Page 23 of Kings of Violence

Nikolai clearly doesn’t believe me. He only watches me.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I amend, looking away from him. “You did it already.”

“Yura…” Nikolai sighs. “Is there something you need to tell me about this girl? It’s not like you think we’ve been celibate without you.”

“It’s not because you fucked her,” I snap. “It’s because youclaimedher. That’s fucking permanent, and I didn’t get a vote because I’m here, so I guess you two just fucking forgot about me. I end up in here, so that means I’m not important enough anymore to even?—”

“Yashin!” the guard interrupts. “That’s it, you’re done. Hang up and get out of here before I drag you out in cuffs.”

I was yelling. Fuck. I slam the receiver onto its holder and get up.

Nikolai is scowling at me now, and I can only imagine what he wants to say to me.

Probably something like,stop acting like a little bitch.

I head to the door, where the guard is glaring. “You’re on thin ice, Yashin.”

“Good thing I know how to skate,” I answer glibly. The guard backhands me for the backtalk, but I was expecting that.

The pain is something more immediate I can focus on.

A second guard leads me back to my cell, threatening to tase me the entire time. I think they’d call that police brutality or whatever, like there’s ever an expectation of anicetime in prison.

Lucas is already in the cell, reading a magazine on the lower bunk, because he never gets visitors. He takes one look at me and sits up. “Uh-oh. Bad news?”

I shrug and look over my shoulder, but the guard doesn’t linger after he locks up. I go to sit next to Lucas.

“No. Just updates.” I don’t really want to tell him about the arrangement I have with Kotya and Nikolai. Yeah, people exchange handjobs and fuck each other in prison, but nobody admits to being gay or bisexual.

None of the fuckers here need to know that about me.

“What are you reading?” I ask instead, peering at his magazine.

He eyes me, but he doesn’t press, which is one of the things I do like about my bunkmate. He shows me the cover of the magazine, where a woman in a bikini is standing in front of a sports car. “The closest we get to porn in this place,” he jokes. “Half-naked women and cars.”

“Too bad the woman is in the way,” I joke back. “I know you’d rather fuck the car.”

“Well, have you seen the fucking car?” Lucas banters back. “Custom mods on a fucking Ferrari. Who would you think has the balls to do that?”

In terms of cell mates, I could do worse than Lucas. I have done worse, in fact, with the guy who came before him. But the past few months have been a little better with somebody to talk to, and aside from simultaneous wank sessions, he keeps his dick to himself. I don’t know if that’s because he’s just that committed to his heterosexuality or if he’s actually more into cars than women.

If he spoke Russian, that would be even better, but my attempts to teach him have gone nowhere.

“If you’re buying a Ferrari, you have the money to add custom mods,” I suggest, grabbing for the magazine. “What page? Did they give the wheels purple rims?”

“Rose gold,” he says. “Page 57. They painted the damn thinggreen.”

I flip to the page, and make a face when I see the abomination of a car. I skim some of the article, but I can’t read English as fast as I do Russian, and sometimes I still confuse the letters and try to read them as they would be in Cyrillic. Who came up with the idea of having ‘P’ be pronounced as a‘pah’sound anyway?

“The owner likes… who are the Rackers?” I ask, pointing at the page. Then I correct myself. “ThePackers.”

“The Green Bay Packers. They’re a football team, and their jerseys are green,” Lucas says, grinning at me. “Which you’d know if you joined in the conversations about football.”

“That’s an American game. Nobody outside of the U.S. plays American football. Which does not even use feet.” The banter is making some of my anger fade away, at least, and arguing about what a real sport is distracts me from thinking about how Kotya and Nikolai claimed Sierra without me.

They even fucking branded her! That’s more than just a quick fuck.

Maybe they’ll knock her up, and Kotya will get the heir he deserves while I’m abandoned and forgotten.

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