realized that the thing I’d stuffed under Josef’s head
was Rachel’s favorite sweater. Chyort! I hid it under a
cushion—I’d have to hope I could get the blood out.
I was going out of my mind. I was desperate to call
Angelo but I didn’t dare, not with Vasiliy still in the
house. If he was hurt—or worse, if someone else
answered his phone and told me he was dead—I’d have
no hope of holding it together.
At last, Yuri and Mikhail returned and said they were
ready to go. Vasiliy nodded and hugged me, telling me
again that he appreciated my help. Mikhail, though,
looked suspicious. Nothing I can do about that now. I’ll
just have to be careful.
The second the door closed behind them, I grabbed my
phone and dialed Angelo. I started to panic breathe.
One ring. Two rings. What if he’s dead? Three rings.
He’s lying dead. Four rings. He’s lying dead because I
made the wrong choice. If I hadn’t—
“Irina?”
I closed my eyes and took a long, shuddering breath.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
I let the breath hiss out. “Meet me at Battery Park,” I
told him. “We need to talk.”
27
Irina
He was waiting for me, staring out over the water at the
Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t snowing, but a bitter wind
was whipping across the inky-black Hudson River.
“Is everyone on your side okay?” I asked as I walked
up.
He turned to me. “Two hurt. Bullets winged them—
they’ll be okay.”
The relief sluiced through me. And then I slapped his
face as hard as I could.
He reeled from the blow, twisting to the side and
fingering his reddened cheek. “Svoloch!” I yelled. I’d
brought him to Battery Park specifically because I knew
I could scream at him and no one would care. “You
svoloch! You promised!”
The guilt was all over his face. “How bad was it? I know
we hit one guy….”
“Josef! His name is Josef! He almost died!”
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t—Look, they were going to do
the same thing to us!”
“That’s why I warned you! But why couldn’t you just
walk away? Why did you have to get revenge?” I
whacked him in the chest with my fist. Tears were filling
my eyes. “Why can’t you just—You—You stupid—”
“Irina—”
I began to pound on his chest with my fists. “Stupid,
svoloch, asshole!” I bawled.
He caught my wrists. “Irina—”
“I thought you were dead!” I spat at him. “Don’t you
understand that? I thought you were dead and I
couldn’t even check because you’re the enemy!” I was
screaming by the end of it.
He stared into my tear-filled eyes for a long moment
and then wrapped me into his arms and wouldn’t let go.
After a few minutes, I finally stopped struggling and
nestled against his chest, my tears soaking his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I just...I had to.”
I’d cried all the anger out of me and all I felt was tired.
The freezing wind was whipping against one wet cheek,
but the other was warmed by the heated slab of his
chest. I didn’t ever want to move away from that
warmth...but I didn’t see how I could stay, either. We’re
just too different. Too different for me ever to convince
him. “Why?” I asked. “That’s what I don’t understand.
Why can’t you back down? Why can’t you make peace?
Why?”
I said it just to vent the hot, jagged pain inside. I didn’t
expect anything as simple and clear as what I heard
next.
“Because Russians killed my parents,” he said, his chin
pressed to the top of my head.
What?!
I pushed back from his chest...and looked up into brown
and amber eyes that were bitter and furious...and
suddenly moist. I wrapped my arms around him and
pulled myself in tight.
And he told me. He told me about being an up-and-
coming captain in his dad’s organization, about his mom
disapproving but understanding—she’d stood by his dad
every step of the way. Something about that resonated
with me: it was important, but I couldn’t figure out why.
He told me about the Russian gangsters eager to
expand their territory, a less powerful group than
Mikhail’s, but determined and vicious. He told me about
being in the SUV with his parents, on the way to a
restaurant, and how he’d jumped out a street early to
stop at an ATM, saying he’d catch them up.
He slowed down. He had to take a breath to calm
himself between each sentence, the rage palpable: it
was in the taut muscles of his back, in the hard bulges
of his biceps. He described getting the cash and jogging
down the street: his parents’ SUV had stopped at a red
light and he figured he could jump in there, if he was
fast.
He told me how he saw the car pull up alongside his
parents’ car. How he’d known. And then the gunfire, a
deafening roar, and every bit of glass in the SUV
shattering. His dad had tried to drive away but had
slammed into a fire hydrant after just a few seconds,
unleashing a torrent of water. When Angelo reached the
car, the gunmen had gone and his parents were dying,
their car in a red-tinged lake of water and broken glass.
His mom died first. His dad lived just long enough to
make him promise, to swear on his life, that he’d never
let Russians take his turf.
“I hunted them,” Angelo told me. “Rico helped. I wiped
out every last one of their gang and then took over from
my dad.” He gently pushed me back and stared down at
me. “Now do you get it?”
I nodded. “I do,” I said, my voice catching. “And I need
to tell you something. So you’ll understand me.”
And I told him about rounding the corner into our street
in Moscow and seeing first the blue lights of the fire
service and then the cherry red of the flames. About
running down the street and realizing that it wasn’t a
mistake, that it was our townhouse that was burning,
tongues of flames leaping up from every window. About
searching the crowd of onlookers for my parents and
not finding them.
The firefighters had already brought them out, their
blackened bodies covered in sheets.
At the inquiry, the police said that my parents had
passed out on a combination of booze and drugs and
that’s why they hadn’t fled when the fire started. They
showed the press photos of drug paraphernalia and
empty bottles—all mysteriously unscathed by the fire—
that they claimed had been found alongside my parents.
My teetotal mom, who’d sworn off the booze a decade
ago and my dad who was so anti-drug he’d grounded
me for a solid month just because I tried weed at a
party.
But no one cared about the facts. My dad was a well-
known gangster. Who cared if him and his “girlfriend”
(the press couldn’t understand the concept of a married
gangster) killed themselves with drugs?
I hugged my sister Lizaveta tight and thanked God that
she’d been at a sleepover that night. And I swore I’d get
as far away from the gangster life as possible. Then
Vasiliy took us in and that promise became
impossible...even when I ran to America.
“Jesus,” muttered Angelo. His arms locked around my
back, iron hard and unbreakable. His palms pumped
warmth into my freezing body and his broad chest
shielded me against the worst of the wind. Maybe we
were different. But maybe we were different in just the