Page 48 of Merciless Bratva Soldier

She holds my hand through the front of the bakery as though scared I’ll run away if she lets go. I sit at the scarred table. She brings down the first-aid kit from the shelf above the lockers, puts on gloves, then she unwraps the rag, and looks at the cut.

“It needs stitches.”

“Yevgeny’s on his way.”

“Déjà vu, much.” She opens a packet of gauze. “I’ll dress it while we wait. Tell me what happened.”

While she cleans the cut, presses gauze into it, and holds it there with the heel of her hand, I tell her what happened, including where Daniel is now and who will find him in the morning. The only part I leave out is Maxim’s warning for killing Zorin when he wanted him alive. I have no intention of disobeying him a second time.

“The police will ask you about Daniel,” I say.

“I know.” Her hand stays where it is, on the gauze, her eyes downcast. “He used to be kind,” she says at last. “Once, when I had the flu, he made me tea with too much sugar, and sat on the end of the bed and read me the sports page because it was the only thing in the apartment.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “He was going to wait for me in the dark in Rosa’s kitchen.”

“It’s over now,” I say.

“I’m glad he can’t come back.” She looks up at me. “Does that make me a bad person?”

“No, pchelka.” I don’t tell her that I’m glad he can’t come back too.

It’s a different emotion altogether. He would’ve handed the woman I love over to the bad guys to clear his debt, so he had to be stopped. In her eyes though, the betrayal runs a whole lot deeper.

She tapes the gauze down. She peels off the gloves inside out, one into the other, and drops them in the bin by the lockers. Then she takes my hands in hers on the table.

They’re shaking, and I didn’t even realize.

“They do that,” I say. “After.”

She smiles. “Mine shook for an hour earlier.”

Vera doesn’t let go. She comes around the table and rests her forehead against mine, and I close my eyes and let myself lean on her.

Yevgeny stitches my arm at the table, checks my side, and leaves fresh gauze taped over the cut.

“I don’t like what you do,” she says after he’s gone. “I’m not going to pretend I do because I want you here.”

“I love you,” I say.

She holds my face in both hands. She doesn’t look away, and she doesn’t make me wait. “I love you,” she says. “Come upstairs.”

She goes through to the front and locks the door. I hear her test the handle. Twice.

When she comes back, she unlocks the narrow door in the corner of the staff room, the one to her stairs, and looks at me.

“Coming home?” she says, and I don’t need to be asked twice.

EPILOGUE

VERA

The man from Logan Square finishes the lettering on the window by the light of a lamp clamped to a stepladder, and I stand on the sidewalk in my apron and watch him burnish the last one.

GALINA’S.

Gold leaf, outlined in black, in the old-fashioned letters I picked out a long time ago from a book he keeps in a cigar box. Underneath, in fine gold italic, the word ‘bakery’.

He climbs down, folds the ladder, and looks at it with his head on one side. “Don’t let anybody wash it with anything but water.”

We signed three weeks ago, ten days later than Rosa wanted. The landlord wanted the back door repaired before he would sign the transfer, and the carpenter took his time. Then the five of us sat around a table: Rosa, the landlord, his lawyer, me, and Nikolai at the end with his coffee, saying nothing at all. The lawyer was even faster than I expected him to be.