The Jersey Vignettes (7 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“So perfect,” Koldan said, holding Sasha Viviana high in the air. The baby girl giggled down at her father, her little legs kicking in her footie pajamas. “And so pretty, my
dushka
. Giving your daddy heart attacks already, just thinking about beating the boys off.”

Ana laughed from the couch. “You’ve got years before you have to worry about any of that.”

Koldan eyed Ana from the side as he balanced Sasha on his hip. “That’s not the way a father’s mind works, Ana. We panic about it for years leading up to it.”

“Hmm.”

“What?” her husband asked.

“I wonder if that’s how Anton felt for me.”

Koldan shrugged. “I don’t doubt it. Maybe I get why he hated me just … stealing you away like I did.”

“You didn’t steal me away,” Ana said, scoffing.

“I kind of did.”

Ana chose not to push her husband on the topic.

Koldan went back to giving little Sasha all of his attention. He was bound and determined to spoil that girl right rotten. Sasha didn’t seem to mind. At only six-months-old, she was a daddy’s girl through and through. Just getting Koldan in her line of sights, sent Sasha into a smiling fit of a creature. If Koldan didn’t immediately pick her up, Sasha would scream loud enough to break the windows.

Sasha could do without Ana so long as Koldan was around. Their daughter was absolutely gorgeous. Big, wide blue eyes. Dark hair like Ana’s with the ringlet curls to match. Her skin was creamy peach with a pretty pink tone around her cheeks. She had her mother’s features and her father’s color.

No doubt, the girl was going to be beautiful.

She already was.

Already, Sasha was trying to crawl, she’d spoken her first word—Papa, of course—and she had a little attitude that topped it all off. And Koldan didn’t mind indulging that attitude every single chance he got, too.

Ana was maybe … finally … beginning to understand what her mother talked about for all those years when it came to Ana and her own father.

“You’re spoiling her,” Ana said.

Koldan grinned, tossing his daughter high again. “She’s my pretty little princess, Ana.”

Ana sighed.

“Of course, I’m going to spoil her,” Koldan added. “No one, besides her mother, is as perfect as her. Leave me be, Ana. Let me spoil her.”

“Fine,” Ana whispered, still smiling.

“No more, though,” Koldan said, giving Ana a look from the side.

“Huh?”

“Children. I think we’ve filled the house more than enough, don’t you?”

Ana shrugged. “You didn’t know it, but three was my limit, Koldan.”

Koldan chuckled. “Mine, too. But after this little one ...”

“She’s perfect,” Ana murmured.

“She is.”

Ana listened for any noise coming from her sons’ rooms upstairs. It was silent. She’d laid them down an hour before, but sometimes Adrik and Daniil would sneak out of their respective rooms and play in the hallway for an hour before Koldan had to go up and put them down for bed again.

“Boys are quiet,” Ana noted.

Koldan smiled. “They are. I wonder what hell they got into that we didn’t hear.”

Koldan’s statement was probably truer than either of them wanted to admit. Ana was still struggling in some ways to see her sons as the little Bratva princes that everyone else called them. They followed their father around constantly. Koldan didn’t hide things from them. Lessons about family and loyalty and honor had become commonplace and Ana knew when Koldan talked about those things, it was more than just their family.

It was the Bratva family, too.

But she loved her boys. She loved them entirely, so she let them be. They would grow up to be whatever they wanted to be, and she could love them just the same as she did now.

“By the way,” Koldan said, grinning as he avoided Sasha’s bubbly, spit kisses.

“What’s that?” Ana asked.

“I’m going to have your bulls sticking a little closer than normal, all right? They’ll be visible, but they won’t approach you unless something comes up and they need to.”

“Why?”

Koldan shifted on his feet and sat Sasha to the carpeted floor. Instantly, the girl made grabby motions to her father to be picked back up again, but Koldan turned to Ana.

“What’s going on, Koldan?” Ana asked.

“We just had a run in with a rival gang a couple of weeks ago. It’s nothing too bad, but a couple of the crews retaliated. I just want to be safe, Ana, that’s all.”

