“That is an interesting question. But I have one last question for you, Alexi, before I say my piece.” Sergei sat back, hands clasped on his belly, just below his breastbone. “Why did you kill Grigori? With his own sledgehammer, no less?”
I wanted my chin. “He was a rabid dog. He killed my mother, and he wanted to kill me. I took him out before he could. This city wasn’t big enough for us both.”
Sergei nodded and rumbled low in his chest. And then he shook his head.
“My boy, you don’t understand the most important thing about this mess,” he said. “Because you forget one thing. Your mother killed herself.”
“Because he beat her,” I said. “He pushed and—”
“She broke. Because she was weak.” Sergei’s eyes flicked up to look at me then, full of disappointment… and warning. “And so are you.”
There was a deeply uncomfortable pause around the table. In the silence, I set my glass down, still with half the shot of Kors, and stood.
“Sit down.” Sergei motioned with his eyes to my seat.
Vanya and Nic tensed, and I remembered Lev’s warning to me. They thought I was an atom bomb, primed to explode. I hadn’t been: but I was now.
“With all respect, Pakhun, I’d rather go and study my Art.” I turned a small, stiff smile on him. “Excuse me.”
“You are not excused,” came his brittle reply. “I haven’t finished speaking.”
“Then please, by all means, speak.” I stayed in place, but I was not going to sit.
Nic folded his arms, watching me in silent triumph.
Sergei heaved a dramatic sigh. “Nicolai, I name you Avtoritet of New York, as Grigori Sokolsky—honestly, the man I wished could have managed Brighton Beach until his deathbed—is not here to claim that honor. Lev will be by my side as Advokat as we establish our Asian contacts. Vanya, your man Petro Yankovic has been voted by the others as suitable for the role of Cell Commander, and he will take Nic’s place when he rises to his new station. As for you, Alexi, I have other work for you and Vassily befitting your age and skills.”
Other than dog chum? I was genuinely surprised. With Nic as Avtoritet and Petro running the enforcement in the Beach, there would be no contracts for me. There would be nothing for me.
“Vassily is to go to Miami, to liaise with our younger, enterprising operation there and to assist with keeping the road to Colombia open and free. South America is still worth our time. He will have a chance to prove himself there.” Sergei watched me with some amusement now. “And you will be coming with me and Lev for a tropical vacation. We are building a community in Thailand first of all, and we have business in Phuket which will require your particular skillset.”
It took me a moment to process what he had just told me. Leave the country? I knew what went on in Thailand. There would be no fuel racket there, no advancement into fake credit cards and careful money laundering. Southeast Asia provided three things to the black market: slaves, organs, and heroin. None of them were the sort of business I wanted to be involved with.
“I understand,” I replied. “I will talk to you tomorrow, Pakhun. Avtoritet.”
I directed the last to Lev with a slightly bowed head. Nicolai’s eyes tracked me at a slow burn on the way out, but this time, no one tried to stop me from leaving.
Chapter 21
I reeled all the way back to my apartment and took the long way home, driving around and around the neighborhood in agitation. If I was pulled over tonight, I’d lose my shit. I’d kill a cop and end up in Wisconsin somewhere. At least it wouldn’t be Thailand, but Vassily would still be stuck in Miami: addicted, alone, with Nic’s forces arrayed against him, surrounded by strangers. He’d be dead within the month. It was one thing to tell him to get his crazy-making ass out of my house and clean himself up, quite another to be on the other side of the world, and probably never to see him again.
We had two choices. We got our asses out of New York, or I got really powerful, really fast. And then what? Kill everyone that hated me, and rule over a graveyard out of spite?
I was exhausted, wrung out from days of stress and strain. I went home to clean up before going to Mariya’s to break the bad news, and found two letters in the letterbox and a package on my doorstep. The package had no address on either the back or front and no stamp. I sniffed the paper: it smelled like Crina’s perfume. One letter looked like it had come from Lev’s office, dropped off by a courier while I was still out. The other was the telephone bill, now well overdue.
The package was large and thick, but surprisingly light. I had not been expecting a package. I unwrapped it outside slowly and suspiciously, but relaxed as a red cover came into view. A post-it was tacked to the front.
“I promised I’d get this for you,” the note read. “Sell it if you have to. And stay alive.” Crina had signed her note with three suns, almost like a personal sigil.
It was Das Rote Buch. I smiled despite myself and tucked it under my arm while I looked at the other, unmarked letter. A slip of paper with an address written in Lev’s deeply slanted hand: 14b Grove St. It offered both satisfaction and confusion. The address was a safe house in Bushwick, which must have been where they were taking Vincent. But why was he confirming it for me? Out of respect? Consolation?
Jana’s mysterious L, the name she hadn’t written, was still in the back of my mind.
I took the book inside to the den, sat down, and savored the rest of the unveiling. Even though it was just a copy, it was beautiful, hand-bound, an authentic replica of the old German journal Jung had used to record his innermost revelations. I turned it, breathed in the scent of new ink and leather, and sighed as the muscles relaxed along my spine.
Tongue humming, I laid the book out on my knees and turned the first page. My eyes lit on some of the brightest, most stunning images I’d ever seen: beautiful illumination enmeshed with pages and pages of elegant German calligraphy. It looked like something from another time, and the illegibility of the text made the images stand out all the more. Mandalas wove into themselves with fearsome complexity; a many-footed snake ate itself as a naked man looked on in terror. What caught my attention and held it was a singular image of a tree that looked vaguely like a Joshua tree, some kind of succulent plant with diamond-shaped leaves. The tree that Vincent had tried to draw so poorly in his diary was splendid in this painting, framed against a night sky with the moon—or was it the sun?—glowing trapped within the loose cage of its branches. It shone with a radiant corona that should have been impossible to depict in paint, framing a huge fruit-like rind that hung from a stout branch. A humanoid shadow was visible through the skin of the fruit, which was partly enfolded by the tree’s branches just like the way a woman would embrace her own pregnant belly. The figure within was poised like a dancer in mid-air, hands lifted, hair flung up in an arc.
I pulled off a glove, blew on my hand until my fingers were dry, and reached out to stroke the image, tasting the crisp rasp of parchment under skin. I’d heard the book was beautiful, but beauty wasn’t all I could appreciate. I felt like I was looking back on a photo of a time long past, of seeing something ancient and non-human rendered by human hands. It was as if Jung had painted something that was not actually from him, something that didn’t belong to any of us… and with that, a new gravity settled over my shoulders. I didn’t fully understand the implications of the Fruit being here in New York, but Jana had wanted it enough to torture men to death for it. She had been working for someone, someone who had given her tacit approval to move heaven and earth for this thing. What if they got it? And if the Manellis had it, what would they use it for? It was only a matter of time until they figured that out. And then, what? Would there even be a New York to come back to, if Carmine was able to utilize the power of this primordial artifact?