Page 9 of Vasily the Hammer

“It’s a ram.”

I look at it again. “Oh, it’s an Aries symbol. Like the ram.”

“Da.The ram. Baranov is the ram.”

When Sasha first spoke to me, it was in another language. I didn’t understand it, but Vasily is not an American name either. And my own name, Ana, spoken with anahsound, that’s not necessarily an American name either. Not typically, I don’t think. And even though my husband speaks English and doesn’t sound any different from Sasha or anyone else at that place, he just saiddainstead ofyes.“Are you Russian?”

“Da,”he says again, only to correct to, “Yes,” but I liked how it sounded the first time better.

“Am I Russian?”

He chuckles at that, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh. I like it. I get this feeling I haven’t heard it a lot, or maybe just not recently, but I like it. Then he lifts our enmeshed hands and brushes his soft lips against the back of my fingers. “No. You are American. Italian, but American-born. You should sleep, Ana. It’s been a long day.”

He’s right. And I do. I close my eyes and fall right to sleep, lulled by the engines and the vibrations of the hull. We’re still in the air when I wake up, though, and Vasily and Kostya are having a conversation in Russian, not a single word familiar to my ears, except I swear I hear my name repeatedly. I keep my eyes closed, not wanting to interrupt them or make Vasily think he needs to stop talking or switch to English to cater to me. I listen to the cadence of their voices, wondering if the anger I hear is true or if it’s the tone of their native tongue.

No, they’re definitely arguing— about me.

Kostya doesn’t like me. He’s probably saying that Vasily should have left me to rot in Consummate’s headquarters. But I’m Vasily’s wife. Yes, Vasily has been colder to me than I’d hoped for, particularly now of all times, but he’s my husband. He married me. He loves me enough to have pledged his life to me.

I curl closer to Vasily, slinging my arm across his lap and nuzzling against his chest, breathing in something sweet like berries but also hinting at mossy firewood. It’s an intriguing scent, definitely one I enjoy, and that must be a good sign, right?

He squirms under my touch and nudges me away with a careful but firm hand.

Maybe I’m wrong about everything. Because what man would push his wife away? Not just his wife either, but a woman he’s nearly lost forever?

And I just want to cry.

Chapter4

Vasily

I pay my staffenough that when I return to my condo, I don’t return to a disaster.

But everything feels just slightly off.

Kostya did exactly what I asked of him, protesting every step of the way. He doesn’t think it’s right that I’ve decided to keep Ana for a little while. He actually argued with me when I told him to heighten security and keep Benedetti out of the building while Ana is here— I don’t need Benedetti reporting this to Ana’s brother. I don’t need Tony showing up before I’m ready to let him know he needs to be more careful with his things.

She’s not a pawn,Kostya reminded me repeatedly.She’s a human being.

But Kostya was the one who drove the vehicle that brought her to Flagstaff six years ago, after her brother sold her virginity tomy brother and I was the one suckered into taking the actual payment. I was theonlyone who treated her like a human being. And the only reason there’s video footage floating around to this day of me treating her like a pawn is she asked me to film it. Those homemade pornos were supposed to save her.

So why did Sasha and the rest of the boys at Consummate have to save her? What the hell was she doing in Florida to begin with?

Those are questions for another day. Dima was supposed to keep an eye on her. When I let her go to keep her out of the mess I was inheriting on my brother’s deathbed, Dima was supposed to watch her from afar and intervene if an intervention was necessary. All I asked was that she be kept safe.

Dima has failed me.

It’s all he seems to ever do anymore.

But I love him too much to deal with him at this moment.

The lights turn on the moment Ana steps foot inside the apartment, but they’re dim. It feels like we’re stuck in a perpetual night, having left Orlando in the early morning and landed in Los Angeles six hours later but still well before dawn. My nights of partying well into those early morning hours were over long before I ever moved to California; if I’m coming home past midnight, I’m half asleep and want nothing more than a night light barely bright enough to keep me from stubbing my toe on errant furniture.

The handful of days Ana lived with me in my shitty apartment in Flagstaff should have been a drug-fueled blur, at least on my end. I told myself nothing remained of that time except the sick fantasies of a masochist hell-bent on cutting himself on lies of the past. Instead, I’m suddenly struck by a crisp, unshakable memory of stubbing my toe in the haze of a pre-coffee morning, taking out my anger on the poor girl I’d all but kidnapped on a falsely noblequest to show her that the world was more than the nonsense our brothers had forced her into.

I screamed at her for rearranging my furniture, and her bottom lip quivered as she yelled back at me, so desperate to have something to do, some attention given to her, that she risked my rage to tell me that my apartment had crafted a prison cell of her thoughts the day before.

I whisk the memory away as I take note of the fresh flowers that have been added to the sideboard, the coffee table, and the kitchen island. New cookware has been added to the rack hanging above the island, left empty because I rarely cook and stick with a simple pot and frying pan when I do. There’s an array of fresh fruit in the bowl that usually just has a handful of oranges, and I trust that whomever filled the bowl had Ana’s allergy list.

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