Ana frowned. Koldan had taken his father’s spot over the last couple of months. The transition had been easy for Koldan’s men, as far as Ana understood, but it seemed like the issues outside of the Bratva piled on higher at the worst possible time.

“What about the boys? School and pre-school, Koldan.”

“They have bulls that watch them, Ana.”

“I know that, but they’re not inside the schools, Koldan.”

Koldan conceded to her point. “They’re as close as they can be without breaking trespassing laws. The boys are in private, well-guarded schools. I’m more concerned about you. From now on, you need to be sure your bulls know where you’re going every single time you make a step.”

“Fine,” Ana said quietly.

“I know you don’t like this.”

Ana smiled sadly. “I like that you take care of us.”

Koldan chuckled deeply. “That I do.”

“I’ll take Sasha up to bed. Meet me in the bedroom in five?” Ana asked, winking.

“Absolutely.”

Ana had just rounded the top of the stairs as the sound of glass breaking stopped her in her tracks. Fear crawled up her spine and lodged in her throat when she heard Koldan shout. Another loud bang followed, like someone was thrown against wood.

Or like someone had hit their front door.

Ana turned with her six-month-old baby girl in just enough time to see Koldan hit the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t take his eyes off Ana’s frozen form for a second.

“Safe room,” he shouted.

Ana blinked, holding a crying Sasha tighter.

“Go, Ana!”

Koldan’s hand hit Ana’s back hard, lurching her forward. Rapid pops, one after the other, sounded downstairs. Her heart pounded out of control, threatening to leap right out of her chest. She hit the hallway running with Koldan right on her heels. Ana yanked open the doorway to Daniil’s room just as Koldan turned the doorknob on Adrik’s.

“Ma?” Ana heard little Daniil cry.

The noise downstairs got louder.

“Come here, baby,” Ana whispered, trying to keep calm for her son.

What was happening downstairs?

Who would do that?

Ana grabbed Daniil’s little hand in hers, trying to pretend like her own wasn’t shaking. Koldan had a sleepy, confused Adrik in his arms as he jerked his head toward the back of the hallway. Ana followed his lead. Quickly, Ana found herself inside a room in their house she had never needed to use. It was a small, eight by six box surrounded by ten inch thick steel. It had an air ventilation system and food stocked. It also had two little cots. Once closed completely, the door couldn’t be reopened from the outside. A monitor was set up for the people inside the safe room so they could hear what was going on outside, and there were several camera shots showing the house on three separate screens.

Koldan sat Adrik to the floor and turned, hitting the red button on the wall.

Ana watched in silence and terror as the door to the room began to close and her husband didn’t come inside. She held onto Sasha as the baby girl cried for her father. She didn’t let go of little Daniil’s hand when he reached out for Koldan, asking for him to stay.

“Koldan,” Ana whispered.

Koldan touched two fingers to his lips and then turned away.

Chapter Eighteen

Ana stayed still and quiet behind the steering wheel of her Benz as her mother helped Daniil and Adrik out of the backseat. Viviana unbuckled little Sasha from her car seat and cooed at the child.

“Ana?” Viviana asked softly.

“Yeah, Ma?”

“I’ll take the kids in and get them something to eat. Sound good?”

“Sure. Thanks, Ma.”

Ana said nothing when her father slid into the passenger seat. Anton waited until Viviana and the kids were inside the house before he turned to his daughter.

“Talk to me,
dushka
,” Anton said.

Ana shuddered, her fingers clenching tight around the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. “I just … had to leave. I can’t even go inside my house because of the fucking cops. My kids were in that house. I
can’t
…”

“You’re okay,” Anton said gently. “The boys and Sasha are fine. Koldan did well, Ana. He made sure you were protected and safe. What more could he have done?”

“Not brought it into my home at all!” Ana shouted.

Anton flinched. “Oh, my
dushka
… you just don’t get it. Do you honestly believe that man wanted a bunch of gang members to storm your house and shoot it up? Do you truly think he would put you and his children in that position, Ana?”

“It happened,” Ana argued. “If it wasn’t for the goddamn men he had watching the house—”

“Ana, stop it.”

