I couldn’t say what brought that particular memory to mind, but it wasn’t surprising that my mind was boiling with every moment that I could recall of a seven-year-old boy’s life. It was just too bad for the guy whose throat was under my shoe that the flash of guilt storming through my brain happened right then. It certainly didn’t put me in a very happy or forgiving frame of mind. It was a piece-of-shit world that took what should’ve been sweet nostalgia and turned it into nothing more than bitter regret. I had a feeling a small portion of that regret was about to be passed on.
Leaning a fraction harder, I let gravity take my weight until the distressed squawking died out beneath me. “Dipping into the till, Vasily.” I shook my head, bored. “You think I have nothing better to do than kick your preklag?”
Normally this wasn’t my job, punishing the stupid. I was a bodyguard, not random muscle, and I wasn’t too wild about this new detour in my career path. No matter how temporary, this was not what I wanted to do. Maybe none of it was. What had once seemed as inevitable as the tide now seemed nothing short of criminal insanity. Everyone was born with a soul; when had I decided to throw mine away?
It didn’t matter because I knew exactly when I was getting it back—two more days. Two more days and I wouldn’t be the person I had been, but I would be better than I was now. It wasn’t saying much, I realized with a dark twist of my lips, but it was better than nothing. I’d lived ten years with the nothing, and I had few illusions there was worse than that.
“How much did you take, sika?” The demand was harsh, the voice itself cut glass and shattered ice. It was my father’s voice, clearly . . . unmistakably. And yet it managed to find its way from my mouth with a natural ease.
“Perhaps our dear friend Vasily would be more forthcoming with a crushed testicle.” Konstantin crossed his legs, tugging carefully at the crease of his elegant slacks. “Or two.” He was balanced on a barstool with the grace of a much younger man. With one arm resting along the polished wood and glass counter, he tapped his index finger imperiously against its surface. “Black tea, sugar and milk.” Our beloved leader had a trace of a sweet tooth and preferred his tea milky and as cloying as honey in contrast to the strong Cuban coffee he favored. With shaking hands, the guy behind the bar scrambled to obey.
The restaurant belonged to the man on the floor, Vasily Bormiroff, who was soon to be a eunuch if Gurov had his way. Correction—the restaurant belonged to Vasily in name only. In reality, the Samovar, as with so many other businesses, existed to launder money for the organization. When some of that money went missing, it was taken personally. Poor doomed Bormiroff; he must have thought himself pretty damn clever, taking only a little here and a little there. He wasn’t clever; he was a moron. Even a wayward penny would have snagged Konstantin’s eye. Vasily was nothing but a hen in a fox house and a hen that was well and truly caught.
It was my bad luck that I was snared just as thoroughly with him. Not by virtue of the money, no. Thou shalt not steal was an easy commandment to obey when the Lord’s wrath was so much more immediate. I preferred my balls unsmited; too bad it hadn’t been so simple a decision for Vasily. And because it had not, I was very likely going to have to do something I would regret. Removing my foot from his neck to place it on his crotch, I thought Vasily might accept the regret happily if he could trade places with me. His mouth hung open as he gasped wetly for breath. Just as moist, his eyes were the apprehensive velvet brown of a dog caught pissing on the carpet.
Yeah, a bad, bad boy, but he wasn’t escaping this with a swat on the muzzle. “The money,” I prompted, applying pressure. Up until then Vasily had been playing dumb, an act at which he excelled with true Oscar quality. As his opportunities for children began to dissipate beneath my heel, he abruptly decided owning up to it and taking his medicine was the best way to go. Once he began to talk, he couldn’t spill the location of his ill-gotten gains fast enough.
“Please . . . please, Mr. Gurov. Please. Sorry, so sorry. Never happen again, swear. I swear.” Still pinned to the floor, Bormiroff babbled on in that vein for some time as Konstantin drank his tea, undisturbed by the pleas or tears. Seeing a grown man cry from pure terror wasn’t enough to spoil a good cuppa. It might even add to the pleasure, if I correctly read the glitter behind the older man’s wire rim glasses.
“Yes, Vasily, my friend, I believe you. It truly shall never happen again.” Carefully patting his lips with a linen napkin, Konstantin stood and removed his glasses to tuck them away beneath his suit jacket. “Who knew you possessed a knowledge of the future to such an astounding degree?”
It was coming. It was coming and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing I could do about it. I felt my mouth go dry and my ears ring lightly as the air in the room went dead. But as stagnant as the atmosphere was, it still carried Gurov’s next words with uncanny clarity. Simple and innocuous, a casual bystander wouldn’t have guessed them for the death sentence they were.