The Beauty Who Loved Him by Bethany-Kris

19.

“Would you have doneit?” Igor asked.

Vaslav passed the plaque at his side a disinterested glance. Gold lettering in Russian and English spelled out the historic nature of the site, and the still present dangers because no one had the funds or means to tear it down. The government sure as hell didn’t care.

Igor leaned closer to inspect the small memorial.

“What, jumped off the bridge?” Vaslav asked.

Igor shrugged, murmuring the names under his breath of kids who had drowned after jumping—whether the current took them, they had been tangled in something under the water, or they jumped into something just beneath the surface; they each got a spot for their name.

And an unfortunate series of dates. One year after another. Nearly all the months looked the same. Summer. Strangely, it was also not a spot that saw a lot of suicides.

“Yeah, would you?” Igor asked. “I could see you doing it, had you been given the chance.”

“Almost, one summer.”

Igor stood up straight at that. “Really?”

The old, forgotten covered wooden bridge, or the half left still standing on worn and broken cement blocks, just outside of Dubna’s town limits was a menace to the teenagers of every generation, and the parents who buried them year after year. A risk any rebel couldn’t pass up. To jump from a hundred feet into what seemed like bottomless black waters had become a rite of passage for only the boys and girls who had the most reckless and wild hearts.

Yet, for every ten that dared to take the plunge, it was said that an average of two wouldn’t come back up. Only to be found later caught up in a dam upstream.

Despite knowing that what remained of the fallen half of the bridge was still under the calm waters of the stretch of Volga River, ignorant youth, and undoubtedly stupid pride drove kids to walk the fifty rickety feet to make the jump. A sad state of affairs and too much danger prevented the people of the area from taking matters into their own hands and pulling down the bridge. It was a shame, because back before the kids used the rickety edge to jump off, the water down below had been a popular swimming hole.

Even standing at the mouth’s edge of the old bridge, with its large entrance eave beams blackened with age overhead, Vaslav couldn’t honestly say he would have made the jump in his own youth.

“A guy drowned the day before, but since he didn’t show up at the dam, they had a few boats in the water.” Vaslav shrugged, adding, “I don’t think I could have done it if I was standing there, though; they put me in the colony before the next summer, so I never had to find out.”

Igor’s grin faded, and he swiped his palm down his mouth and jaw as he eyed the quiet, short road leading to the remnants of the bridge that connected off from the main trek. While the neighboring townships had erected barricades to block the road, they didn’t do much good. Someone could easily fit a vehicle in between the two cement blocks painted bright yellow.

Vaslav and Igor, on the other hand, had left their SUV running just beyond the safety of the dividers. It left more than enough room for the man of the evening to arrive and follow Vaslav’s very specific instructions about how he should pull up to receive his payment.

“Looks like we didn’t have to worry about time at all,” Vaslav said as Igor rolled his eyes and stuffed his hands into his parka’s pockets. “You’re never one to be late, Igor.”

“Yeah, well—”

Vaslav’s comment had come right on time; the roll of wheels on gravel drew the gazes of both men to the black Porsche pulling off the main road. The headlamps on the car flicked off as the driver navigated the vehicle in a half turn so he could back up beyond the cement dividers keeping the bridge blocked.

Feliks’ Porsche came to a stop only a foot from Vaslav and Igor’s feet. The trunk of the car popped open a second before the driver’s door opened wide and out stepped a man Vaslav would forever call a coward.

“Feliks,” Igor greeted.

The only living Abramov took his time closing the driver’s door and joining the two men waiting at the rear of the car. Despite directing his words to Vaslav, his gaze didn’t leave the six duffels sitting just inside the mouth of the bridge on the ground.

“I didn’t know you were also making a trip out to see me tonight,” Feliks said. “Am I that special, Vaslav?”

“Or that unlucky,” he returned frankly.

Feliks, quick like he was, took the subtle threat for what it could be. He put his hands up, averting his eyes from Vaslav’s unforgiving stare when he said, “No harm meant, of course.”

Vaslav didn’t bother with a reply.

Igor stepped up to the plate, still ready to get on with the evening and remove one more thing from his unofficial to-do list. “Took six bags. All various bills. Should make distributing it easier, however you choose.”

Feliks nodded, his gaze back on the duffels. Right where Vaslav expected it to be. “I have plans for it. It’ll go far with renovations, and funding at the school. Although, the kids will be sad that Vera isn’t returning.”

Every word the man let slip out of his mouth was a lie. Vaslav knew it, too.

Vaslav spoke up, then. “Don’t worry Vera’s got her hands full of other things to do.”

For now, he added silently.

Feliks, stuffing his hands into his slacks pockets, eyed the darkness beyond the mouth of the bridge. “Rumor is, part of what’s keeping her hands full is you. Someone might even be getting married soon. She’s kind-hearted, and entirely too good for you.”

A laugh split from Vaslav’s lips. “You’re not wrong. Let me guess how word traveled, my mother?”

