Page 1 of Imperfect Desires

1

Lev

I was born into blood.

My childhood soundtrack was my mother’s screams echoing through the paper-thin walls of our Brighton Beach apartment. By age five, I knew the sting of my father's hand; by age ten, I had mastered the art of hiding bruises. By twelve, I had learned how to throw a punch hard enough to break a rib. Survival wasn’t a lesson—it was instinct. The streets of Brighton Beach belonged to the mobs, and if you couldn’t hold your ground, you didn’t make it to the next day.

I don’t remember the last time I saw my mother’s face. I think I stopped looking after a while because the emptiness in her eyes made my stomach churn. My father was emotionally dead. Hewas a street soldier for the Colombian cartel—a brutal man who answered to even more brutal men. He came home with blood on his hands more often than not. Sometimes, it was his own. Sometimes, it wasn’t.

“Why do you always hit mama?” I remember asking this when I was around six.

“Because she is fucking soft. Beating her will toughen her up.”

“No, it won’t, and you should stop doing that.”

“You’re going to grow up soft,” he used to say in disgust. “Your mother’s weakness is in your bones.” He always spoke to me in our native Russian language. “There is nothing Russian about her; the only thing she is good at is pumping herself full of drugs and spreading her skinny legs.”

I learned to hate him early. But more than that, I hated the part of myself that resembled him. The coldness. The ability to look at someone bleeding out on the floor and feel nothing.

At thirteen, I had learned to fight back. I wasn’t going to let another man beat me up at will. Whether said man was my father or not. I left home the day I turned fourteen after getting into a fight with my dad again. By then I had stopped calling him dad and he was just Alex to me.

My father was a ghost I barely remembered, and my mother had stopped looking me in the eye years ago. There was nothing left for me in that apartment except the cold silence and the ache ofbeing unwanted. My mother would sit by the window for hours, staring at the street below like she was waiting for someone to come home. For someone to come get us out of that slum—but no one ever did. And eventually, I stopped waiting too.

I took nothing with me when I left. Just the clothes on my back and a knife tucked into my pocket.

Brighton Beach is sharp edges and cold pavement beneath bare feet. The apartment buildings crowd each other like they’re trying to push the others out of their fucking way. The streets are loud—always filled with the sounds of shouting, car horns, and the occasional gunshot in the distance. If you weren’t part of a crew, you were fair game.

I learned quickly that these streets belonged to the mobs, especially the Colombians. They controlled the drug flow, the dock shipments, and half the police force. You stayed out of their way unless you were useful. And I made sure I was useful. Very useful.

By sixteen, I was running small drug drops for them. Then debt collections. I learned how to break a man’s nose with the heel of my hand. How to drive my elbow into the soft hinge of a jaw. How to squeeze the air out of someone’s throat until they stopped moving. I stopped feeling sick about it after the first few times.

You survive, or you die. There’s no room for hesitation.

By seventeen, I was trusted enough to run bigger jobs. I knew the rules. Knew how to handle myself. I didn’t ask questions, and I didn’t make mistakes. That’s why I couldn’t believe how fast it all fell apart.

It was supposed to be a simple transaction. Meet up with the delivery guy, collect the package, take it to the buyer, and return with twenty grand in crispy notes. My cut? One grand.

Easy money.

But when I step into the alley behind the bar, the delivery guy is already dead. Blood pooling beneath his head, glinting black in the darkened alley. I ignore his dead state, and quickly searched him for the package, but It’s gone.

My mind hammers because dead men don’t speak, and in the world I live in, who is to vouch that I didn’t kill this guy and take the package? Just as I stand with my hands stained with his blood from searching him, I see Carlos Mendes, one of the Colombian street lieutenants, stepping out of the shadows. He glances from the body and then at my blood-stained hands.

“What have you done?” He asks in fury that could bring down a building.

“I didn’t do it,” I say, my voice steady despite the thundering in my chest.

Mendes steps closer, his eyes dark and sharp beneath the dim light. "Didn’t you?” His eyes stray to my blood-stained hands.

"I was only looking for the package.”

Mendes’s smile sharpens. "Of course you were."

He stretches his hand and I know he is asking for either the drug or the money.

“I don’t have any.”

He nods toward the two men flanking him. Large and heavyset, with dead expressions. “Frisk him.”

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