Her Russian Brute: 50 Loving States, Idaho (2 page)

“
I
t’s not you
, it’s me, Scott,” Sola told the caller as she reversed her mentor’s car out of the strip mall parking space. “I feel like we’re in two different places in our lives. You’ll be joining a new team next season, and I still don’t know where I’m going to land once I’ve graduated from ValArts. We both have these huge lives in front of us, and frankly, I think we’re much too different to make things work together. We’ve been drifting apart for a while now. I think it’s time for us to break it off. But I’ll always think fondly of you, and, um…thanks, I guess…”

She cut her eyes towards the Lexus’s Bluetooth display screen. “C’mon, say something! I’m dying here.”

“Well…there’s a lot of good stuff to work with, but you really shouldn’t start a break-up speech with ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’ That’s
so
cliché,” her best friend, Anitra, answered.

“Okay, okay, good feedback,” Sola said, mentally filing her friend’s comment away.

Thank God she’d met the soon-to-be doctor during her first year at ValArts, when Anitra had mistaken her as the only other black student in their Directing 101 course. After an awkward explanation about her heritage—Guatemalan parents, one of whom had curly hair and much darker skin, likely due to an ancestor of African descent, Anitra had answered, “Well, we’re the only women wearing glasses in this class. So…”

So…they’d ended up becoming best friends. And remained such, even after Anitra dropped out of their arts program to attend school in West Virginia on a pre-med scholarship.

But luckily for Sola, the future doctor still remembered everything they’d learned during their first year Theater Lab course about providing critique and giving good notes.

“Anything else?” Sola asked, as she negotiated the car Brian had left at J.J.’s bar a few days ago out of the parking lot and onto one of Valencia’s busier streets.

According to Brian, only a few decades ago Valencia had been home to nothing but a few goat farms, several orange groves, and a young art school: the Valencia Institute of the Arts. But thanks to the sprawl from nearby Los Angeles, the formally small desert town was becoming busier and busier by the year, and ValArts had gone on to become one of the most prestigious universities in the nation for students of both visual and performing arts.

“You’re making it seem like it’s mostly you who has all the issues in the relationship,” Anitra said in response to Sola’s question. “I’m concerned he’s not going to realize what a douchebag he’s been to you after you’re done breaking up with him.”

So much for giving good, impartial notes. “Nitra...”

“I’m just saying you might want to come right out and tell him he doesn’t deserve you, because he’s a controlling asshole who doesn’t know a good hairstyle when he’s sees it.”

Sola shook her head at the radio. Anitra was still way more bitter about the second of only two major fights she and Scott had ever had over the course of their relationship.

Albeit, the hair one had been pretty major. Scott had lost it when she’d shown up at his condo in Marina Del Rey with her hair cut short after a summer spent interning with Brian in New Mexico. The ensuing argument became so intense, Sola ended up leaving early and taking a bus back to Valencia. She spent the entire ride texting with Anitra about how insane Scott had been, yelling at her like a lunatic. Anitra agreed his reaction had been way out of line, too.

And when she’d told her mentor, Brian, what happened when she returned home earlier than expected, he’d said, “I think I can understand what a young woman such as yourself might see in a football player. It’s a common enough trope, though in this case the handsome soldier is bearing pigskin instead of a sword. However, I don’t think that fellow is for you, Marisol. I doubt he’d know
Tosca
from
Don Giovanni
if you gave him a libretto to follow along. And I’m sure Eddie would agree with me on this if he were able.”

That was Brian’s way of saying she could do better than Scott, and that if his husband, Eddie, weren’t suffering from a rare debilitating neurological disorder that manifested in various states of dementia and catatonia—with the rare “good day” thrown in every few weeks or so—he’d totally agree.

Sola, too, had started to have doubts about what had, up until then, been a more or less fairytale relationship between her and the boyishly handsome second-string running back for the L.A. Suns.

But then Scott had shown up at the auditions of the thesis play she’d been stage managing to get in more tech hours, and finish what should have been a six-year program in only five. Even though the play was a spoken drama, he’d auditioned for the role of Sola’s boyfriend with a charmingly off-key version of The Fray’s “Over My Head.”

Every other girl in the theater had melted and looked at Sola like she’d be crazy not to take him back. And so she had.

After all, he really did seem genuinely sorry, and at that point, they’d been together for over a year. Ever since meeting on a commercial she’d PA’d the summer before. Not that long ago, she’d been shocked that a sandy-haired football player from Omaha would even pay a nanosecond of attention to a poor Guatemalan art student like herself.

