The Beauty Who Loved Him by Bethany-Kris

14.

“Kiril is joining thegirls for lunch,” Igor informed, his voice hushed close behind Vaslav. His head of security had remained standing behind his chair in the private balcony for the better duration of the funeral.

Vaslav had a million better things to do than attend said funeral, and the pieces of the man in the coffin below, centered in front of the altar, certainly wasn’t worth his very precious time. In fact, he hadn’t planned to be there in the first place which was part of the reason why Viktor’s body parts had shown up in garbage bags floating in the canal. He didn’t exactly need to make it clear that the death had been a result of the man’s mafiya dealings when his very discovery spelled the man’s end out perfectly clear.

However, Vaslav was also an opportunist. So when an opportunity presented itself, even if it wasn’t exactly how he would like for it to arrive, he really had no other option but to take it and run with it. Like today.

“And your ride has arrived out front,” Igor added after a brief pause. “The General will be leaving first, and you are to quickly follow.”

He didn’t bother to ask how Igor could confirm the news. The man’s one responsibility when Vaslav was out on and on the move was to make sure his boss could do so safely. While he wasn’t always willing to blindly trust Igor, the man did know how to do his job.

Particularly well.

Behind the opaque aviator sunglasses that made the light streaming in from the many stained-glass windows slightly more bearable, Vaslav surveyed the lower section of the church long enough to be satisfied that no one down there was looking back at him. The heavy gold drapery framing every balcony from the outside, and around each balcony entrance on the other side, helped with that. At least, the plush, crushed red velvet chairs and thick piled carpeting make the balconies more comfortable for those who were deemed important enough to use them.

Like him.

And his mother.

Unfortunately.

Speaking of which, Vaslav decided his attention was better spent on the people inside the balcony at the moment. Especially because he now needed to slip out without causing unneeded attention and conversation when the funeral wasn’t even over.

Essentially, impossible.

Which already put Vaslav in a bad mood before he could even rise from his seat. Instead, he took a few seconds to massage the tension and pressure in his forehead and temples. The pain scale teetered somewhere between a too strong seven and a moderate eight. Not quite enough to keep him in bed or bent over a toilet, but enough to wind him when he had to so much as think.

Never mind talk.

Yet, time was something Vaslav didn’t have at the moment. A fact Igor chose to point out when he said quietly, “Fifteen minutes and the Prosecutor General’s limo is leaving, Vas. Before the parish starts to clear out.”

“As if it makes any damned difference,” he hissed right back.

Wisely, Igor didn’t reply.

Why would he?

Vaslav was right.

People would still see. Someone would recognize the luxury, stretch limo painted black with very specific flags on the front and back waiting at the front of the church, and given how many vory from the brotherhood had attended the funeral that day, it was highly unlikely that Vaslav entering said vehicle would also go unnoticed.

A politician, he was not.

“Vaslav, honey,” came his mother’s coo at his left. Vaslav hadn’t noticed that Natalia had leaned across the two-foot makeshift aisle between their chairs until she spoke. A great way to put him on an even sharper edge. There was something to be said for the skin-tight dress and blood red claw-like fingernails she opted for the day. The veil that fell around the stiff brim of her black hat didn’t hide how glassy her eyes were when he was this close to her face. “You really do need to take the sunglasses off. It’s not appropriate.”

While he couldn’t smell the vodka on her breath, the hot sourness of her words gave it away for him. His previously expressionless face pulled fast into a scowl as he turned to Natalia, and still wouldn’t take his sunglasses off.

“Mat, you’re only here because I needed at least two people from a family to reserve the balcony,” Vaslav said. There was something to be said about a church that would sell good seats to anyone with a big enough checkbook, but who was he to judge how priests funded their debauchery and bullshit? Igor didn’t count because he was working.

Unfortunately.

Natalia’s brows drew together, and anger lit up her gaze. Every word she snapped at him came with spittle and more sour breath. It took him straight back to his chaotic childhood on hard floors with aching bones as she stood above him, raging. “Excuse me, you invited—”

“Yes, I needed you. One last unfortunate time,” he interjected coldly.

