2. Mikhail

"I'd ask where you've been all afternoon, but the smell tells me all I need to know."

I flip my brother off and grab my water bottle from the counter. "I only came back for this."

I would've stayed in the gym until I knew everyone in the house was asleep, but I finished the last of the water bottles in the gym fridge a few hours ago. I've sweat so much that I'll turn to leather if I don't rehydrate.

"You've been in the gym for" —Anatoly checks the clock above the stove. "—six hours today. Feels like enough, wouldn't you say, Raoul?"

Raoul shrugs, ducking his head behind the refrigerator door he has open. "It's a lot."

It is a lot. I can tell because my limbs are shaking and my muscles burn with every step. But the fact I'm still standing means I haven't gone hard enough.

"You're just jealous because you wish you were back in the gym, Nat."

My brother narrows his eyes at me. "I think my surgeon would rather I not undo all of his nice stitch work on my chest."

The fact Anatoly is home from the hospital less than a week after being shot in the chest is amazing to me. It's one of the few good things to come from the last week.

"Well, I wasn't shot in the chest," I point out. "So I'm going to head back and?—"

"Maybe not literally," Anatoly interrupts. "But that doesn't mean you're not in recovery, too."

I grimace. "That was some second-tier, discount bin psychoanalyzing, Anatoly."

He ignores me and cruises ahead anyway. "I was shot in the chest, but it's not the physical shit that's messing with me. It's the mental stuff. What I saw. What I lost." He swallows, and I know he's thinking of Stella. We've all been thinking of her. She was part of the family and we loved her. No one as much as Anatoly.

"I'm sorry about Stella, man. You know I am. But she was your girlfriend, not mine."

"I'm not talking about Stella," Anatoly interrupts. He hits me with a long, knowing look.

I meet his eyes, refusing to look away. I can't let him think for even a single second that I'm running from the dark tornado of guilt and doubt and regret that has been swirling around my head for days.

"What I'm talking about," Anatoly clarifies, "is that it's okay to be fucked up over what happened. We all lost people we cared about, and another marathon session with your punching bag isn't going to make that better."

You never know if you don't try.

"I did what I had to do for the Bratva and I have no regrets. Now, if you'll excuse me?—"

"Dante was a mess all afternoon," Anatoly adds before I can turn away. "He threw a fit for his tutor, refused to eat lunch, and shredded every stuffed animal in his bedroom."

Fuck, what I wouldn't give to be able to ignore him and walk away. But Anatoly knows what he's doing.

It's Dante. I can't walk away from my son.

"Has anyone talked to him?" I sigh.

"We've tried." Anatoly gestures to himself and Raoul. "He doesn't want to talk to us. He wants to talk to?—"

"Well, he can't!" I drag my hands through my hair and drop down into one of the stools at the counter. "I told him that she left. I was honest and told him she wasn't coming back. What the fuck does he want from me?"

I know I'm not being reasonable. Dante is five years old. He has spent every day of his life with his mother and now, without warning, she's gone.

"Well, for starters," Anatoly says, clapping his hand on my shoulder, "you could stop getting drunk by yourself and boxing all night and try spending some time with him. I'm sure he'd rather have one parent than zero."

The problem is, without the boxing and the drinking, I'm no good to anyone. I wake up every day with a tension in my body I can't get rid of. It's a buzzing awareness under my skin that something is wrong and I need to fix it. And the only way to get rid of it is to dull the sharp edge with alcohol and then physically burn the rest of the energy away.

I can't sit in the mansion with Dante and do puzzles or go for walks. I can't be around him because seeing his face reminds me of her.

My hand tightens around my water bottle until my knuckles turn white. When I look up, Anatoly is looking at it like he's waiting for the bottle to implode.

I force myself to release my grip and stand up. "Bring Dante to the gym. If he wants to talk, we can talk there."

"Sure," Anatoly mumbles as I leave. "That's healthy. I'm not worried about this at all."

I ignore him and shove through the patio doors.

I'm deep in another set when I finally hear the door to the gym open fifteen minutes later.

"Go on," Anatoly encourages. "I'll be out here if you need me."

Dante walks across the padded floor towards me. He looks smaller than I've ever seen him. Like the last few days have physically worn him down.

He stops a few yards away and watches me from the sidelines. I could pause and talk to him, but I don't even know what I'm going to say. Which is exactly why I've been alone in the gym for days on end.

