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“How’s semi-retirement treating you?” I ask as I take the flask and a mouthful of the harsh whisky.
He lights a cigar thoughtfully. It had only been four years ago that he let me take over on his eightieth birthday, but I’d been running the majority of it since I graduated at twenty-two.
I was grateful to my grandfather in many ways. He seemed to be the only thing that offered me stability, discipline, or purpose while growing up. He looked after my mother and me and somehow still managed to expand and grow his corporation that he entrusted to me. However, we all had our faults.
“I golf a lot now,” he says as if it’ll come as some big surprise.
“I thought you had a bad back?” I lecture.
He shrugs like a child, and again, the corner of my mouth twitches up. I stare up at the full moon; out here I can see stars, unlike in the city. In so many ways, I wish it could be as simple as this. But my world was very far from the fractured peace of my mother’s world.
“I saw you went into silent partnership with the Barones,” he says, interested.
I’m not surprised he’s still keeping tabs on me, considering my anonymous dealings usually have one particular goal in mind—anything that my father’s influence has a reach into and ripping it apart.
I don’t comment. Because the less he knows, the better. And besides; we were men built on ambition, were we not meant to continue expanding?
“You’re playing with fire, son,” he warns. And although I never had a father to raise me, and my grandfather calls anyone younger than him son, I feel in many ways like that at times. “You need to let your grudge and revenge go.”
I take a puff of the cigar thoughtfully. “It was you who taught me how to be ruthless,” I remind him.
“In business. Not against your father. Not against the Bratva.”
Silence. It’d been some time since we’d had a conversation about him. I find it coincidental that my mother also mentioned him tonight as well.
My grandfather sighs. “My greatest regret is never stopping your mother from marrying him. But she had such a strong will then, and I couldn’t stop her even when I tried. Both of you are incredibly stubborn in that way. But to think she thought she loved a monster like that.” His expression shifts into one of disgust. I can’t help but invert the same notion to myself. Would Elanee one day look at me like that as well?
He continues. “I failed as a father protecting her against that. But my greatest regret as a grandfather is that you’re hindered because of it as well. You’re fighting a battle that should’ve been left alone a long time ago.”
Suddenly, the air isn’t feeling as fresh. The sky not as beautiful.
“Dmitri, you’re not a killer like him. Let it go,” he says.
My jaw grinds. My grandfather holds me with such high regard, but had he known the things I’d already done… The blood on my hands. The trickery. The unquenchable thirst to end my father, he most likely wouldn’t have handed his business over to the likes of me.
I take another swig of the whisky. Perhaps I was more cut out for my father’s line of work than I’d like to admit. And it only makes me hate him all the more because of it.
In many ways, I look up to my grandfather. But he wasn’t the fire that forged me. No, it was vengeance.
Curiously, I ask, “Why do you think he let us go instead of killing us? Wouldn’t it have made it cleaner?” We were, after all, loose ends.
He’s watching me intently as I hand him the flask back. “Don’t do anything stupid, boy.” He throws back the whisky. “The only thing I’ll ever be grateful toward that man for is the fact that he let you both go.”
The corner of my mouth curls up. “Let us go, huh?”
It’s just a twisted game to him, Elanee had said.
“Why has he reached out to you?” my grandfather asks grimly. I suppose, in some ways, Elanee was as good as any calling card.
“No.”
“Don’t mix that with our company. I mean it. Don’t have me regret handing the reins over to you.”
I puff on the cigar, but it’s not entirely to my preference.
I tire of hiding behind the mask. By not saying his name as if it’s going to give him more power over us. Mostly, I regret not being able to move on him sooner. “He has something of mine, and there’s a price he has to pay for taking it.”
My grandfather’s disapproving glare bores into me. “The only price that will be paid is with your life. Let. It. Go.”