Natalia, either too drunk or frustrated that she couldn’t get a proper rise out of her son, huffed back into her seat with arms folded over her chest and a childish pout set into her lips. Behind his aviators, Vaslav’s gaze narrowed on his mother.

She didn’t realize how little he needed her. That she was more of a problem; a thorn in his side that he hadn’t been able to remove for years because a part of him was just as human as her. He knew good and well why he was the way he was. A lot of it stemmed from her. Natalia wasn’t any different, and he never did see the point in killing a soul that was already dead.

Well, that was then.

“I despise you,” Vaslav said, making sure every word was clear for his mother to hear despite the fact that he kept his gaze focused on what was ahead of him in the balcony.

Igor cleared his throat behind Vaslav, muttering only, “Ten minutes.”

Better make this quick, then.

Natalia’s head whipped his way, her gaze widening into fake surprise as she replied, “I feel the same about you, Vas.”

Dumb bitch.

She was always so quick to push whatever button of his showed itself. As if it was big, red, and blinking, she couldn’t help but slam her entire face into it if it meant Vaslav would bite on the chain she threw at him.

“Mat, you’re walking on thin ice. You lost what little fondness I had for you the day you put me in the juvenile colony at thirteen. I only kept you alive after I got out of prison because I needed to access the family estate you were pissing away.”

“You bastard,” Natalia hissed. “You stole that from me.”

“Half of it was mine, that’s why you really kept me. You needed a child, a boy, for the money and the investment accounts to kick in for you after you spent your own. What were you going to do with the mansion and land in Dubna? You let it rot for decades. I only took what was mine.”

What she took away from him in the first place.

“And after I had the good grace to provide you with a decent stipend and an apartment you couldn’t scoff at,” Vaslav continued, “you had the nerve to get me locked up in a madhouse, and then you kept me there for two fucking years.”

Slowly, he turned to stare at her, this time pulling his glasses high to sit them on the crown of his head.

“They were going to kill you for what you did. You decapitated a man and delivered his head publicly to his son. In the middle of the day!”

“The bombing really got them worked up, Mat, let’s be honest.”

Vaslav had needed to make choices that day, and not all of them were rational if one didn’t live inside his head. Some secrets, he intended to take to his grave.

“Right,” she barked out in a sardonic laugh. “You flattened a doctor’s office with him inside. I did you a favor. They would have executed you in the streets, and danced, you moron.” Natalia’s gaze burned, and every word she spat between her thin, tight lips felt like knives slicing into his eardrums. “Instead, I paid doctors and lawyers and everyone else you needed to say you were crazy, and they did it! Because of me!”

The sound of feet shuffling as the parishioners stood for what would be the final hymn, according to a stoic Igor still behind him, muffled his mother’s shout. Barely.

Vaslav chuckled, scratching through his coarse facial hair with fingers he’d rather use to wrap around Natalia’s throat. “You forgot the part where you did all of that with money you funded and pilfered from my accounts. Or when you paid the institution more of my money, again, to keep me locked away for longer. You were having the time of your life, Mat.”

On his dime, and while he went insane, heartbroken, and entirely alone, and she wanted praise for that? Gratitude?

What really was insanity?

If not for Igor, and rest his soul, Nico, the brotherhood would have crumbled. They kept every brigadier in line and stayed loyal to a man they could only talk to through smuggled letters written on stolen paper. Ink, however, could be made from various things.

Fun times.

“Five minutes,” Igor prodded with a bit more sternness.

Right, back to the matter at hand.

He didn’t even mention to his mother that the call she made to her illegitimate brother hadn’t exactly ended with the promise of a dinner. Natalia had no clue why Vaslav actually wanted to attend the funeral, but the Antonovich family name was just important enough for her to agree to put on a black dress and grief veil for a day. Her vanity, and an ever-present need to social climb despite her mid-sixties fast approaching, encouraged her to quickly agree to whatever he proposed.

On the other hand, the parking lot was the perfect no-man’s land for a well-known criminal, and said criminal's politically influential uncle to meet with justifiable reasoning if they had both attended the same event.

Or rather, if it appeared like they did.

Appearance was everything, after all.

“Why is it that every time the two of us are in a room together,” Natalia started with the cock of one perfectly manicured eyebrow, and a wag of a finger between their respective seats, “we end up doing this? We could just ... not be near one another, no?”