“She’s making calls to anyone who will take them. I just happened to put two and two together about who the wife-to-be in question actually was,” Feliks returned.

Fucking bitch.

“Her circle isn’t that large,” Igor assured.

It didn’t even matter.

Not at this point.

“They’re not so heavy if you give ‘em a good throw,” Vaslav said to Feliks as he passed the man by, referring to the duffels he left behind. Igor was quick to follow Vaslav. “Maybe pull the Porsche back a few more inches.”

Feliks didn’t move as Vaslav and Igor headed for their own vehicle, parked and running, twenty or so feet away. Pulling himself into the passenger seat, he watched the man near the bridge reach for the first blue duffel bag at the same time Igor climbed into the driver’s side of the SUV.

“He was going to run with it,” Vaslav told Igor when the man slammed the door shut. “The money, I mean.”

Igor glanced his way, but his stare skipped past to the window and the scene beyond. “How in the hell do you know that? I’ve been watching Feliks, I keep tabs on him like anybody else that might be a problem.”

“He lied about what he was going to do with the money. Didn’t you tell me last week that there hasn’t even been a contractor visit The Swan House to survey and estimate the damage from the last water leak? That was months ago, Igor.”

“That doesn’t explain how you know—”

“I still have both deeds to his Swan House,” Vaslav interjected. “More importantly, I have the original, which should matter to him the most, no?”

Igor fell further into the seat with a grunt. “Right, because he doesn’t know about the fake.”

“I found it behind a lock in a cabinet that was very easy to break. He had to have noticed it was gone by now, but he didn’t say a thing. He’s willing to pretend like it doesn’t even matter as long as he gets the thing that he wants.”

The money.

Just like all those years ago with Irina. Some shit never changed. Feliks had been all too willing to ignore the signs of danger facing his own sister as long as the money on the table was a substantial enough number to make him turn his cheek.

All it would have taken him was a single phone call; a second out of his day to tell Irina not to leave the house that day. She never even saw it coming.

So, neither did Feliks.

Vaslav left the useless excuse of life alive long enough for the man to think he was safe, estranged from his old world, sure, and a pariah to everyone else, but safe from Vaslav’s remaining wrath nonetheless.

No one was safe.

“Too bad for him,” Vaslav said, turning to watch as Feliks tossed the first heavy bag of bills into the trunk of his car. “He won’t even get the money out of me.”

That had been decided the moment Vaslav made the offer to Feliks, money for his disconnection from Vera Avdonin, and the bastard hadn’t even known it. The first bag being tossed into the back of the Porsche was all it took to start a chain reaction.

One of the most interesting things Vaslav learned in the juvenile colony was how mixing specific compounds could produce various results. One sealed glass beaker inside another filled with reactive, dangerous chemicals could easily create a plume of fire when thrown hard enough to break.

The first fireball that came rushing out of the trunk sent Feliks flying back, arms flailing, into the waiting bags right behind him. Small fire-like explosions started one after another as each mini-bomb inside the bags were broken, and the chemicals mixed.

“Well, get going,” Vaslav said when the fire caught onto the bridge, and the back of Feliks’ running Porsche. It was a fire that only needed the chemical to splatter, spreading the caustic liquid and licking flames further to continue burning.

The bridge.

The Porsche.

The ground.

Feliks.

He didn’t care about the man screaming and jerking back and forth on the ground.

Igor pulled the SUV out of park, and hit the gas as the first backfire from the exhaust of Feliks’ overheating Porsche cracked through the air. The car exploded before they had the chance to pull out on the road. In the passenger door mirror, the sky lit up from the fire and the sight of cash fluttering into the air made Vaslav chuckle.

What went up had to come down. The river would catch the fluttering, burning money—or what was left by the end of it all and take it straight to the canal.

“I’d rather this entire country wipe their asses with my money than give it to that man,” Vaslav said. Well, now they had something in the range of a hundred million to do so. “Let them bitch about bodies in the canal now.”

“We really need to get a handle on how you deal with your problems,” Igor muttered as they drove further from the scene. “I’m not going to believe you when you tell me you’re dealing with something. You’re absolutely not dealing with it, Vas.”

Vaslav disagreed. This had gone better than he expected. “Can’t imagine why.”

Not to mention ...

“You had every chance to stop me on the way here,” Vaslav said.

The man in the driver’s seat didn’t deny the truth.

Slowly, whether Igor realized it or not, his boss gave him more and more rope to work with. How he used that rope was up to him, of course. Igor could hang himself with it, or the rest of the world. That didn’t change what remained proverbially tied to the end of the rope, however.

The keys.

To a kingdom.

“I want to retire,” Vaslav said, lost in the passing darkness blanketed in a layer of new, fresh snow. “It’s not like the brotherhood would miss me. Haven’t I earned a few quiet, happy years of my own making?”

Coated in desperation, Igor laughed. “Is that what all of this is about ... really?”

What else mattered?