Moskva (3 page)

New York City - the past

Logs burned in the fireplace of Dmitrey Rodchenko's study. Alina sat in the window seat overlooking the back garden. She had been sitting over an hour after being summoned by one of her father's guards to wait for the old man's return home.

Early August, it was too hot for a fire, even a small one, so she had the window cracked open, just enough to give her relief and let her close it quickly. She did not listen for footsteps in the hall or the cane Papa Rodchenko used only when he was in his house with no one but his children and most trusted staff to see his growing infirmity.

Her eyes and ears were devoted to the gate at the corner of the garden, the one Mishka used to come and go by Papa's orders since he was old enough to leave the house on his own. Three days had passed since she had fled Mishka's room in tears.

Contact between them was minimal. He left for the docks early and came home near sunset. She could not catch his eye and only once had he touched her, his hand landing on a doorknob the same time as hers.

His thumb had lightly stroked her wrist, just one passing before he withdrew and murmured an apology. When she had looked at his face, she saw nothing to suggest the stroke had been intentional or even meaningful once done.

Downstairs, her father's cane slapped against the bottom riser. She pulled the window shut, but kept her gaze on the gate until she heard her father's movements just a few feet beyond his study door.

She turned in the seat to face his desk but did not get up to take one of the chairs close to it. He had summoned her more than an hour ago then left her to wait. Another hour might pass before he acknowledged her presence and she would rather not sit so close to the old man when she didn't have to.

Papa Rodchenko entered the room, his focus on his desk. Grigori, who managed the house, followed behind carrying a shoe box. Placing the item on the desk, he took Papa's cane before exiting the room.

After a glance at her father to ensure he was ignoring her, as always, Alina studied the box. Time had aged the cardboard, especially the corners of the lid. The shoes once housed inside it would be barely larger than her own.

She squinted, trying to make out the faded writing.

Boys, size seven.

She had never seen the box before, but its presence filled her with dread. There was no fancy name brand on the side like the footwear Dima got when he was younger. And her father didn't need to save shoeboxes to store things in. He had manila envelopes and banker boxes, big filing cabinets, lockboxes, bank vaults and more.

Hands folded in her lap, she began to pinch at the cuff of her sleeves. Like the fire, her long-sleeved shirt was too hot for the weather. She wore it to hide the pinch marks Dima added to daily.

Her arms had been covered in the small bruises the night she crawled into Mishka's bed. But the room had been too dark and the bright glow of the room with each lightning flash too fleeting for him to see them. Like Papa and the rest of the household, Mishka didn't know. There was no point in anyone knowing.

No one cared beyond Mishka -- and maybe not even Mishka cared. If he did, his response to Dima might get him killed by one of Papa Rodchenko's thugs.

So she wore the long sleeves and tugged at their edges whenever tension began to build inside her chest.

A soft scrape of noise from the back of her father's throat pulled Alina's gaze from the box to the old man's face. The set of his eyes told her he was annoyed with her already, perhaps for not relentlessly studying him and awaiting his cue that she should approach.

Standing, she crossed the room and took the hard wooden seat in which he made all his visitors sit. He had been scribbling in a ledger the entire time and continued to do so. Waiting, she locked her hands together, fighting both the urge to pick at her sleeves and to touch the box that was now so close.

Outside in the hall, she heard the approach of footsteps, the long, heavy stride telling her it was Grigori, the only person in the house besides Mishka with such long legs, but without the lightness of the young Russian's step.

Grigori stopped, out of view. She heard the creak of metal. She mashed her lips together, fought the urge to roll or bite at them. What Dima was doing to her arms, she was had been doing to the inside of her mouth, especially after the night in Mishka's bedroom.

She looked at her father, a scream running through her head.

Why had he brought her to live with him? He bought her clothes and fed her when he wasn't trying to starve the weight off her. He kept a roof over her head and the heat on in winter. Yet he had never shown her the slightest affection and was often cruel in his words.