Ana sucked in a deep breath, choking on a sob. “That was too real.”

Anton frowned. “Ana, this life is not a game.”

“I know that!”

“Then you know that Koldan did his best. He did everything he should have. And you cannot run away from your marriage and your choices every time something happens that you don’t like,
dushka
. How is that love, Ana? How is that showing him that you understand and that you forgive his mistakes and accept him for who he is?”

Ana cringed. “I didn’t run away.”

“You did or you wouldn’t be in Little Odessa right now,” Anton argued.

“Stop it,” Ana whispered, willing the tears away.

She couldn’t stop the damned things. They were like a constant flood of her emotions and hurt streaking down her face. How she made the two and a half hour drive from Jersey to Brooklyn without crashing, Ana wasn’t sure.

“I just need a couple of days,” Ana said, hoping her heart would calm. “Just to think and get away from that so I can go back and not be angry with him.”

Anton nodded. “Okay.”

“Please don’t be angry with me, Daddy.”

“For what?” Anton asked. “Why on earth would I ever be angry with you, my
dushka
?”

“Because I’m not like Ma, and I can’t always be okay.”

Viviana Avdonin was the strongest woman Ana knew. Her mother had seen and experienced more things because of the mafia than some of the men who worked for Ana’s father. Viviana rarely seemed to blink a lash at any of it. Ana tried to be that kind of person, the Bratva wife, unaffected.

But she couldn’t always do that.

She’d failed.

People, angry with her husband, had come into their house and could have killed Ana and her children. How was she supposed to turn her cheek to that?

“Oh, Ana,” Anton said, sighing heavily. “I’m not mad at you. You’re not your mother. You don’t have to be.”

“Don’t I?” Ana asked.

She was the wife of a Bratva boss, after all.

“No, because you’re just perfect for him. Nobody else matters.”

• • •

Ana stepped out of the car, hugging her middle as she glanced up at the man sitting on the front steps of the large home. Koldan rested his arms over his knees and watched her like he was waiting for her to bolt.

Ana’s heart broke.

Maybe her father had been right.

Maybe she had run.

Ana let the boys out of their car and booster seat from the back of the Benz. Adrik and Daniil wasted no time getting out and running across the large driveway to their father’s waiting arms. Koldan laughed as the boys climbed into his lap. Ana smiled as her husband kissed her boys’ heads and hugged them tight.

The police tape was gone.

The broken windows were fixed.

The glass that had sprinkled the driveway and Koldan’s shot up car had been removed.

It was like the ambush and attack hadn’t even happened.

Not physically, anyway.

Ana could still feel the aftereffects lingering, especially in her heart.

She grabbed Sasha’s car seat from the backseat, balanced the seat on her hip and crossed the driveway. Koldan stood to greet his wife, sadness playing in his gaze even though he smiled.

“
Krasivyy
,” Koldan murmured. “The house doesn’t feel right when the boys aren’t tearing it apart.”

Ana smiled. It was honest and true. She’d missed him over the last two weeks. Her unexpected trip to Brooklyn kept her there longer than she first meant to stay. “Oh?”

“No.” Koldan took the car seat from Ana and set it to the step. Bending down, he played with little Sasha’s kicking feet. “Hello my princess. Papa missed you, baby girl.”

Sasha cooed. “Pa, pa, pa.”

Adrik and Daniil had already made their way into the house like nothing was amiss. They weren’t frightened or worried. Ana wished she could say the same.

Standing straight, Koldan held out a hand for Ana. She took it without question. “And I missed you, Ana.”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” Koldan said. “So much.”

“I’m sorry I took off.”

Koldan shrugged. “I’m sorry you felt like you had to.”

Ana let him tug her into his chest. She let herself be suffocated by that feeling of his warmth and love. It was a constant in their life. No matter what happened, that was always there. Koldan’s lips brushed over Ana’s cheekbone, seeking her mouth. She took his kiss, needing it.

Their life certainly wasn’t perfect. Ana wasn’t perfect.

“We’re okay,” Ana whispered.

Koldan nodded and held her tighter. “As long as you’re here, everything is beautiful.”

Because she was his.

“Always.”