35. Bronwyn

35

brONWYN

The next day, I went dress shopping with my friends. We found the bridesmaid’s dresses after only four stores: deep green halter-neck gowns with matching heels. They looked amazing on everyone, but I saw Luna nervously playing with the price tag and Jen looked worried, too. “Relax,” I told them. “Radimir has said I can have what I want. And what I want is for you to not have to worry, so it’s on me. Your dresses, the bachelorette party...everything.”

“I gotta meet this guy,” said Sadie.

My wedding gown was harder. There were plenty of dresses that looked great on the store window mannequins, but when I tried them on I felt like an elephant in a tutu. I was giving up hope when Jen led us down a back alley to a tiny place she’d found online. They specialized in designs for curvier brides and as soon as I saw the dress, I knew. I listened politely to all the store clerk’s patter but as soon as she’d finished, I pointed to it. “Can I try that one, please?”

It was a long, cream dress with delicate silver details, and when I tried it on it was perfect . It hugged me just right and the long, slender skirt seemed to add about three inches to my height. There was a train that flowed down my back like a silky waterfall and trailed behind me for a full eight feet. I looked at myself in the mirror and suddenly, it all welled up inside me. I’m getting married. I didn’t normally get emotional, especially over a dress, but?—

I burst out of the changing room and looked at my friends. Luna, Sadie and Jen clapped their hands to their mouths.

“It’s—” I managed

Luna nodded wildly. Sadie flapped her hand in front of her face to cool her eyes. Jen grinned. “It is! It totally is!”

For the first time, I thought about checking the price. My stomach suddenly dropped. Okay, it was beautiful, but I could literally buy a car for that.

Jen saw my face. “He did say anything you wanted,” she said gently.

I thought of how serious Radimir had been, the morning after I’d patched him up. He really did want to make me happy. “Okay,” I managed. “Okay, yes.” I dug out the credit card he’d given me, took a deep breath...and handed it over.

“ Now,” said Sadie, “I really have to meet this guy.”

I smiled sadly and looked away. Radimir never willingly interacted with civilians and if they did meet him, they’d be shocked at how cold he was. But on a whim, I called him.

He picked up immediately. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. Um. Are you free right now? For coffee?”

There was a stunned silence, and I imagined him staring at the phone, bemused. He never took breaks, even though he worked twelve-hour days. “ I have a lot of work to do,” he said at last.

I nodded. “I guessed you would. It’s fine, I’ll see you later.”

“Bronwyn, wait. Why was it you wanted to meet?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Luna, Sadie and Jen. “I wanted you to meet my friends.” It sounded dumb, now. “I’m marrying you and they’ve never even met you.”

I heard him stand up. Then there was a rustle of fabric, and I knew he’d just tugged his waistcoat straight. “Where are you?”

I told him the address.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“But you have work!”

“I also have a fiancée, and this is important to you.”

He ended the call. I stared at my phone, biting my lip as a warm bomb went off in my chest.

Ten minutes later, Radimir pulled up in his Mercedes and whisked us all off to a nearby coffee shop. Luna, Sadie and Jen bombarded him with questions and...he was nice. Pleasant and patient and as close to warm as I’d seen him. He even managed to not wince too much when Jen patted his arm right where the knife wound was. He was trying. Or...maybe even changing?

My friends loved him. As they were getting ready to go, Jen pulled me aside. “This is still super-fast,” she said doubtfully. “But...he is kinda great.”

I could hear the hurt in her voice: she still thought I’d been having a secret romance with Radimir for weeks and keeping it from her. And I couldn’t tell her the truth, or she’d try to save me. “He is,” I agreed.

“And he’s obviously crazy about you,” said Jen.

My heart started racing. I tried to sound casual. “Crazy about me?”

She smirked. “He can barely drag his eyes from you. And when he talks about you, his voice changes. It’s adorable.”

He’s acting. That’s what it was. It had to be. I looked over at Radimir. He wasn’t capable of falling for someone. Right?

Radimir insisted on driving my friends back home, so they didn’t have to get cabs. “It’s good that you have friends,” he said as the last one of them waved goodbye.

“What about you?” I asked.

His jaw tightened. “People like me don’t have friends. Civilians don’t understand my world. And the people in my world all want to stab me in the back. All that’s left is family.” He put the car into gear, and we accelerated away.

“Isn’t there anybody?” I asked.

He shook his head. Then, half a block later, he stuck out his lower lip and reluctantly shrugged. “There was one man, once…” He glanced across at me and sighed. “I wasn’t always a Pakhan: a boss. When I first came to America, I…” He looked around the car, scowling. “I did what Valentin does now.”

He used to be a hitman! That explained how he’d killed Borislav so easily, how he’d dealt with the two men who attacked me in the bookstore. But he hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. I realized I was going to have to get used to that: watching what I said in case the car was bugged. “Go on.”

“My brothers and I were in New York, back then. I worked for a man called Luka Malakov. This man was Luka’s best... problem solver. The best in the whole city. He taught me and we became...close.” He scowled at the rear-view mirror, not meeting my eyes. “We lost touch when I moved to Chicago.”

