Page 35 of Vasily the Nail

My eyes mist up as reality hits me. My sinuses tingle. Kseniya sees it immediately and throws her arms around me, crying out, “I will cut his dick off, I swear!”

I laugh, the sound ragged but my spirits lifted marginally for it. “No, it’s not Vasily. I just . . . I was thinking about my brother.”

Every glimpse I get of Vasily— and really, that’s all I get from him— has me further doubting who’s my villain. Tony sold me. For such a paltry sum that I don’t understand why this was the better deal to him. He sanctioned my rape.

The fact remains it was Vasily who physically did it, and as careful as he was with me last night, he did seem to knowexactlywhat he was doing with the show he set up.

Bracing myself for an answer I don’t want to hear but need to hear before I let this go any further and end up trading the frying pan of Mafia men for the fire of a Bratva psycho, I ask, “Has Vasily hurt women before?”

“Never!” Kseniya cries out, appalled. “Never. Oh my God, like, he’s got his issues, some really terrible issues, but never. But then, he hasn’t been serious about a woman since, well, you know.”

She doesn’t know how I ended up here, so I can’t trust that she would know if he’s hurt women in the past. But at least I can get some other questions answered. “I don’t know, actually.” I turn my head bashfully and shoot her some innocent eyes, a move I perfected as a child and have already used on Vasily several times. “We haven’t been together very long.”

“Oh. Well, I was away in college for a while, so I might be wrong, but I don’t think he’s had a girlfriend since Brooke died. Gosh, six years ago now.”

I was wearing a dead girl’s clothes. Yikes.

“There’s something else Artyom wanted to know. About what Vasya did last night.”

“It’s fine,” I bristle, not wanting to explain how it was my own stupid fault for giving him the idea. “It wasn’t what it looked like. I’m fine.”

She’s in no way bothered by my attitude. Instead, she has a laugh and another cookie. “Well, thank you for being protective of Vasya because hardly anyone is, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Artyom wants to know if he was acting strange lastnight. I guess one of the guys told Artyom that Vasya was weird this morning.”

It feels like she’s hinting at something, but I genuinely don’t know what. “No? I mean, he was intense. It was an intense night, but he didn’t seem strange to me.”

Not that I would know. There was the strangeness when I asked to shower by myself, but that seemed resolved by the time I finished up.

Kseniya lifts an eyebrow. I’m thinking with my face.

“It’s nothing.”

“Sometimes something seems like nothing with him.” Her eyes flit around thoughtfully before she makes up her mind and says, “Drugs. What drugs was he on? Or . . . fuck. Here we go. Did Vasya shoot up last night?”

“What?!” I squawk, hopping to my feet. “No. What? No. I don’t—look, I know hardly anything about drugs,” I admit as I start pacing around the kitchen island. “But he was super intense last night. And I know he takes drugs. But I don’t, so I don’t know what’s what. But doesn’t . . .heroin,” I whisper as though saying it out loud will conjure it into existence, “turn you into a zombie?”

Kseniya shrugs, but she looks as helpless as I feel in this moment. “Sometimes? It works in different ways? And listen, I promise this isn’t normal for him. It’s been ages since he was on it. He does do a lot of drugs, and we’re doing the best we can to help him, but he’s kicked heroin. There’s just . . . glitches, I guess. After you two did that thing you did last night, did he take anything? To mellow out?”

“Not that I saw.” My heart sinks as, yet again, I think about how I told him I wanted to shower alone. “But I wasn’t with him the whole time.”

Kseniya sighs and reaches out to me to reel me back to her so she can squeeze my hand. “Did you smell anything? Really sharp, almost like vinegar?”

I clench my eyes shut against the tears. I shouldn’t be emotional about this. Vasily isn’t my problem. Did I briefly think he was my salvation? Yes. Was that incredibly naive and pathetic? Yep.

Did I smell something like vinegar? I did.

“It’s okay,” she says, hugging me again like I’m not the villain in her story. “It was probably a fluke.”

Before I can answer, the door is thrown open so hard I hear the dry wall behind it crack.

Vasily stands there, red-faced and breathing hard. His eyes are wide and wild. “Get out,” he snarls.

I tuck Kseniya behind myself reflexively, although I’m little more than a fly for him to swat. I don’t even know why he’s so angry.

But then he points at her — well, both of us, but obviously meaning her — and says something in Russian. He only gets a few words out before he shakes his head and says, “You and Artyom, I’m done with both of you. We don’t need you in our business. Get out. Come here,zvyozdochka.”

He holds his hand out to me, but I hesitate. It’s the nudge from Kseniya that gets me moving. I know I shouldn’t betrusting anyone, but I don’t have a choice, and the way Vasily pulls me in tightly and rests his head against mine is enough reassurance I need.

“That package was delivered to my house,” Kseniya says as she grabs her bag and heads for the door. Before she leaves, she says something in Russian that makes Vasily squeeze me more tightly. I glance over my shoulder and see that his already pale skin goes ashen, his lips parted in shock or distress. Whatever she’s just told him, he wasn’t prepared for it.

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