Page 4 of Ivory Oath

“Well, I wasn’t shot in the chest,” I point out. “So I’m going to head back and?—”

“Maybe not literally,” Anatoly interrupts. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not in recovery, too.”

I grimace. “That was some second-tier, discount bin psychoanalyzing, Anatoly.”

He ignores me and cruises ahead anyway. “I was shot in the chest, but it’s not the physical shit that’s messing with me. It’s the mental stuff. What I saw. What I lost.” He swallows, and I know he’s thinking of Stella. We’ve all been thinking of her. She was part of the family and we loved her. No one as much as Anatoly.

“I’m sorry about Stella, man. You know I am. But she was your girlfriend, not mine.”

“I’m not talking about Stella,” Anatoly interrupts. He hits me with a long, knowing look.

I meet his eyes, refusing to look away. I can’t let him think for even a single second that I’m running from the dark tornado of guilt and doubt and regret that has been swirling around my head for days.

“What I’m talking about,” Anatoly clarifies, “is that it’s okay to be fucked up over what happened. We all lost people we cared about, and another marathon session with your punching bag isn’t going to make that better.”

You never know if you don’t try.

“I did what I had to do for the Bratva and I have no regrets. Now, if you’ll excuse me?—”

“Dante was a mess all afternoon,” Anatoly adds before I can turn away. “He threw a fit for his tutor, refused to eat lunch, and shredded every stuffed animal in his bedroom.”

Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be able to ignore him and walk away. But Anatoly knows what he’s doing.

It’s Dante. I can’t walk away from my son.

“Has anyone talked to him?” I sigh.

“We’ve tried.” Anatoly gestures to himself and Raoul. “He doesn’t want to talk to us. He wants to talk to?—”

“Well, he can’t!” I drag my hands through my hair and drop down into one of the stools at the counter. “I told him that she left. I was honest and told him she wasn’t coming back. What the fuck does he want from me?”

I know I’m not being reasonable. Dante is five years old. He has spent every day of his life with his mother and now, without warning, she’s gone.

“Well, for starters,” Anatoly says, clapping his hand on my shoulder, “you could stop getting drunk by yourself and boxing all night and try spending some time with him. I’m sure he’d rather have one parent than zero.”

The problem is, without the boxing and the drinking, I’m no good to anyone. I wake up every day with a tension in my body I can’t get rid of. It’s a buzzing awareness under my skin that something is wrong and I need to fix it. And the only way to get rid of it is to dull the sharp edge with alcohol and then physically burn the rest of the energy away.

I can’t sit in the mansion with Dante and do puzzles or go for walks. I can’t be around him because seeing his face reminds me of her.

My hand tightens around my water bottle until my knuckles turn white. When I look up, Anatoly is looking at it like he’s waiting for the bottle to implode.

I force myself to release my grip and stand up. “Bring Dante to the gym. If he wants to talk, we can talk there.”

“Sure,” Anatoly mumbles as I leave. “That’s healthy. I’m not worried about this at all.”

I ignore him and shove through the patio doors.

I’m deep in another set when I finally hear the door to the gym open fifteen minutes later.

“Go on,” Anatoly encourages. “I’ll be out here if you need me.”

Dante walks across the padded floor towards me. He looks smaller than I’ve ever seen him. Like the last few days have physically worn him down.

He stops a few yards away and watches me from the sidelines. I could pause and talk to him, but I don’t even know what I’m going to say. Which is exactly why I’ve been alone in the gym for days on end.

When my knuckles connect with the bag, it’s like a circuit finally being completed. The energy in my veins has somewhere to go.

Maybe it can help Dante, too.

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