“You could get back in touch,” I said gently.

He shook his head. “It was a long time ago.

There was clearly more to it than he was saying, but with Radimir I always knew when a subject was closed. A lot of his past seemed to be off limits. I still didn’t know what happened to his parents, or why he and his brothers had come to America. Was he ever going to let me in?

We fell into silence, and I watched him as he drove, the setting sun painting gold highlights along the hard lines of his jaw and cheekbones. God, he was gorgeous. And my gut instinct had been right, back when I first met him. Under all that coldness, he was completely alone…

The feelings had been building for weeks but I’d been fighting, denying, pushing them back behind a dam. Suddenly, as I stared at his profile, that dam began to creak and buckle.

He’s alone and he shouldn’t be. There’s a side to him no one else sees, a side that’s good.

The dam started to spring leaks, faster than I could patch it. The feelings began to blast their way through, a firehose that threatened to knock me right off my feet.

He doesn’t deserve to be alone. And he doesn’t have to be because… Because…

The feelings surged and the dam disintegrated.

Because I’ve fallen for him.

I sat there motionless, barely breathing, my mind spinning. Then I slumped back in my seat, turning it over in my mind.

I’d fallen for him. But that didn’t change what he was. I still hated the world he lived in, the senseless violence of the gangs. I couldn’t just ignore that. So, for there to be any chance of us working, I had to understand it. Accept it.

“Radimir,” I said, my voice a little shaky. “Could you tell me about...what you do?”

He glanced at me and his jaw hardened. “You don’t need to know.” Protecting me, as always.

I shook my head and put my hand on his. “I do need to know,” I told him. “I need to understand. I need you to tell me why you do what you do. ”

He stopped the car at a stoplight and turned to me, frowning. He must have seen something in my eyes because he suddenly inhaled, and his face lit up with hope before he managed to control it.

The light changed and he threw the car into a U-turn. “I can’t tell you,” He said, his voice tight with emotion. “But I can show you.”

I thought he’d take me to see the buildings he’d constructed, or the flashy casinos he ran. But he drove me to one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, instead. He offered me his hand, and we started walking down the street, our shoes crunching in the snow.

The first few people to see him shied away and I felt my heart sink. Everyone’s scared of him. But then the owner of a convenience store hurried out to speak to him. “Mr. Aristov! I wanted to thank you. I would have lost my whole business.” As I listened, I pieced together that the city had wanted to close him down over a planning dispute, and Radimir had smoothed things over. Then an old Korean lady stopped to shake his hand. Her son had been beaten up by a couple of cops, and the police department had looked the other way. Radimir had made sure the cops knew never, ever, to do something like that again. It went on and on, as we wandered down the street. Requests for him to use his contacts with the city to get the potholes fixed. Pleas for loans to start businesses, from people who’d been turned down by the banks.

I started to notice something. The neighborhood was poor, but it looked different to others I’d seen. It took me a while to figure out why, because I had to realize what there wasn’t . There wasn’t any graffiti. There wasn’t anyone selling drugs. It felt weirdly... safe .

I realized not everyone was scared of Radimir. To the poor people, he was a lifeline. He actually listened to their problems and made sure things happened. And he understood what was going on here far better than the people in City Hall who never left their air-conditioned offices.

Radimir pointed at two of his skyscrapers downtown. “All of that starts here. This is where my brothers and I started, in this neighborhood. And we’re still here. We still run it.”

Then Radimir led me down a side street. We walked for a block, crossed an intersection, and suddenly the neighborhood changed. It was still the same kind of housing, but I could feel an edgy desperation in the air. People didn’t make eye contact. Stores were boarded up, there were snow-covered mounds of trash between the houses and there was what looked like a crack house on the corner.

“This is what happens,” Radimir told me, “when no one is in charge.”

And for the first time, I understood. He wasn’t claiming the Bratva were good. But they were better than the alternative, because the alternative was chaos.

“It isn’t just on the street,” he explained. And he told me about corruption in City Hall, fraud in the big construction companies and the police and judges who’d take bribes from anyone. “Someone has to guide things, to make sure the little people don’t get crushed.”

A freezing wind gusted down the street, whipping up snow and trash into a dirty blizzard. I shivered and Radimir opened his overcoat, pulled me against him and wrapped me up. I could feel his heartbeat against my back, smell the dark citrus scent of him. He whispered, his words hot in my ear. “You wanted to know why I kill. I kill to stay in charge, so that things don’t fall apart. I kill last of all, after deals and bribes and blackmail and favors have all failed. But I do kill. And I will keep killing, when I have to. To stop it all spinning out of control. To protect my family. And to protect you.”

I could feel something shifting inside me, a sort of rebalancing. It wasn’t that Radimir was better than I’d thought. It was that the world was much, much worse. I’d been sheltered from it, growing up as a civilian but now, seeing what Radimir did in context, I was starting to understand.

I looked up at him, torn. Understanding wasn’t the same as accepting. And even if I could accept it...then what? My stomach lurched. In less than a week, we’d be getting married. And even though I’d finally admitted to myself that I’d fallen for him...I still had no idea if he had real feelings for me.