But just a year and a half after he sang for her forgiveness, Sola regretted not listening to Anitra and Brian. Scott had become more and more controlling since they’d gotten back together. Often calling to check up on her at odd times, and sometimes showing up at her place out of the blue.

She couldn’t so much as mention a male, even in the context of one of her plays or classes, without him accusing her of cheating. In fact, the last two times they’d had sex, it had been because he’d shown up in the middle of the night without warning. Supposedly it was because he missed her. But Valencia was over an hour from where Scott lived in Marina Del Rey. And she could tell by the way he’d looked around the small cottage she rented for next to nothing from Brian, that he was searching for evidence that she’d been with another guy.

But the most damning fact of their doomed relationship was that Brian hadn’t been able to spend any time with her since September. He was having a bad season with the Suns, and he’d told her not to visit him during the season because he “didn’t want to be distracted by sex.” Sola had been somewhat relieved, too, because with only a year left to complete the rest of her MFA requirements—including all her tech hours, since she’d have a thesis opera to direct during her spring semester—she’d be pretty busy herself.

However being busy was one thing. Not missing your boyfriend one iota in over three sexless months was another. Which was why, as much as she hated to hurt anyone’s feelings, she really needed to break up with him this weekend—the first one in thirteen they’d managed to schedule together.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to stomp all over the guy.

“I just want to break up with him,” she told her best friend as she carefully drove the short distance back to her little guesthouse, which sat just behind the Craftsman Brian shared with Eddie.

“I don’t want to make him feel bad about himself. He’s already upset about getting traded to Omaha after missing that pass in the playoff game. If I start listing reasons and stuff, it’s going to be like I’m piling up on him.”

“I guess,” grumbled Anitra. “But I really think somebody ought to let him know that the shit he pulls with you isn’t cool. Maybe I’ll text him...”

“Anitra, don’t you dare!” Sola insisted, knowing her bestie just might.

“Okay, okay, but only if you promise to call me right after. And take plenty of dialogue notes, because I want a blow-by-blow detail of what he says when you finally dump his sorry ass. That pixie cut was
so
cute!”

“Nitra…” Sola started to say with another laugh as she pulled up in front of the house.

But the laughter died in her throat when she saw what was waiting for her on the front lawn.

Scott, in all his gorgeous football player glory, stood there with what looked like at least half a marching band behind him. He smiled and the band started playing “Over My Head” as soon as her car came to a stop.

And just in case that wasn’t enough of a clue about what was going on, two majorettes rolled out a sign that read, “MARRY ME, MARISOL!”

Sola’s mouth dropped open.

And somewhere in the distance her best friend demanded on the other side of the car’s Bluetooth radio, “What’s happening? What’s going on?!”

T
here is
no one else to kill. Now you will have to decide how to live your life.

Ivan stood on the hill overlooking Wolfson Point, the small Idaho mountain town he now called home. Pondering, not for the first time, the last thing his older cousin, Boris, had written him. The two-line email had arrived shortly after he’d sent a one-line response to Boris’s wife’s heartfelt invitation to join the family in San Francisco for the holidays.

“No,”
he’d answered. Only to receive a rather ominous, and much less friendly, email from Boris a few minutes later.

He would have liked to dismiss his cousin’s words. The musings of a formerly great fighter who’d slipped too easily into family life—just like his older half-brother, Alexei. But weeks later, standing behind the house he’d won in a card game earlier that year, Boris’s words continued to haunt him.

There is no one else to kill.

After the murder of his family, Ivan had spent every waking moment either plotting to kill or killing. With Boris’s help, Ivan had taken out the mafia boss who’d ordered the hit on his family, his entire small-time organization, and his three adult sons.

All that was left of that crime family now were the women and children. And Rustanovs didn’t harm women and children.

Ivan wished there were still more men to kill. His fists reflexively opened and closed as he looked over the bucolic mountain town. Even now Ivan’s hands longed to beat another person death.

He’d become known for that. Beating the men who’d help bring about the death of his family into a bloody pulp before finally releasing them into the afterlife with two shots in the chest courtesy of his father’s old GSh-18. Ivan’s new take on the method the Rustanovs had become infamous for back when they’d still been a crime family.

Even Boris had been impressed with his young cousin’s technique.

