Page 1 of The Pakhan’s Heir

1

NONA

The worst thing about spring in New York is that the diesel and trash smells mix with the smell of rain in the worst way. The moment I step off the plane, the stench greets me like a smelly, long-lost relative. It’s strange how one can leave the state for a while and forget, then as soon as the smell greets you on your first few steps through the airport, it’s like, Oh! This is home. It’s just weird how being away from home for half a year caused my mind to conveniently forget the sounds and smells of the city I’ve lived my entire life in.

I’m walking through the airport, dragging my bag behind me, catching my reflection in the mirrored glass, looking out over the tarmac. I’ve lost weight since I first started school. Not too much, but enough for me to notice these jeans riding loosely on my hips as I walk. At the moment, I’ve got my long red hair up in a braided ponytail in an effort to hide how dull and lifeless it looks right now. My skin’s not doing too good either, for that matter. I have to stop as I catch myself in the reflective morning sunlight. My soft, pale skin feels oily from the long plane ride and in the shine of the glass windows I pass, I look less like a human and more like a shined-up porcelain doll. I’ll just be glad to get back home and take a shower.

I start thinking about the text I sent to Papa weeks ago about my arrival. At the time, he texted back a canned response. Something like, “Good! It’ll be great to see you.” I swear, if I didn’t know for a fact that my father would sooner kill everyone around him than let anyone near his phone, I’d think that one of his people sent the text instead. I have a stinging memory of the one time I had mistaken his phone for mine that still rings in my ears if I think too long about it.

I never check my bag, so I won’t have to go the extra route toward the luggage check. I hate standing there like an idiot waiting for my bag to come rolling along on that conveyor belt and hoping beyond hope that it comes back to me in one piece. The last time I actually did check a bag was when I went on a high school trip to Italy. The airport lost it for three days and I thought Papa was going to blow the entire airport up. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he’d threatened to do so as he screamed at the attendants over the phone. It was a good thing they couldn’t understand Russian.

But all that said, I haven’t heard from him since I sent that text weeks ago, which… I suppose isn’t terribly unusual. He’s a busy man, after all. I only hope that when I show up in a cab, he won’t be too surprised to see me. In the meantime, I’m walking around JFK, maneuvering around small clusters of families gathering to wait for incoming parents, children, cousins, or whatever loved ones from the flight I’d just left. I spot the Rent-a-car stand a few yards away. Too bad I’m not yet old enough to just rent a car. If only I could just get into my own car and traverse the New York traffic to Manhattan without having to worry about some cab driver looking to take me the long way around to jack up his fare.

In fact… I stop walking and pull out my phone, looking at my car service app. There is always this option.

“Hey, Nona.” I look up from my phone to see one of my father’s men standing in one of the doors leading outside. I know him, I think. Well, I know his face. His name, however, eludes me. Boris? No. Mikhail… ?

All I actually do know is that he’s one of Papa’s enforcers. He’s just standing there in the doorway, blocking anyone from going through it, a scowl on his face, his low, sloping and lined forehead digging even deeper lines as he nods in my direction.

“Let’s go,” he says in Russian.

I shove my phone in my pocket and follow him outside. Guess Papa did remember I was coming in, after all. Outside, he leads me to the car—a sleek, black luxury deal sitting in the pickup zone… with three more of my dad’s men sitting inside.

My bag is taken and put into the trunk. At the same time, the back door opens and one of the three men steps out, holding the door open for me.

“Welcome home,” the one holding the door says.

Some welcome. I give him a tight smile and slide into the back seat. He follows, squeezing me in the center between him and another of Papa’s men. The first one’s done with my bags and is getting in on the passenger’s side. “Is this really necessary?” I say tentatively. “I mean, it doesn’t take four people to pick me up.”

“It does right now,” the first one says. “Dangerous times we’re living in.”

And that’s the only explanation I’m going to get. I lean back in my seat and do my best to squeeze my arms closer to my body so as not to touch the other two men on either side. As the car pulls off, a vague memory pops into my mind. Sometime when I was younger—very young, too young for my feet to reach the floor of the back seat, I had to travel this way. It’s only happened a couple of times, but everywhere I went for a few months, whether it was school or to a friend’s house, I had to have several bodyguards around me when I traveled.

Never got an explanation for that. But back then, I was in grade school. I don’t know what explanation Papa could have given me had I asked. And besides, I had been told never to talk about what he did for a living. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I got to know the truth.

So, I hope there’s an explanation when I get home.

“Dochurka! Come here. Let me look at you in the light.”

He’s standing in the door as I step off the elevator. Funny how time doesn’t ever change him very much. He’s wearing a nice dress shirt and slacks and his snow white beard is neatly trimmed, but his silver hair, which is almost always a little too long on top, is swept to one side and has a messy, but organized look about it. He smiles at me warmly, his thin face brightening the moment he sees me.

He holds out his arms, and I rush over to him and throw myself in them. “I thought you forgot,” I say. He hugs me back for a moment, and I feel one of his hands let me go for a second. I look around just in time to see him gesturing to his men. Get her bags and bring them inside, he says without speaking. He turns me around, looking me over before putting his arm around my shoulders.

“How was your flight?” he asks me as we walk into the foyer. “Good, I hope.”

I take a half-second to enjoy the smell of my father’s cologne mixed with the faint antiseptic smell of the marble floors under our feet. The apartment looks remarkably the same as it did before I went off to school. The foyer, then the dining room with the black lacquer table and high-backed chairs, one of two crystal chandeliers hanging above. The living room off to my left, the metal stairs leading up to his bedroom and to mine somewhere off toward the back of the house.

It’s extravagant, but it’s my home. I smile at my father and say, “It was okay. Stewardess was a little rude, but otherwise…” I give him a shrug.

“That happens sometimes,” he says as he beams and pulls me close. “I’m just glad you’re here. Come on, I’ve got blueberry pie for you in the kitchen.”

Of course he does. It’s my favorite treat.

He leads me to the kitchen and I see the pie sitting on the counter, two plates stacked one on top of the other and silver forks sitting neatly on napkins next to them. I sit down on a stool right in front of the pie as he retrieves the ice cream from the freezer.

Everything kind of falls out of my head as he serves up the blueberry pie and ice cream. At least it does until one of my father’s men comes walking into the kitchen.

“Sir,” he says, “Where do you want the suitcase?”