She was there because he'd always kept one whore exclusive for his use among the many slave houses the family ran along the Atlantic seaboard. And during that period of exclusivity, his whore had gotten pregnant, the baby girl born with the same dark brown eyes and black hair that marked Papa and Dima.

He left her to rot in that house until she was nine, her birth no secret to him. Most of the time she thought about it, she figured she was there as a warning to Dima, who had been seventeen and openly arrogant around his father when she was finally freed from the dark house with its crying, drugged women and all the little children running around in rags.

Hands still locked together, she sank her nails into the fleshy side of her palm. She was nothing to this man, just a token warning to her half brother that where there was one bastard, there could be others, some of them suitable to take his place as the family's crown prince -- the future Pakhan of their criminal enterprise.

Papa Rodchenko finally stopped scribbling in his ledger. She looked up, meeting his brown eyes. Staring at him, she turned cold despite the fire and the long sleeves in the summer heat.

"I have decided, with Kata dead, you will take over hostess duties."

Her nails dug deeper into her palm. Her entire life, she had never worked beyond keeping her room clean. Staff, protective of their jobs, did the rest. Neither was she allowed to work outside the home and who would have hired her with one of her father's thugs always present? She had been caged up her entire life, first in the hellish house she'd been born into and then in her father's, with only a weekly trip to the library allowed on Saturday.

Even her clothes were bought by someone else and delivered to her.

"Grigori will do most of the work," her father added, his voice sharpening as Alina remained silent. "Just as he did for Kata."

Shifting in his seat, he leaned forward. His gaze critically scanned her outfit.

"You will need new outfits, better fitting and not so drabby. He will take you shopping and select the clothes."

She sucked a slow breath in, her mouth starting to tremble at the thought of the new clothes and the complications that might arise from them.

"Of course," she stuttered after waiting too long to respond. "Grigori knows what will please you and Di--"

The old man's face turned to stone as she started to mention her half-brother. She had erringly equated Dima's authority with her father's. In her world, it was true. Papa could have her killed with the snap of a finger, but the old man ignored her most of the time. Dima was the one who had tormented her from the day she arrived until Mishka had joined the family and stopped the worst of Dima's bullying despite being five years younger than Dima.

"I'm sure Grigori will find outfits that please you, Papa," she corrected, one hand sliding below the other on her lap to brutally pinch at her soft thigh. The pain distracted her from the bigger hurt in her chest that threatened to choke her lungs.

"One last thing," Papa Rodchenko said, picking up his pen as he nailed her with his dark gaze. "Nazarov is no longer part of this family. He will no longer live here and you will no longer see him."

Never before had she blurted anything at her father, but she couldn't stop the protest from bursting out. "He is Kata's son--"

"Kata is dead." Her father's already narrow face pinched with a waspish frown that turned his eyes to small brown dots. "From the moment he entered this house, he has shown nothing but disrespect."

"He only pushed Dima down that one time," she argued, tugging at the cuff of one sleeve.

Would he change his mind if she showed him the bruises? Would he believe his precious boy had placed them there, that Dima always sought to torment her in some fashion, even in front of the staff, and that only Mishka's presence kept him in check?

"Papa..." she started. Her lips tried to shape the rest of her plea, but the old man skull fucked her with his hard, uncompromising gaze.

"You disappoint me, Alina."

He didn't care, never had. It was all about Dima. And it wasn't that their father was blind to the little devil's faults, it was that Dima was the elder Dmitrey's mirror in all things. Their actions, their coloring, their unnaturally thin frames no matter how much they consumed, even the beak of a nose that made her dream of buzzards ripping out her guts.

When she could finally speak again, she nodded at the old man. "I understand, Papa."

"It is not enough to understand. You must know." The stern features never softening, he pointed at the shoe box. "Open it."

Pulling the box onto her lap, she lifted the lid with a hand that shook. As she had started to suspect, the box belonged to Mishka and he had kept it over the years to store mementos.

