Page 52 of Marrying the Silver Fox

He reaches out to lace his fingers through mine as he looks back at me. As simple as those words are, they are the beginning of a future for us, as unconventional and unexpected as it might look.

A future that I thought might have been stolen from me—and a future that, now, I am going to enjoy every moment of.

26

NIKOLAI

I drum my fingers on the table as I wait for my father to pick up, ready to hear his voice down the other end of the line. After all that has happened, I know I need to explain myself—and I can only imagine how hard he will take the news of what has happened with my brother.

It takes a few moments for him to take my call, but as soon as I hear his voice, I begin to un-tense. I might be a grown man in my own right now, but there’s still a comfort in knowing that my father is just a phone call away.

“Dosvedanya,” he greets me, clearly distracted. He only speaks Russian to me when his mind is somewhere else entirely, having taught Max and me English by speaking it in the house for as long as I can remember.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Ah, Nikolai!” he greets me, and I hear the creak of his chair as he leans back, as though glad to hear my voice. “And how are you keeping? Settling into life with your new wife, I hope?”

I hesitate before I answer. He doesn’t know. Not yet. I’ve been putting off the part where I have to come clean to him, not wanting to shatter his heart with the revelation of what my brother has done. But I have to think of my child now, as well as Andie, and I’m sure he will understand that as clearly as I do.

“Dad, there’s something I have to tell you.”

He falls silent. He can tell from the tone of my voice that this is a matter of great importance. Has he noticed that Max is gone, does he know that it is to do with him? He’s not stupid, he must have some sense that his other son was not pleased with how the division of our assets turned out, and when he took his trip to America, that he might seek me out to make things right.

“Is it about Max?”

I sigh. “Yes. Yes, it is…”

I can hear the resignation in his voice, and I know at once that he has some sense of everything that went down. He might not want to believe it, might have lived in denial that his own son would be capable of something like that, but there is no denying the truth.

“What did he do?” he asks, voice tightening, as though to force out the emotion.

I gather myself for a moment before I reply—but then I launch into it, every detail. I don’t hold back a single thing, not what he planned to do with Andie, not how he drugged her and stole her away, not how he locked her up and threatened her. I don’t make mention of the pregnancy yet, not wanting this to be how he finds out—and besides, I need to hold some good news back, given the pain of everything I’m hitting him with right now.

When I’m done, silence fills the air between us. I wish I could be there with him now, to try and help him through the excruciating weight of everything that he’s hearing. I’m not yet a father, and I can only imagine the searing pain of knowing that your own son has not only committed such an evil act, but has done it against his own brother.

“And I made it clear to him that if he set foot back in America, I would not be so merciful,” I add. “He left the country last night. I don’t know where he went, if he tried to return home, but⁠—”

“I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he left,” my father replies. His voice is measured, careful, as though intent not to give away more than he wants to. “He told me he was planning to spend some time in Europe—I had no idea he was going to America, let alone that he was looking for you and Andrea…” He trails off. I can hear the guilt in his voice, the blame he’s piling on himself realizing that he didn’t do more to stop it.

“You couldn’t have known,” I assure him. “I know you would never have let him even think of something like that.”

“Never,” he replies sharply. “You know how seriously I take the matter of family, son, and he—he disrespected that. And he’ll pay for it.”

“How?”

I wonder, briefly, if my father will do what Andie kept me from doing—if he will kill him, his own boy. But then he speaks again, swiftly making himself clear.

“He’ll be excommunicated from the Bratva,” he replies. “No protections. Any trouble he gets himself into, he’ll have to manage on his own. Effective immediately. I’ll send the memo out now.”

I breathe a long sigh of relief. I knew my father was going to take my side, but hearing it from him so directly is a weight off my shoulders I didn’t even know I was carrying.

I can hear the hurt in his voice, of course, the pain of having to give up on one of the sons that he has poured so much of his life into raising and crafting into the kind of man he can be proud of. But betrayal doesn’t fly in this world, regardless of who it comes from. Blood is no thicker than water, not when blood commits an act like that.

He falls silent for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is thick with emotion.

“Your mother always said to me that Max was going to be…that he was going to cause trouble, out of the two of you,” he tells me.

I tense. He rarely speaks about my mother, the weight of her loss still heavy on his shoulders. But now, with just the two of us left here in our family, I suppose it only makes sense to reflect on those members no longer with us, one way or another.