But not any more. Now Boris sent him terse emails that made Ivan feel like a petulant child for not accepting the invitation to Christmas dinner. For refusing to pretend he wasn’t a monster. Something to be hidden away in the dark—or in a dark house in the mountains of Idaho. One did not invite monsters to Christmas dinner. Why couldn’t his cousin and his opera singer wife understand that?

“Sir, Hannah has a request.”

Ivan looked over his shoulder. Gregory, one of the servants who’d come with the house, stood behind him in his usual ensemble of tailored pants and a cable knit sweater worn over a tie and button down shirt. Yet in spite of his relatively light attire, Gregory didn’t show any signs of feeling the biting chill of a winter day in Idaho, Ivan noted. Not so much as a shiver, even though the freezing wind was strong enough to blow the older man’s formerly lacquered gray hair into complete disarray.

“Yes, what is it?” Ivan asked, not bothering to keep the irritation at being disturbed from his voice.

“Hannah would like to feed the prisoner, if you don’t mind, sir. She fears he might meet an untimely end before he is able to stand before the judge.”

The request, as with all of Gregory’s requests, was carefully worded. As if he were addressing a king rather than some random guy who’d won this house and its extensive property in a high-stakes poker game from Gregory’s last boss. And Ivan had the feeling, not for the first time, that Thomas Wolfson—the man he’d won the manor from—wasn’t just some unlucky sap who’d played his last desperate hand completely wrong. Mistaking Ivan’s stony, Russian demeanor for bluffing, and going all in with the deed to his mountain manor house to cover his bets.

Back in Vegas, Wolfson had seemed like nothing more than a foolish man-child when he’d lost to Ivan. Even going so far as to cry and beg the Russian who’d just taken his house in a card game for the chance to win it back. The house had been with his family for generations, he’d tearfully told Ivan. Since the early 1800s. The whole town would be devastated when they found out a non-Wolfson now owned it. He had to let him win the house back. Or buy it back. He could raise the money, he’d insisted. Just give him a few weeks.

Ivan wasn’t all that moved by his tears. Or the sight of a grown man, down on his knees, begging. For some reason, losing your whole family in a car bomb hardened your heart against men who didn’t think before using their family’s centuries-old home as collateral during a high-stakes card game.

Truth be told, the situation also hit a little too close to home. As Ivan discovered after the death of his family, his father had been concealing the real reason he was so desperate for Ivan to join the Rustanov family business. All those opera donations, the house in the north of Nevsky, the constant stream of beautiful women—pets—traded out before their thirtieth birthdays, the respect that came with being a member of one of the richest families in Russia…their father had gone deep into hock with the wrong people in order to keep up appearances.

The issue, as it turned out, was generational. Ivan’s grandfather had been brought up as a crime family accountant. Ivan’s father had assumed that he, like his father and his father before him, would be responsible for keeping the Rustanov money laundered and off the books.

But his father had been wrong in that assumption. When his nephew, Alexei, took over, he decided the only people who could touch the Rustanov fortune would be those with actual degrees and experience in investing. Of course, Alexei gave shares in the new company he’d created with the Rustanov holdings to everyone in the extended family. Shares that eventually made most of the family members billionaires, depending on when they sold them.

His father, as it turned out, had sold his shares embarrassingly early. And for millions as opposed to billions. But rather than go to his nephew for a loan when the millions ran out, he’d gone to an “old friend of the family.” A friend who had been happy to extend Ivan’s father several high-interest loans. Not everyone liked the Rustanovs sudden metamorphosis into a legitimate business family. And to this old friend, lending Ivan' money had been like welcoming home a prodigal son. One who was more than willing to put his dusty laundering skills to secret use, against his nephew’s express bidding.

But this old friend had been less than happy when he eventually discovered that not only was Ivan’s father going through money too fast to ever pay him back in full, he’d also taken to skimming off the profits he laundered for the family.

So one of the skimmer’s bodyguards had been bribed and outfitted with a bomb. A lesson served, and a warning to any other wayward Rustanovs who might think to take advantage of their old crime world connections.

Big mistake.

That friend paid for his “lesson” with the lives of every single male member of his crime family over the age of 18. Now there was one less crime family to be taken advantage of, which when you think about it, probably wasn’t the intention of that lesson at all.

It had taken Ivan nearly a year to avenge his family’s deaths. Everyone who could possibly be punished for what happened was dead, but…

Ivan was still here.

With a murderous rage that still burned.

And no way to douse the flames.