When my knuckles connect with the bag, it's like a circuit finally being completed. The energy in my veins has somewhere to go.

Maybe it can help Dante, too.

I drop my arms and turn towards him. "Hey, Dante. I thought?—"

"Where is my mom?" he asks.

It's a blow I'm not expecting. I swallow down the bile in my throat. "She's gone."

"When is she coming back?"

"She isn't."

He frowns. "What did you do to her?"

We've been through all of this before—several times, actually. That doesn't make it any easier to handle now.

"Nothing," I growl. "I didn't do anything. It's why I'm here and she isn't. She is the one who?—"

Who what? How am I supposed to explain any of this shit to Dante in a way that makes any sense?

I saved your mom from my violent big brother, got her pregnant, and now, I have to take care of you on my own because she killed Trofim the way I probably should have six years ago.

"Tangled web" doesn't even begin to cover it.

"Have you boxed before?" I ask instead of finishing my sentence. I reach out to steady the bag in front of me.

Dante frowns, still as suspicious of me as he probably should be. Between me and Viviana, Dante comes by his distrust of authority naturally.

"That's not a box."

I bite back my first smile in days. "No, it's not. I don't know why they call it boxing, actually. But what I do know is that it's fun. Er—it makes me feel better, anyway."

He crosses his arms and I see so much of Viviana in him.

Bringing him here was a mistake.The gym is the only room in the house she's never been to. The only place that doesn't smell like her and isn't dripping with memories of the weeks we spent living together.

But I'll always see her in Dante. No matter how much I wish I didn't.

I blow out a breath and grab the roll of tape from the mat. "Come here. I'll wrap your hands."

Dante's curiosity wins and he inches over to me, a frown on his face.

Ever since I met him, he's been a bright, bubbly kid. He loves everyone and is excited about life. Or, he was.

The last few days, he's shifted into something I'm more familiar with. When I look at him, I can see the same rage that swirls inside of me. It's the same storm I've been learning to tame my entire life. Now, it's Dante's turn.

The kid in front of me now isn't as innocent as he was a few weeks ago.

The last thing Viviana made me promise before she left is that I'd let Dante be a little boy for as long as possible. I'm not sure that's a promise I had any business making. Less than a week in, and it's already proving impossible to keep.

"Why are you putting these things on?" he asks, flexing his knuckles through the tape. "I'm not bleeding."

"And we want to keep it that way. Hence the tape." His hands are impossibly small against mine. The tape that just covers my knuckles goes from Dante's fingertips to the middle of his palm. "Maybe one day I'll get you some gloves, but this is all you'll need right now."

"What do I do?"

"Did you see me when you came in?" I ask.

"You were hitting that thing."

I gesture towards the bag. "Do what I was doing. We'll get a baseline for where you're at and then home in on what?—"

Before I can even finish, Dante launches himself at the bag.

He's small, but he flies. He's a blur of movement as he circles the bag, punching and kicking and wailing. It's a heavy bag made for taking what I can throw at it, but Dante actually gets the thing swinging a bit.

"Slow down. You aren't being timed," I tell him.

But he can't hear me. His breath is coming in uneven huffs and he's gasping as he slams his fists into the punching bag again and again. His chest starts to heave and when he circles around the bag the last time, I see why.

"Dante, that's enough." I grab him by the shoulders and pull him back, but he lunges for the bag again. He's really crying now, big, heavy sobs tearing out of him. "Dante, stop."

"Don't touch me!" He flings the words at me like a punch. "You're a liar!"

I frown. "I never lied to you."

"You promised you'd take care of Mama! You told me you would, but she's gone!" He scrapes the tape off of his hands and tosses the scraps to the floor. "She's gone and today is—" His little mouth pinches together until his lips are white.

"What's today?" I ask him.

He swipes clumsily at his damp cheeks. "I'm six now. It's my birthday."

Oh, fucking hell.

"I had no idea, bud."

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they're the wrong thing to say. Everything I do with Dante is wrong. Vivian would know what to do.

"We can still get a cake," I say. "Maybe Stel—someone can go to the store."

Dante flinches. He caught my mistake, too. His mom is gone. Stella is gone. The list of people who were there one day and gone the next is growing longer all the time.

"I don't want cake!" he screams. "I want my mom!"

I reach for him, but he twists away and sprints for the door. As soon as the door swings open, Anatoly is there waiting.

Our eyes meet through the open door. There are questions written on my brother's face that I don't have the words to answer.

I'm not sure I ever will.