Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
All it does is show his true colors to his people.
By the time I get back home, word will have spread all throughout the family.
Oleg’s going soft. Oleg’s slowing down.
Chapter 29
Lev
Ifind my wife in the basement practicing her footwork.
It’s amazing how she’s thrown herself into fencing. She doesn’t even know I’m there, and I try not to distract her as I sit on the steps and watch. Her body’s lean and long, and her feet are extremely quick. Fighting with her is like trying to stab lightning: one second she’s in front of me and the next she’s flowing around my blade and scoring a hit.
She didn’t even want to do this when she first came to live with me. I practically had to drag her down here. And now it’s like she never leaves.
I try to identify the feeling in my chest as she wipes sweat from her brow. It takes a little while, but I realize it’s pride.
I’m proud of my wife.
For obvious reasons: she’s beautiful, funny, intelligent, and talented.
And she’s driven when she wants to be.
“When did you get here?” She looks over her shoulder and fumbles with her drill.
I grin at her, mask fully on, except I wonder now if it’s actually a mask at all. If maybe the fencing mask is the real mask, and this smile I have whenever I’m around her is just how I feel.
I don’t have to fake it.
“A few minutes. You’re getting good, you know that?”
“I’ve always been good.” She gets a drink of water as I walk over and start shrugging on my gear. I have it piled in the corner of the room. Her eyebrows raise. “You’re interested in a fight?”
“Just some light sparring. Nothing serious.”
“You’re not going to tackle me to the floor?”
“Not unless you beg for it first.”
She laughs, cheeks flushed and beautiful, and she takes her position at the far end of the rudimentary piste I painted on the mats for her. “En garde then, big guy.”
We square off and go through the motions. She’s faster and better skilled; I’m stronger and taller with much better reach. You’d think it would cancel out, but no, she wins four out of five, at least.
“I was at my father’s today,” I say as casually as I can. I’m breathing hard and feeling the burn in my thighs. Fuck, I’m not used to all this squatting. I really shouldn’t skip leg day.
“How’d that go?”
“I confronted him about his little intervention. He won’t bother you again.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“It wasn’t all about you.” She swipes at me and I jump back in time. But instead of pressing the fight, I relax and get a drink of water.
She joins me. We sit on the floor together, backs against the wall, passing a big jug of ice water between us. Her shoulder touches mine and she doesn’t flinch away. Her hair’s messy and she’s got a beautiful sheen of sweat on her skin, and it’s taking all my willpower not to reach out and touch her right now.
“You have a complicated relationship with him,” she says softly, looking up at me with those expressive eyes of hers. I swear, she can say more with her eyebrows than she can with her words.
Right now, her face is pure worry.
“I had an older brother named Stepan,” I tell her, even though she already knows this, and it probably sounds like a digression, but it’s important. It’s everything, really. “He was the favorite. Step was my best friend, and he was the heir to the family business. My father basically brought him up to be the next greatest crime lord this city’s ever seen.”
I smile to myself at the memory of those early days. It was absurd, obviously. Step was never going to become more powerful than Valentin Zeitsev. But our dad really did think there was a chance to turn his oldest son into something special.
“I know he died recently,” Carmie says, leaning closer to me. She’s warm and soft, and feeling her touch me like that makes me want to open up even more.
“Dad thought Step was going to be great. And he was right. Step was smart and strong. If he hadn’t gotten killed in some freak firefight, Step would be running this family by now, and he’d be a force. But back then, Dad put all his time into teaching Step everything, and usually I was a part of those lessons.”
Carmie tilts her head to see me better. “Why does that sound so ominous?”
“My father was never a normal man. He had a theory about how best to teach a person. He felt that young boys needed proper motivation, and you’d think that would mean praise or glory, or maybe even prizes or money, but that’s not what our father did. No, he used me as Step’s motivation.