He walked to the desk and picked up the folder. My uncle pushed it into my limp hands, and I struggled to take it, flipping through the fat documents.
He put his hands behind mine and helped me hold it open, navigate to the right spot. “There. She was out Christmas shopping, you know. We could still see the crushed bags next to her body and her lost white heel when your father and I rolled up.”
Every breath I took became more like broken glass as he bypassed the police reports and got into the section with the pictures. Downtown Chicago's bright lights filled my eyes from all those years ago. Yellow police tape lined the zone where my mother died on the pavement.
I never saw her face. If there was a photo somewhere, then maybe Uncle Gioulio took it out when I wasn't looking to spare me. Seeing her small, soft body thrown on the dirty ground was enough. Both her shoes were knocked off, and the matching white coat she'd been wearing had black stripes going across it, like the bastard made a conscious decision to drive right over her after the fatal strike.
“These are surveillance photos from nearby businesses,” he said, flipping through to some grainier black and white pictures. “When our contacts in the police brought them over, we couldn't believe it. Gio wanted to march out and kill every last one of those fucks. I wouldn't let him. It would've been suicide. The entire fucking incident was a sneak attack. We had a fucking truce with the Ivankovs when they struck. Same truce I warned him years before not to roll with because I knew it'd bite us in the ass, cause us to let our guard down.
“No, shit was never perfect. War was gonna come between our families sooner or later because we were running up against each other's business. But Christ, even in the old days, you never fucked with a man's family. Here's the piece of shit who ran your mama down, Brina. Take a good look.”
He stabbed a slightly blurry photo of a car racing down the street. Two men sat in the front, but the one behind the wheel had the unmistakable, determined, icy blue eyes of an Ivankov. He was too old to be Anton or any of his brothers.
Seeing those features, wide and full of hate, were just as bad as if it was Anton himself. I ripped the file out of my uncle's hands and held it to my face, forcing my eyes open, letting seething tears fall down the sides of the old documents.
“That's Boris Vassarinivich Ivankov. First generation, first real thug here after the Soviet Union collapsed. Former head of their family. Every branch of the Russian mafia's infamous for letting their commanders fire the first shot when they go to war. Well, this boy did, and he decided to go after the most vulnerable, innocent target he could. He struck down poor Allison. The medical report at the back says she was dead before she hit the concrete, but I know the bastard ran her over twice just to be sure. He wasn't fucking around. He was gunning for her.”
His hand slid down my shoulder, smoothing my back, just the way good old Uncle Gioulio used to do. I'd never forgive him for putting down my father, but I didn't turn his comfort away.
He held me when I dropped the file, rocked me until I stopped shaking.
I was drowning right there in his arms, suffocating in the invisible quicksand pulling me into its fierce undertow. I wanted to die. But first, I wanted to make sure the assholes who'd truly stabbed me in the back found their way to hell first.
My whole body felt dirty. To think I'd relished fucking an Ivankov man with such lust, such insatiable need...
I turned my head up to the ceiling as far as I could, anything to stop the vertigo, one wrong breath away from forcing me to throw up.
“You've seen enough. The rest is all history, as they say, my niece.” His voice was soft and understanding. “Don't cry. We all spent months grieving her. That's behind us. Your old man couldn't ever put it behind him. He started killing himself recklessly, surely, pushing that shit into his veins every second he was awake.”
“Then why? What's the point of all this? You just want to turn me back to you.”
He blinked, looking strangely hurt. My uncle slipped away, rounded the desk, and plopped back down in front of me. “I want you to work for this family, Brina. Not me. I know I've lost your love doing what I had to do to my poor brother. Fucking kills me to this day. But I'd do it all over again if he was about to fuck you over in a junkie rage or drive you off a bridge some cold night.”
“And how do I do that? I already helped the Ivankovs without even knowing it until you showed me what was really going on. They used me.”
There. I said it.
I wanted to say he used me. I should've known the fucked up whirlwind romance was too good to be true, built on Stockholm Syndrome from the very beginning. Like a good little slave, I'd trusted him, worked for him.