Page 42 of The Pakhan’s Heir

His grip loosens around my fist and he goes limp in my arms. The sound of the car and Rikki’s voice as he talks to Marius fades away as I hold my dead father in my arms. My eyes start to burn and something deep in my chest feels like it’s cracking in two.

“Wake up,” I say, grabbing his hand. It’s still warm. I squeeze it and say again, “Come on, Dad. Wake up. Please. Please, don’t… don’t go… Not yet.”

Rikki’s stopped talking and I feel the car slow down and stop. He turns around, looking at me with wide eyes.

“Alex?” he says.

I can’t speak. The pain is lodged firmly in my throat.

Our father is dead.

15

NONA

He asked me not to wait up for him and I swear I wasn’t going to. Alex’s business is his business, after all. I don’t really have any part of any of that. I’m just his wife or whatever.

Except… Except I just had a bad feeling when he left tonight. I don’t know if it was the fact that I just saw Gedeon doing something the other day that could be construed as shady when I was at the mall or if it’s just something in the air. Whatever it is, it isn’t really letting me sleep.

I’m sitting in the game room, watching the news. For a few hours before this, I just lay in bed, scrolling on my phone, trying to distract myself into sleep. When that didn’t work, I made myself a cup of tea and decided to watch the local news.

Dark back alley deals don’t make headlines unless something’s gone really wrong and the civil peace is disrupted. Well, sometimes not even then, depending on that week’s news cycle. Crime in the city is as normal as breathing so unless somebody gets identified as being connected in some way, whatever happened is usually reported as typical news fare.

It’s like when one of my father’s warehouses burned down a while back. The news reported it as a kind of spectacle, warning drivers to steer clear of the area. They mentioned nothing about the possibility of arson or that the matter was under investigation. It certainly didn’t mention that the warehouse belonged to Slavik Sokolov of the Irkutsk crime gang.

But that said, right now, listening to the talking heads go on about other things happening in the city, I don’t really know what I’m looking for. Especially since I don’t know where Alex went or what he’s doing. I don’t know what they’ll report if something’s gone wrong.

I hope nothing’s gone wrong. My husband is an obstinate man with a cruel streak, but he loves his family and his brotherhood. I would hate to see him lose any part of the things that he values most in one night.

I’d also hate for him to die. I wasn’t kidding about that part. Practically speaking, I wouldn’t know where that would leave me. We haven’t been married long enough for me to think that his father or siblings would make sure I was taken care of in light of being widowed. Emotionally speaking…

I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that.

I look down at my empty cup of tea and it occurs to me how silly this is that I’m sitting here waiting up for a man who probably wouldn’t even notice that I wasn’t in bed, anyway. I should just go on back to scrolling on my phone and try to sleep…

The screen changes suddenly. A graphic whizzes by as a sharp sting rings out and words in bold font reading, Breaking News appear on the screen.

I freeze, my heart in my chest.

The graphic slides away with a whoosh and one of the talking heads reappears. “Breaking news tonight,” she begins. “Gunshots ring out in the Upper West Side of Manhattan near the West 79th street leaving several men dead.”

The screen changes to B-roll of the area. A dark street, damp from the light rainstorm that blew through a little while ago. A parking lot that’s been cordoned off with police tape and officers walking around investigating bullet holes in cars and shell cases on the ground…

My stomach tightens and my mind immediately starts to make excuses. Crime happens all the time. This was some other gang activity. Italians and one of the motorcycle gangs battling it out…

“Witnesses report hearing gunshots a few minutes after midnight tonight,” the reporter says. “So far, no one has reported actually seeing the incident, but police are still investigating. We will have more on this⁠—”

I turn the television off. My hands are shaking. It happened maybe thirty minutes after Alex left. And with no one identifying the dead…

My phone buzzes on the end table next to me. I pick it up. Damn. It’s Yeva.

“Nona? Is Alex there?”

“N-no,” I say. Her voice is firm. There’s no panic in her tone or hysteria. Just a simple question. She doesn’t say anything for a moment… and I hear the news on the television in the background.

“Okay,” she says finally. “When he comes in, can you tell him to call me?”

I want to tell her not to worry, to tell her that the news report doesn’t mean anything at all just yet and we just have to wait for more information. Alex will walk through the door and it’ll all be fine.