Someone had clearly raided her room as well. The contents were a mix of small tokens she had exchanged with him. There was the glitter-covered card she had made at age eleven wishing him a Merry Christmas his first year in the Rodchenko family. In the valentine from when she was fourteen, she had graduated from signing her cards with "your sister Alina" to merely "your Alina" as her affection for Mishka suddenly yearned in an adult direction she had not recognized at that tender age.

There were cards from him, too, and a small book of proverbs in Russian that he had taught her how to read. Past the slips of paper that marked a decade of their lives were other tokens, like a shiny silver button she had taken from a coat he had outgrown three winters ago and the small bull she had fashioned for him out of copper wire as they both watched Kata waste away from an illness the doctors could not identify.

He was her Russian bull, strong and obstinate where she was weak and compliant. Knowing that tough times would follow if his mother didn't recover, Alina had made the wire sculpture to remind him of his fortitude -- and her affection.

Now Kata was dead and the tough times were upon them.

Her gaze drifted from the box to the burning log before moving on to her father.

He nodded, the gesture an unspoken order for what she most do without arguing. Taking the box with her, she got on her knees in front of the fireplace and pulled back the screen. She worked on the smallest scraps of paper first and then the cards. Reaching in for the book of proverbs, she palmed the small bull and let it drop just inside the hearth before feeding the book to the fire. Finishing, she placed the box on top of the flaming log and watched it burn, hoping with each snap and crackle that the little bull would survive.

"Grisha," her father said, calling Grigori who had waited in the hall as her father delivered the bad news and forced her to feed the box of treasures into the fire. "Bring it."

Her stomach, already twisted in knots, turned slick with the need to vomit.

Hadn't the old man tormented her enough? What fresh pain waited in the hall with Grigori standing guard over it?

Had they already hurt Mishka? Was "it" some part of him, like in the crude stories Dima told her on how the family took care of some of its problems by merely making people wish they had been killed?

Metal creaked again and then Grigori entered the room carrying a rabbit with yellow-gold fur a shade darker than Mishka's hair. For the first time since her father had sat down, she rolled her lips in worry, her face screwing tight with the urge to cry.

Leaning over, Grigori shoved the rabbit at her limp arms, the creature frozen in fear.

"It is not enough to understand," her father repeated. "You must know. If you speak to Nazarov, he will die. If I catch him trying to speak to you, he will die."

She nodded, her head bobbing rapidly as she hoped against hope her father would stop, that he would see not only the terror in her gaze but her absolute obedience and order Grigori to take the animal from her and return the poor, trembling creature to its home.

"Show me that you know, Alina Dmitrievna Rodchenka."

Her lips pressed together, teeth sinking into them as her head and torso shook.

"I know, Papa. I promise I know."

Rodchenko's gaze grew small once more. "Did I bring the wrong girl home from the slave house? Do you belong among those women?"

"No." She shook her head, the first fat tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. "I am Alina Dmitrievna Rodchenka and I belong here."

Her grip on the rabbit tightened reflexively. The animal began to struggle in her arms. Its small claws scratched at her sleeves to mark the skin beneath. Her gaze on her father, she curled one hand around the creature's neck.

Rodchenko's gaze lit at last with approval.

There would be no reprieve. Not for the rabbit nor from what she must do.

Slowly she began to squeeze. The animal's powerful back legs kicked in terror, tearing the fabric of her shirt and drawing blood in thick streams. It screamed -- dear God how it screamed. She didn't know a rabbit could make a noise like that.

"Both hands," Grigori counseled. "You'll only make it suffer longer the way you're going about it. Give it a good twist!"

Bile burned her throat and tongue as she angled her right hand upside down to cup the underside of the rabbit's head as her left had closed around the back of its neck. Squeezing and turning at the same time, her forearm a bloody mess, she heard a moist snap and the rabbit went limp.

Her body sagged in sympathy. She looked up at her father to see quiet amusement flicker across his aging face. He was both satisfied with her compliance and disgusted by her weakness, she thought.