Page 29 of The Bratva’s Monster

He left me his shirt. I can’t stop thinking about that.

It’s a day later and I’m still really sore from that night. Every time I move a little, it feels like he’s still inside me. My ass still stings a little from the healing welts across my ass cheeks. I’ve been thinking about the marks I left him with and it makes me wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. Is he being reminded of me every time he notices a scratch or a bruise?

Fucking him was like fighting in all the best possible ways. It was full of adrenaline and passion. I felt like if I could find a way to rip him to shreds… If he could have ripped me to shreds… God, I don’t want to think about how I would let him break me into pieces.

Of all the men I could have gone home with… I was in a room full of men who would have gladly taken me home with them. Why did I choose Rikki? Was it just because he happened to be there, hovering over me like a master cockblocker? Was this just opportunity confronting my lingering loneliness?

I had my pick of men that night. And his being around me wouldn’t have stopped me from finding someone else if I were determined enough.

Yet, several hours later, he was fucking me in a hotel room. Fucking me like no man has ever done before. For a few hours, all the hurt, anger, and grief that I’ve been carrying around I was able to pour into him and into the sex. And after, I slept better than I have since Gedeon’s death.

And then I wake up and find myself in a predicament. My dress was in tatters on the floor at the foot of the bed and I had to face the notion of wearing a bathrobe to get to my car. But that’s not what happened at all. Instead, he left his shirt. My very first thought when I saw it was just that he can’t have meant to leave it, which is ridiculous. A person doesn’t leave a whole shirt behind. Underwear, cufflinks, bras, sure. But a shirt?

How strange for a monster to be so considerate to his prey.

When I put it on, it covered me almost entirely like a midi dress. I tore some of the fabric away from the dress and fashioned it into a belt and rolled up the sleeves. Once I put on my shoes, I looked like I was wearing a particularly smart looking dress. A dress that still had his musky sweet scent all over it as I left the hotel room.

Clearly, I have lost my fucking mind. I’ve been sitting here in bed, still in my nightgown, turning Gedeon’s coin over and over between my fingers, trying to figure out why I slept with him in the first place. Great sex notwithstanding, he was Gedeon’s best friend. The two of them came up in the brotherhood together. There was no one on this earth that my husband trusted more.

And I practically threw myself at him… and he caught me. Boy, did he catch me.

And I’ve been so lonely since Gedeon died. My bed just seems ice cold at night now, and so does the house. Sometimes, I wake up and reach over and feel that he’s not there and I think that he’s just somewhere in the house or out gambling or on business.

And then I remember and I grieve all over again.

I guess… I guess the other night was just about trying to feel something other than that for a little while.

I go to put the scratched up and tarnished ruble on the nightstand, and it falls off the edge and onto the floor. “Shit,” I mutter as it rolls across the room and under the dresser.

The last thing I need to do is lose my dead husband’s lucky coin. That’s got to be some serious bad juju. I get down on my hands and knees and look under the dresser, seeing it immediately. So I reach under to grab it and my finger brushes up against the dresser’s edge… and I feel something cool and hard.

It’s probably just a nail or some other metal part of the dresser and I retrieve the coin… but the more I think about it…

I reach back under the dresser and turn my hand so that my fingers touch the edge. The cool metal thing doesn’t feel like any kind of hardware… and is that tape?

I find the edge of it and pull. It rips off easily and falls into my hand. I sit back and look at my prize… a key, small and square. It doesn’t look like it’s for a door. I turn it around in my hand, holding it up to the light. Where is this supposed to go?

And it hits me. Gedeon’s filing cabinets. I laugh to myself as I stand, key in one hand and Gedeon’s lucky coin in the other. Guess it really is lucky.

Guess I’ve got my distraction for the day. I’ve been walking around the whole thing of clearing out Gedeon’s office. Now, with this whole business about him being a traitor, it’s got me thinking that if there is any proof of his innocence, that’s where it has to be.

Or guilty. If I’m now a target for something he did, then I want to understand exactly what and why he’d done it in the first place. Whatever I find, I’m at least owed some answers.

I take a deep breath and leave my bedroom, heading to his office down the hall.

I open the door and step into the room that still smells like him, still feels like him all around me. The papers piled in folders on his desk, the filing cabinets, the computer with a layer of dust over it…

It’s a lot, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

I start with the first filing cabinet and pull on the drawers again. Still locked, so I use the key and, presto! The drawers slide open easily. The first drawer is filled from one end to the other with a bunch of papers, all arranged in chaotic order. Wrinkled papers with flat ones, small scraps, pieces torn from napkins and the backs of magazines.

Sitting on the floor, I spread them all out and start going through everything. It all looks even worse outside the cabinet. It’s like he just shoved random pieces of trash into a filing cabinet.

Then I start to see the pattern. Every paper, every piece of napkin, every single item in front of me has numbers written on them. Dates with four- and five-digit numbers, listed sequentially as if he meant to pick them up at the grocery store.

Then I see some have what look like titles on them. Sunshiny Day, Courtside Seats, Powderpuff Riot…

Horse races. These are all bets. Some on horse races, others on fights. This is where he kept a record of his gambling habit.