So no, he hadn’t given the spoiled rich kid his house back. In fact, Ivan moved in the very next weekend, and had been surprised to find it still fully furnished. His home in Nevsky had been outfitted in the same modern baroque style all the Rustanovs tended to favor. But this Idaho manor was a reflection of the country it resided in—one that had still been widely populated by indigenous nomads during the actual Baroque period.

The manor, though grand and sprawling across thirty-six acres of prime mountain real estate, was the kind of place built by people only a couple of generations away from doing everything with their hands. Exposed stone and wood for days, and not a hint of damask to be found on the walls.

Save for the gym, solarium, and Olympic-sized pool, it could not have been more opposite from his childhood home in Nevsky. Yet Ivan found himself settling into this new digs just fine. It was the perfect place for a recluse. It even came with two servants who lived in one of the property’s detached cottages. When he’d come through the front door with Wolfson’s deed in hand, they’d merely exchanged a look, then asked if he’d be in need of their services.

The two older servants had shown no signs whatsoever of missing the man Ivan replaced. In fact, they had been nothing but respectful and deferential during his months in residence. Even going so far as to turn away a few of the townspeople. The ones who came to the door yelling about how it wasn’t right to have “one of his kind in the kingdom house.”

Well, that is, the two servants had been nothing but deferential until now.

Ivan’s eyes flickered toward the manor’s strange outbuilding. It looked like a simple stone structure from the outside, but Ivan had been surprised during his original inspection of the property to find what appeared to be several jail cells inside, with just enough floor space left to create a narrow walkway in the middle. At first he assumed it was the site of the town’s former jail, maybe a holdover from the 1800s. But inside the cells were cushioned floors and what looked a lot like oversized, silk-lined pet beds.

Yes, it was strange. But it had been the perfect place to throw the man he’d caught snooping around the property two days ago. A spy sent by his cousin, Alexei, to “check on him.”

The man, overly thin, had been asked by his interfering cousin to get in and get out, and then provide a detailed report. Ivan could easily see why his cousin had sent this particular fellow to do the job.

The usual hire for the job would definitely have stood out in the small Idaho mountain town, but this short, spindly fellow with his sweater and jeans worn under a goose down parka, fit right in. If not for having made the bad decision to get very drunk at the town’s only bar before completing his reconnaissance mission, his cousin’s spy might very well have finished the job without detection.

However, Gregory noticed him staggering around the property almost as soon as he stepped foot on it and soon after that, Ivan had the whole story from him before tossing him in one of the cells.

But now it would seem Gregory’s wife, Hannah, was having a fit of conscience.

“How many calories does someone need to survive?” Ivan asked.

“Fifteen to eighteen hundred, I believe, sir.”

“Tell Hannah to give him fifteen hundred.”

“Very well, sir.” Gregory backed away with a small bow.

And Ivan, one side of his face numb with cold, the other numb for different reasons, went back to staring at the town below. With Cousin Boris’s words still ringing in his ears:
There is no one else to kill. Now you will have to decide how to live your life.

How did one even go about doing that when everything and everyone has been taken from you? When your past felt like someone else’s life, and you couldn’t see anything in your coming future but pain and regret? He didn’t have a clue.

Ivan glanced once more at the outbuilding. Wishing he could kill the prisoner inside. Use the man to temporarily relieve his constantly burning rage—at least for a little while. But that would only give Alexei the perfect excuse to come here in person, and a visit from his interfering, overly-concerned cousin was the last thing Ivan needed.

Boris and I are worried about you
, he’d told Ivan after somehow finding the unlisted number for the house’s only landline.
We thought you would recover after you had your revenge, but it is clear this has not happened.

Nyet
, he wasn’t any better than he’d been during those months he’d spent waiting to recover from his wounds before he could take action. When he’d done little more than drink vodka and plot how he’d avenge his family’s deaths once the burns on his face had healed. But now here he was, over two years later. He’d avenged the hell out of the murders of his parents and sister, but he felt more dead now. Now…..

There is no one else to kill. Now you will have to decide how to live your life.

He’d have Gregory release the man and drive him back down the mountain tomorrow, Ivan decided with a huff of ice-cold air. A couple of hours before the only drivable road into town officially closed for the winter. It wouldn’t open again until spring, which meant his cousin wouldn’t be able to send anyone else to spy on him after Ivan returned the current fellow, weakened and the worse for wear after three days in an unheated jail cell.

It was a good plan. A decent, small revenge. But still…

Boris’s words continued to burn in Ivan’s head as he stood in the frigid cold, looking down on the town that didn’t want him here.