me like a tidal wave.
My first interrogation in this room. My first kill.
Even my father standing over my mother when they called me in at just five years old to tell me she was leaving for a while.
She never came back, and I still don’t know what happened to her.
But I barely knew her anyway. Hard to grieve over someone you didn’t really know.
I remember when my father was happy with me after I figured out that one of our seeming allies was informing on us to a rival organization. I remember the pat on the back he gave me that day, and the squeeze on the shoulders he’d give me on other days when I did something he deemed smart or worthy.
It’s a weird sort of feeling I’m hit with.
A bunch of seemingly innocuous moments that probably meant too much to me, more than they should have, but since I was so starved for attention, I remember them when this feeling hits.
I still don’t think it’s grief, though—it’s not a sadness for what I had to do, or what I’ve lost. It’s a sadness, perhaps, for what could have been.
Add to all of this that my body and mind are entirely too overstretched and exhausted, and I’m stumbling under the weight of the memories. The realization of what I’ve done has crashed down on me, and I need to get out of its way if I don’t want to be crushed.
I grasp the desk to steady myself and try to catch my breath.
I’ve had no time to brace myself, and it’s worse than a punch to the stomach.
My hand slips and scatters the papers around, and I fall into the desk chair, gripping the armrests and sinking myself into it.
I wince as I remember my father sitting here just days ago, looking down at me with that condescending gaze. Get a grip, Derrick.
I bend to pick up the papers that fell to the floor, and I see Edoardo’s name.
Upon first look, scanning through, it seems like a straightforward business transaction granting the usage of certain docks for benign shit like plastic gloves and cafeteria trays.
But upon further scrutiny, I see a name: Maxim Whitney.
“Those conniving fuckers,” I whisper. There is something incredibly shady about this document—a puzzle to be solved, even though I can’t quite see the full picture yet.
Not only was my father about to stab the entire mafia world in the back by having dealings with Edoardo, who was well-hated by most of our allies, but so were a number of prominent figures in the Northeast. Marco’s name is in these papers, as is Timur’s, Mara’s father, Maxim Whitney, and the list goes on.
What’s even more surprising is that my father had Maxim’s daughter for over a day and was planning to kill her, even though they were doing business together. There really is no honor in this game.
An image of the Bolyar pops into my head at that moment. I know what my brain is trying to do, and I shut it down right away. No. He does not have honor. He just loves his daughter.
But maybe in this game, that is a type of honor. Maybe that’s more honor than any of the rest of us will see in our lifetime. Maybe just to have that bit of vulnerability, to admit such a weakness, is as close as we’ll ever get.
I bite down on my back teeth and feel some kind of resolve pump through my bones.
I don’t know the full scope of it yet, but I’m certain I want to try life the Bolyar’s way.
To care about something and admit it to myself.
To do more than endlessly wonder what it would be like to have the things that “normal” people have.
But I have to get Liza back completely, and to do that, I have to get her father back on my side somehow. I’m going to find out everything I can, absorb every detail, figure this out, and bring it to him so we can save the day.