Page 23 of Vitaly

“Mama, when I’m Pakhan, you’ll be no one’s servant. You don’t even have to stay here anymore if you really don’t want to. I?—”

“I’m not saying this so you’ll have sympathy forme,synok,” she says with a heavy sigh, like she’s spent years teaching me alesson I’ll never learn. “I’m saying this so you’ll have sympathy for yourwife.”

“Nina.”

Mama startles at my grandfather, Vova, coming to a standstill in the entryway. His disapproving stare aims her way.

“What are you doing with my grandson?”

When she doesn’t answer, I answer for her.

“Teaching me to cook kushnick.”

Dark shadows occupy his eyes as he stares at Mama. “You’re teaching him to be awoman?”

“Go, Vitaly,” she tells me, throwing me a glance while continuing to roll the dough. “See if your father needs help with something.”

I look between her and Vova, sweat sticking to my forehead as anxiety rolls down my spine.

“Now,” Mama hisses.

I duck my head as I leave, not stopping until I make it to my room.

That night at dinner, I don’t take a bite of my kushnick. My mother’s black eye turns my stomach.

And it’s years later, when I’m sitting in a prison cell, this memory playing through my head, that I realize my mother didn’t want me to find my father so I could help him. She wanted me to find him so he could helpher.

Present day

My eyesopen as I come out of the memory, shame enveloping me as it has every other time I’ve thought of it. Only now, there’s another piece. Another source nagging at my conscience.

Mila.

She was a girl who came to a new house to be given to a new man to treat her as he pleased. She was supposed to be given the life my mother had.Worsesince she was supposed to be married to me.

I could’ve made it better for her. I could’ve protected her. I could’ve raised a son to be better than me, to respect his mother and all she offered.

Instead, I made her life unimaginably worse. She’s right… I destroyed her value, at least what men like my grandfather would give her credit for.

Nikita isn’t the only one who made her a servant, a whore.

I did too.

I became everything my parents feared I’d become.

My eyes clench shut at the pain in my gut, and I lean my forehead against the stone. A long time passes before it feels like I can speak the words I came here to speak. But finally, I sniff, blinking away the sting in my eyes as I open them.

“Forgive me, Mama,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss the stone, my hands gripping the top.

With one last shaky breath, I stand, straighten my hoodie, then head for the gate.

There’s nothing I want from my family’s empire. Nothing I feel entitled to.

But Mila Alekseev was wrong. I’m not a coward. I don’t run. And I still have work to do. Because whether she walks away with me today, tomorrow, or a year from now, I won’t leave Las Vegas with the woman on my conscience. Not again.

I climb in my Jeep and pull out of the cemetery lot.

Homemy destination.

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