Page 100 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"You've got a cracked rib."
"It is barely cracked."
"That's not a thing."
We compromised by all going down together. Daniil left his charcoal coat folded over the back stair railing. I caught a glimpse of the black SUV at the curb when we passed the side window, two of his men inside, one with a coffee cup, both pretending hard not to look up at the building. I said nothing. Neither did he. The fact of them was just the weather Daniil traveled in now.
The backyard was small, fenced in chain link, a single terracotta pot in one corner and a big maple shedding the last of its leaves over the fence from next door. Grandma's plot was a narrow rectangle along the back. A row of collards still standing stubbornly, broad leaves a deep wintered green. Two spent pepper plants, dry and brown, stems leaning. An unraked pile of leaves. The air had that late autumn bite that gets into your knuckles within five minutes.
I crouched at the pepper plants and started pulling. Daniil rolled his sleeves up past his forearms and joined me in the row, kneeling on the cold dirt without complaint, hands going straight into the work. Rhea elected herself supervisor and arranged herself cross-legged on the back stoop with Beom-Beom in her lap.
"You're pulling that one wrong," she informed Daniil. "Beom-Beom says you have to twist it."
"Beom-Beom is correct," Daniil said, twisting it.
"Beom-Beom also says Chloe is doing it perfectly."
"Beom-Beom is correct again."
"Beom-Beom is biased," I called.
After twenty minutes I was sweating despite the cold. I dragged the back of my wrist across my forehead.
Daniil saw.
He stood, walked to the back step, picked up the kitchen towel I'd brought down for my hands, and came back. He didn't give it to me. He used it himself, pressing it gently to my temple, sliding it down along my hairline, his other hand resting at the side of my neck.
"Sit," he said. "Take a rest. I will finish here." He glanced toward the stoop. "You too, Halmoni."
Grandma straightened from the chain link, where she'd been pulling dead vine off the wire two beds over. She wiped her hands on her apron, slow. The smile started in her eyes first and moved down to her mouth.
"Now I see why my Chloe is into you," she said. Warm and dry and weighted all at once. "You are a good man."
Daniil shook his head, immediate, soft, the way he shakes his head at himself when he thinks nobody is watching.
"I am not a good man, Halmoni. I just love your granddaughter."
A beat. Grandma kept her eyes on him. The garden was quiet enough that I could hear leaves moving along the fence and a far-off bus brake on Northern Boulevard. She studied his face the way she studies a melon for ripeness.
"Nobody is perfect, Daniil. Sometimes love is enough. I can rest easier knowing there is a man who treats my girl well."
My eyes burned. I didn't let it tip over. I sat down on the cold concrete of the stoop next to Rhea and let her drop Beom-Beom into my lap. She leaned her shoulder against my arm. I rested my chin briefly on top of her head and watched my grandma watching the man I loved.
He worked the rest of the row. Pulled the last pepper plants with Rhea's patient twist. Raked the leaves into one tidy pile against the fence. Paused at the collards and asked grandma which ones she wanted left, and she pointed out the three biggest. He left those, exactly those. His palms went muddy at the heels. The small white scar across his left index knuckle went pink in the cold, the way it always does.
By the time we went back inside, the sun had dropped behind the houses across the alley.
Grandma turned in early. She kissed Rhea's head, patted Daniil's arm, squeezed my hand, and disappeared into her bedroom with her glass of barley tea, the door clicking softly shut.
The three of us were left with the front room and the pull-out couch.
It took some doing. Daniil dragged the cushions off and I unfolded the metal frame, and we made the bed with two of grandma's thick quilts and three pillows in a row. Rhea brushed her teeth at the kitchen sink because the bathroom was occupied. She climbed into the middle in borrowed flannel pajama pants and the t-shirt I'd given her, Beom-Beom held very firmly to her chest.
"He sleeps in the middle," she announced. "Of me. Not of you."
"Understood," Daniil said, lying down on her right.
I took the left. The single lamp on the side table was turned to its lowest setting, and the TV was off, dark screen reflecting nothing. The apartment smelled like grandma's laundry detergent and the ghost of the porridge and the faintest trace of garlic that lived in the walls.