Vaslav smirked and nodded. “I agree.”

Starting now.

“What are you doing?” Natalia asked, her voice pitching high. “Where are you going?”

Vaslav stood, adjusting his blazer in the front as he did so. “I have things to do, and your usefulness ran out about five minutes ago, so none of those things include you. But back to what matters.”

“Excuse me?” she questioned with the same air of indignance.

It took practically no time at all for him to become bored with her poor pity me, the victim act. “Your allowance ended as of your last payment, and your building dues are paid up until the end of the month. My financial help ends then, Mat. I can’t imagine how you’re going to keep the hotel suites you’ve been switching out every week or so since I added that extra on top every month, but that also isn’t my problem. Hopefully the amount of my money you poured into all that plastic surgery will still make you worth something to the names in your black book, hmm?”

“You prick!”

“Get a new insult. That only hurt when I was a boy.” Vaslav smiled down at his mother. “Also, the gate to the property in Dubna will no longer be open to you, and trespassers are shot on sight.”

Natalia gasped, indignant in a blink. “You wouldn’t, Vaslav.”

“Mat, I will personally pull the trigger and dig your grave.”

The hymn down below finally ended.

Vaslav had maybe two minutes to catch his ride outside.

“And if you think you want to challenge me in court or elsewhere, if there’s even an ounce in you that believes there’s anything left for you to take, Mat,” Vaslav informed with a shrug of his shoulders as he turned to follow an already retreating Igor from the private balcony, “I hate to tell, but don’t waste your breath. As of the first of December, my new wife will gain ownership of every account, property, investment, and anything else in my name that’s there for her to have.”

“Married?” she shrieked as a realization dawned over her face. “That’s ... less than thirty days away!”

It was entirely possible that someone down below might have heard her with the priest’s murmurings echoing through the old church’s speaker system. Vaslav simply didn’t care.

“Yes, and not enough time for you to put any kind of plan together,” Vaslav said as he headed down the aisle in the small balcony between the rows of chairs. Only four, with two chairs on either side. “Have a lonely trip to hell, Mat.”

“Vaslav! Where are you going? We are not done speaking here! Vaslav!”

And may she forever rot there.

Igor waited in the corridor outside the balcony for Vaslav to pass before he followed right behind, saying, “While we’re in the city, we could make a trip downtown. Your accountant has the money ready.”

“It only took him two fucking months.”

Which was the only reason why Vaslav didn’t make a trip to Feliks’ beloved Swan House after he left a reminder in the form of a written note on Vera’s front door. He disliked the idea that Feliks had unfortunately tied Vera to Vaslav in a way that meant she could be a messenger for him.

That would end.

Soon.

Igor sniffed, muttering, “Nobody has a hundred million in American dollars on hand, Vas.”

Fair enough.

The bigger question at hand?

“Had it been a check, or even a transfer, Feliks could have had his money a lot sooner,” Vaslav told Igor. Unlike others who didn’t have a significant amount of money on hand, Vaslav did. In various accounts from banks all across the world. He never kept more than a handful of millions in one account in case it was flagged or closed for some reason.

It still took time to turn digital into paper.

“His business is failing, his life is practically over,” Vaslav said more to himself than Igor, “and Feliks didn’t want instant money. Essentially.”

His man didn’t reply.

Vaslav didn’t need him to.

“No, not Feliks,” Vaslav muttered, still working over the problem at hand in his mind, turning the corner at the end of the hall that led to a stairwell. “Feliks wants cash.”

“Apparently,” Igor returned, “it took six duffle bags to hold it all, too.”

Of course, it did.

*

Igor exited the churchbehind Vaslav, but didn’t say a word as his boss took the grand stairs at the front two at a time. The taillights of a Mercedes limo pulling away from the curb came on to signal the driver inside had hit the brakes before he could pull out onto the street. When the vehicle stayed put, Vaslav trusted that the man waiting inside was willing to give him the grace of an extra couple of minutes.

He appreciated it.

Nobody liked tardiness as a valued trait.

