Page 51 of Vasily the Hammer

Vasily spits on one.

I cover my mouth, horrified. He spit on me. He actually spit on me, like a psycho. Like Tony claims he is. And in the video, I’m obviously begging Vasily to stop.

He spits on me again.

He’s disgusting.

And then he spins me around, pulls down the shorts I was wearing, and spanks me for the whole world to see. The red handprints are just barely blooming when he dips his hands into the space between my thighs and pulls them apart.

I screech and look away but not before getting an eyeful of something that I can never take from my memory. That my brother is looking at, too, that who knows how many people have seen. Tears leak from my eyes as I cry out, “Turn it off, turn it off!”

Tony nods and does so solemnly, saying, “It only gets worse from here. I’m sosorry.”

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” I whimper, already rising on shaking legs, already thinking that I’m going to walk straight through my bedroom and into my bathroom so I can barf my pierogi dinner up.

“Yeah, that would be for the best. Sleep well, Lacey.”

Chapter 16

Vasily

Kostya freezes atthe door to my office. He looks around cautiously, his gaze shrewd, analytical. He takes a comical step backward and then returns.

“You, ah, want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly. Where’s Dima?”

He walks in on delicate footsteps, careful to dodge the spray of soil from the potted cactus Kseniya sent me to LA with to remember Flagstaff by, along with some joke about Twilight that I didn’t understand. I’ve done a lot for my baby sister over the years, but Twilight isn’t one of them.

I should pick the cactus up. If it dies, she’ll be pissed. In fact, I’m irritated that instead of picking the cactus up, Kostya’s just concerned with not grinding the potting soil into the carpet.

Nope, I tell myself. Kostya’s not my gardener, and he’s not my janitor or my housekeeper. That’s not his job, and he’s a good man for at least doing his best to keep the carpet from being permanently stained.

“I get that you want us to prioritize Dima, but—”

“And Alex.”

“And Alex, of course.” His tone tells me he’s just repeating what I’m saying, which is pissing me off.

Kostya’s a good man. He’s been my right-hand man for years now. I need to calm down.

“So where are they?” I push.

From the seat of his preferred chair, Kostya removes a handful of pill bottles, a gun, a desk lamp, and a cup. He pats the seat to make sure nothing was in the cup when it landed there. “The situation in Flagstaff—”

“Flagstaff can burn the fuck down for all I care!” I roar, throwing the last remaining item from my desk— my phone, which only survived the great purge because it was still in my pocket at that time— across the room.

Well, I throw it at Kostya. He knows that. But I throw it wide so it swishes by the side of his head, close enough to ruffle his hair, before sailing all the way across the room and bouncing off the door to my private elevator. It lands in pieces, but I think it’s just the case breaking off.

“Vasily, you can’t just let everything fall apart because—”

“Where . . . is . . . Dima?”

“Cousin. Listen to me.” Kostya puts his hands up in surrender, but I know nothing he’s going to say is going to make any difference. “This situation sucks, I know. Whether I think you should have claimed Ana the way you did, whether this was going to end in ashit show between us and the Mafia, it doesn’t matter. If you want the girl, we’ll get the girl back. But—”

I consider what’s left in the drawers, weigh it against the satisfaction I’ll get for flipping my entire desk. “She’s not a ‘girl.’ She’s my—”

“She’s not your wife,” Kostya says more gently than I deserve.

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