someone to not hate me.”
His arms tightened around me and he let out a long-
suffering sigh. “I could never hate you.”
I squeezed him tight. When I finally got control of my
voice again, I asked, “Do you think Vasiliy can ever love
me again?”
“I don’t think he could ever stop loving you,” said Yuri.
“But there will be changes. You will have to go back to
Moscow. You must never see this man again.”
Fresh tears forced their way up from the depths,
scalding hot and bitter. “I love him!”
“Then you too are stupid and unlucky.”
I frowned. You too?
Yuri shook his head. “But that does not make this right.”
“I know,” I said in a tiny voice. He still hadn’t asked
what I was doing in his room. He thinks I came to see
him, I realized. And that made me feel even worse,
because that’s what I should have done.
He hugged me like that for a few moments, rocking me
gently from side to side. “You are not like other
Malakovs. Too much fire. Your mother had too much
fire, too.”
“Then...why did she stay?” I blurted. I pushed myself
back from his chest so that I could look up at him and
sniffed. “She used to tell me that she didn’t want this for
me. She didn’t want me to be with a gangster. If she
didn’t like it, why did she stay?”
Yuri thought for a moment. “Because she was stubborn
like you are, too. She saw she was good for your
father.”
“She stayed because she loved him?”
“Yes. And because he needed her.”
I looked blankly at him.
He sighed and looked at the ceiling. “I am not right
person to explain fucking women,” he muttered to
himself. “Your father...he was cold. Very cold. He could
be cruel to his enemies.”
I frowned. My dad had been tough, sure, but I hadn’t
thought of him as cold or cruel.
Yuri read my look. “I knew him in his early days, before
he met your mother. She balanced him. Is same way
with all Malakov men.”
I thought of Luka and Arianna. Of Angelo’s mother,
supporting his father. Suddenly, it all started to make
sense. I thought of Vasiliy: I knew he’d used to be
warmer and kinder, when I was growing up.
“Vasiliy...when his wife died, is that when he started to
turn cruel?”
Yuri shook his head sadly. “No. It would have been. But
he had someone else who kept him balanced. Until she
pulled away.”
“A lover?” I asked in wonder. “A mistress?”
Yuri gently put his hands on my shoulders and stared
into my eyes.
“Me?!” I croaked.
He nodded.
I blinked at him and stepped back, my head spinning.
He gazed at me sadly as I stumbled off down the
hallway.
Me? I’d been responsible for keeping Vasiliy moderated
all those years?
But it made sense. When he first took Lizaveta and me
under his protection, his wife had been dead a few
years and he’d seemed cold and distant. But the shock
of our parents’ deaths and suddenly having two girls
under his roof had jolted him off the path he’d been on.
And as I became involved in the business he’d gradually
warmed. Yuri was right: I’d been his conscience, his
light in the darkness, just as his wife had been.
I’d thought that I hated our family because I’d been
constantly arguing with him. Now I realized that that
was my purpose: I was his counterbalance. How many
times had he stepped back from some vicious course of
action because I’d told him it was too cruel? How many
times had I unwittingly defused a situation, just by
being there for him to vent to over a game of chess?
I’d pulled away from my family. I’d dreamed of freedom
and New York and isolated myself from Vasiliy more and
more. And then I’d wondered why he became colder
and colder.
My whole view of the last few years twisted around,
reversing itself. All those things Vasiliy had done that
drove me crazy: following me to New York, visiting all
the time...God, even my arranged marriage with Mikhail.
They were all ways of staying close to me.
Subconsciously, he knew he needed me, even if he’d
never admit it. And the harder he’d tried to keep me
close, the more I’d pulled away.
The realization hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer:
this whole aggressive expansion into New York, the
partnership with Mikhail, the gang war we were now in:
none of this would have happened if I’d been there to
calm him, to be his warmth and his conscience. I’d
always said I didn’t want to be a Malakov: I hadn’t
understood that I was a vital part of the mixture that
made the Malakovs work.
I stopped walking and had to hold onto the wall to
steady myself. This is all my fault!
I climbed the stairs to the first floor just in time to see
Mikhail leaving, a wide grin on his face and a small army
of men in tow. Some were carrying guns, some baseball
bats, some cans of gasoline.
It was all my fault...and it was too late to fix it. The war
had begun.
34
Angelo
The fires were the worst. Fighting and smashed-up
storefronts...I could kid myself that that was random.
But when I saw the owners standing in tears in the
street, watching the flames roaring through the place
they’d spent twenty years building...then, I knew I’d
fucked up. These were my people, this was my turf, and
I’d failed utterly to protect them.
I told them all the same thing. I hugged them and said,
“I’ll make this right.” And they took my hand and shook
it and told me they trusted me. But I could hear it in
their voices: they’d never fully trust me again.
The Fire Department did their best but there were too
many fires and they burned too aggressively: Mikhail’s
thugs had smashed their way in and then poured
gasoline over everything. The firefighters kept looking at
me: they knew this was connected to me and they
wanted to know how I could let it happen. They were
probably wondering if the same thing would be
happening to Russian businesses in a few hours.
I did what I could. I even joined the bucket chains at
some of the fires until the overstretched Fire
Department could get to them, but we saved maybe
one place out of ten. Meanwhile, I was getting phone
calls about cars, boats and real estate being smashed
up—the Russians were destroying anything that was
under our protection. It was like nothing the community
had ever seen: brutal, all-out destruction. It was Mikhail
and his men who lit the fires and raised the baseball
bats, but I could feel Vasiliy’s raw hatred behind it all.
This was personal.
And it had a horrifying knock-on effect. Fights were
breaking out in the streets, not just between my guys
and Mikhail’s men but between civilians. Russian guys
who’d never dared set foot in our neighborhood
suddenly got bold and came looking for trouble, in
gangs or on their own. Meanwhile, the local guys were
on the streets looking for payback and they took their
anger out on anyone who looked or sounded like they
might be Russian. I met with community leaders and
reached out to the gangs, trying to calm them down,
but how do you convince a hot-headed sixteen year-old
to stay home when his parents’ coffee shop just got
torched?
I told women to stay off the streets and made sure
Grace had shut down Cinderella’s and sent the girls