The flapping flags on all four points of the limo reflected the Russian Federation, and while the steps were mostly clear of loiterers, he tried not to be the only person that lingered. The less eyes that watched him exit the church and enter his uncle’s limo, the better. He hated when people talked. It required work to shut them up.

Who really had the time?

“I won’t be far behind, boss,” Igor called from behind.

Vaslav replied with a two-finger wave over his shoulder as he reached the bottom of the stairs, but as he reached the parked limo and came up along the back door, he paused with a glance back at Igor. “Lunch, yeah?”

Behind his own dark sunglasses, Igor’s brow lifted high. “Pardon?”

“The girls, and Kiril. Lunch?”

“Yeah, at the cafe near her villa. The one she likes.”

“Good, I could eat,” Vaslav returned.

“With a migraine?” Igor asked carefully.

“I said could, not would.”

And eating wasn’t really the point.

Vaslav left Igor alone to figure out his intentions without further explanation. Opening the limo and slipping inside without as much as glancing around to see if there was anyone watching, he let the door quickly slam shut behind him. As soon as he was inside the dimly lit rear of the vehicle, he found the closest place to sit.

One of the white leather bench seats. Pulling the aviators from his face to dig his fingers in good to his eye sockets just long enough to relieve some of the pressure, it took a few seconds longer for his vision to clear up once he pulled his hand away.

Only to see a smiling, familiar face.

Vaslav did not smile back.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” his uncle, Dimitry, said. “Igor explained you had intentions on getting married in a few weeks. I hope you don’t plan on sending me an invitation, plemyannik, nephew. I’d hate to refuse.”

Then, the man at the back end of the limo chuckled, still smiling as he said, “No offence, of course.”

None taken.

Vaslav waved it off between them, and the similarities between the two did not go unnoticed to him. The physical ones, that was. From the strong facial bone structure to the same ice-blue gaze. While his uncle had at least thirty or forty pounds of girth to him that Vaslav had managed to stave off in his age, Dimitry was still tall, broad-shouldered, and a significant presence in any room.

If not for knowing he had taken after his grandfather, Dimitry’s biological father, he might have thought the man across from him had done the deed with his mother to produce him. Thankfully, their family secrets didn’t run that deep.

Nonetheless it never had, not even when he was a fifteen-year-old thug in a juvenile colony facing more time in an adult establishment that would treat him much less kindly, and his uncle visited him one last time. It was the sight of Dimitry in a three-piece suit with glittering gold rings on every finger on the other side of cracked cement and bars while Vaslav wore prison scraps and had to be shackled to the floor that day long ago that taught him about the kind of criminal he wanted to be. It wasn’t the kind that sat where he did.

Vaslav learned a lot in the span of his fifteen-year incarceration. Specifically, that he didn’t intend on going back. Ever.

“Good behavior will get you out of this situation a lot faster, nephew,” Dimitry had told him that day.

All the while, Vaslav had been suffering from a terribly bruised and swollen face that made talking difficult. Compliments of the illegal fighting between the incarcerated youth; fights that the guards organized to keep entertained. At least it taught him how to really survive.

“Da,” he remembered agreeing with his uncle, and then he quickly followed it up with a simple, “but good behavior isn’t going to keep me alive in here.”

“I heard you need another mess sorted out,” Dimitry said, bringing Vaslav back to the present issue at hand. The only reason the two had needed this conversation to happen in the first place.

The limo had long since pulled away from the curb, but Vaslav didn’t care to see what streets the driver took them down as long as Igor trailed behind.

“Ask your driver where my man is,” Vaslav said.

Dimitry cocked a brow at the request and reached over to press a button on the middle console of his own bucket seat. A dark screen slid to the side with a buzz next to Vaslav’s head, and he turned just enough to see the man positioned on the other side, manning the limo.

“Is there an SUV behind us?” Dimitry asked.

“A black one.”

His uncle looked at him, then. “Satisfied?”

Vaslav shrugged. “Barely.”

A tight smile answered that response. “I didn’t expect anything less.” Dimitry hit the button again, and the screen closed as fast as it had opened. “If you talk at a moderate level, he can’t make out what you’re saying.”

Vaslav wished he cared about what his uncle’s driver heard. No doubt, the man was paid handsomely to hear nothing at all.

“What did Bogdan have to say?” Dimitry asked as the limo took a turn too fast for Vaslav’s comfort.

“Jesus, where’d he learn to drive?”

Dimitry never missed a beat. “Vaslav, if we’re going to talk about the bodies in the canal, then I’m going to at least need an interesting conversation beforehand.”

“You only know about my fucking head doctor—”

“It’s a harmless curiosity, Bogdan is a friend, and if not for me, he wouldn’t have looked twice at your case. And give the man a little respect, he’s not a head doctor. He’s a—”

“I know what he is,” Vaslav snapped back.

Dimitry rolled his eyes, the only show of his irritation before he focused his attention on the scenery passing them by beyond his tinted window. “It’s not good, is it?”

Good God.

Vaslav did not have time for this. “Ten or so good years with a cocktail of medication, clinical monitoring, and other required things that I just can’t produce at the moment.”

“Good years, what does that mean?”

To Vaslav?

“What’s left that’s worth to live,” he muttered.

He was allowed the right to say it. It was his life, after all. Even the end of it.

“What is it, the dementia?”

Unsurprising that Dimitry went there first. That’s what had eventually wasted away his own father while Natalia pissed away the family fortune.

Vaslav sighed, scowling at the man across the limo because Dimitry couldn’t just drop it. It didn’t help that he understood the only reason his uncle pressed was because the man cared. Oh, he might not welcome public attachment or communication to his nephew in any way, but throughout his life, Dimitry had been there when no one asked him to be.

Especially Vaslav.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Vaslav settled on saying. “It’s there.”

And it would eventually kill him. One way or another.

“Right, well, that’s unfortunate, no?”

Vaslav’s scowl deepened further. “I’m dealing with it.”

Nobody said he had to deal with it well.

“It’s far easier to overlook and explain away bodies washing up in the canal when they aren’t bodies of people you have known contact with,” Dimitry noted, “not to mention, if they didn’t keep showing up in rubbish bags.”

“The trash bags help with the mess, or so Igor says,” Vaslav replied.

Dimitry glanced his way, then, unimpressed. “But not with the public speculation, hmm?”

Vaslav didn’t bother to point out the amount of money he had shelled out to officers and other officials across the city to quietly and swiftly move on from his ... messes. No doubt, Dimitry already had a full scope, given his own reach inside the institution.

“I don’t want to ever see my name in the papers again,” Vaslav said. “I’m not asking for much.”

“Yet, you keep killing people. Do you see how those two things don’t fit together?”

“Wouldn’t have to do the killing bit, either, if said people would stay out of my business and follow the fucking rules.”

It wasn’t hard.

Dimitry nodded once, and then his gaze landed on Vaslav. With a good quarter of a century between the two in age, it was the life experience and power his uncle had achieved that lended to the respect Vaslav offered the man.

Very little else.

Blood counted for almost nothing, now.

“This is the last time I am cleaning up one of your messes,” Dimitry warned. “I better not hear of one more body floating up in the canal.”

“I’ve already figured out a new way to handle that problem. Worry not.”

Dimitry’s pursed lips told Vaslav that the man wasn’t happy with his nephew’s reply. “Frankly, I’d rather not know, and one more thing, da?”

“Yes, what?”

“Make sure your fucking mother never calls me again, or else the last thing you ever want to do is ask me for one more favor, Vaslav. Mark my words.”

Fair enough.

“You never answer when I call,” Vaslav said.

“I sincerely hope you don’t wonder why.”

Vaslav didn’t wonder. A call from him meant nothing good.

Chuckling under his breath, he muttered, “Natalia isn’t a real concern. After this month, she won’t even have a penny to pay for the phone she called you from.”

Dimitry didn’t ask for details.

Natalia wasn’t that important, honestly.

“Back to the church, then?” Dimitry asked. “Is that where you’d like to go?”

“No, actually,” Vaslav replied. “How would your driver feel about taking me a dozen blocks east?”

Dimitry, letting out an annoyed grunt, reached over to press the button the console to his left once more. “Why the hell not? You’ve already wasted half of my day. Let’s add another hour to the clock. I clearly don’t have anything better to do.”

He said it, not Vaslav.