2

Lev

 

Mid-twenties?”

“Something like that, with ginger hair just above

her shoulders and lips like a red candy apple,” I reply, tapping the ash off the end of my cigar.

“Not on the floor, fucking dickhead. I told you about that,” my uncle Valentin says, coughing as he shakes his head. He’s had that cough since I was born. I swear I remember it from the day my mother first brought me home.

“It’s marble. It’ll come off with a quick mop,” I reply, waving my cigar over the gallery floor. A few extra ash flakes flutter down.

Valentin curses under his breath, glaring at the ash like it’s a cockroach. “I can never have anything nice with you around. I’m sure you scared that girl off the moment you opened your mouth. No twenty-something artist wants anything to do with an old man like you. Those days are over.”

“Maybe for you,” I mutter, puffing smoke into the spacious room. Valentin has been hounding me to stop smoking in here, talking about the smoke yellowing the paintings, but nobody comes here to buy real art. They’re laundering money. That’s all this garbage is good for.

“For both of us,” he says, waving my smoke away from his face as though he doesn’t smoke two packs of cheap menthol cigarettes a day.

“I’m not trying to hit,” I reply, my mood soured by his inability to listen to a story without reprimanding me for something. Reminds me of my mother, God rest her soul.

“Yeah, yeah, you think she’s the next Van Gogh or something. Sounds like you’re trying to make excuses why you should scuttle down to her apartment and screw her brains out. Again, she’s way too young for you.”

I laugh. “Oh, come on. You think that’s what this is all about? I’m not that shallow. I can appreciate art.”

He cackles, which turns into another fit of coughing. “Jesus, boy, you’re going to give me a heart attack. Yes, I think you’re that shallow. Always have been. You remind me of myself when I was younger, and you don’t appreciate art in the slightest. You’re smoking around all these multi-million-dollar paintings.”

“I’ll ash my cigar on one of them if I feel like it,” I reply, stepping up to a painting of a couple of crooked blue squares and putting my cigar close enough to singe the paint. “These aren’t real art.”

“Would you stop that!” Valentin charges toward me, waving his hands like he’s trying to scare away a bear.

I step away from the painting before he can knock the cigar out of my hand. I’d like to finish this one. It’s a Cuban.

“Are you here to help, or are you just here to gush about your new crush?” he asks, stepping back and planting his meaty fists on his hips. He really does remind me of my mother.

I sigh, looking around at the two dozen paintings still waiting to be hung on the empty white walls. None of them are as good as what Eliza is painting for me, but most of them will fetch a hefty price at auction tonight. The amount of money people wash through this crap doubles every year.

“Hang them yourself,” I mutter, turning away from him and walking toward the door.

“I know you ain’t leaving me. Come one, boy! I’m Family,” he whines, but I already have one foot out the door.

Family doesn’t seem to mean much anymore. I was taught that the bonds of blood were the strongest a man could have in the Bratva, that Family were the only people I could trust.

Then came Vanya, my greedy bastard cousin who fucked it all up.

Now, I don’t trust anyone, and even Valentin doesn’t act the same. Everyone wants something from me, but nobody wants to give a goddamn thing. If it weren’t for the money, I’d have left this cruel game a long time ago and started over somewhere else.

Maybe that’s what I need, a fresh start, a reason to feel that hunger and drive again. Or maybe I am just getting old, like Valentin said. That version of the story is more depressing, but I don’t linger on it for long.

My mind wanders back to Eliza, the painter across the street from the boutique. Her hazel eyes are burned into my mind, and those lips… I was never good at keeping my demons contained. I’d do just about anything, pay any price, kill any man, just to taste those lips.

Or perhaps give her a taste of me, a little extra glaze on her puffy red lips.

I shouldn’t even be thinking about doing something like that to such a sweet young woman. She’d be appalled to know how deep my thoughts have sunk in regard to her, completely ignoring her talents in favor of her body.

I try to tear my thoughts out of the gutter as I cross the street toward the skyscraper that houses my penthouse apartment, but my demons have claws. They don’t let go so easily, especially something as soft and grippable as Eliza’s perfect body.

The greying receptionist nods at me as I enter the building, silent permission for me to brush past him to the elevator without showing my keycard. Everyone here already knows who I am, but security is tight when it’s anyone but me. I

witnessed them questioning a guy for half an hour for trying to sneak a girl in one time.

It would be excessive if my lifestyle wasn’t so dangerous, but as it stands, security like that is necessary. There are about a dozen people who want me dead at any given time, and at least four of them live in New York.

My cousin Vanya is a great example. That little slimeball knows where I live, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he took a shot at avenging his brother Feliks’ death at some point.

Talk about a broken Family. Mine wants to murder me.

The elevator takes a minute and a half to reach the top floor, something only accessible with a red key, a typed code, and a scan from my keycard.

More security measures that would be excessive if I wasn’t a Bratva boss. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t, but as I step out into my living room, my shoes sinking into the antique Persian rug I inherited from my father, I can’t imagine living any other way.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly as I walk to the floor- to-ceiling window that stretches from one side of the room to the other. It’s a single pane of bulletproof glass, but nobody would be able to get a shot at me from all the way up here. I can barely see the city below me, just the tops of the buildings and a few yellow taxis like the reflection of fireflies in still black lake.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket. Probably Valentin.

I pull it out, turning from the window and walking to the bar to make myself a scotch as I check the message. It’s not from Valentin. The number isn’t immediately recognizable, either, but once I open the message, I know instantly that it’s Eliza.

(Hey, thanks again for buying my painting! You’re very generous. I’d like to bring it to you in a couple of days, but I don’t have an address)

I want to trust her, but I can’t. Not yet.

I leave it at that as I pour myself a drink. I need a double after what I’ve been through today. Between dealing with some of the biggest snobs in the art world, pacifying a couple of our clients who need their money washed, dried, and folded by yesterday, and getting talked over when I’m trying to be the slightest bit vulnerable with Valentin, I feel like the grey hair on my head has doubled in the last twenty-four hours.

And then there’s Eliza.

Sweet, soft Eliza. Just a girl trying to make it in New York. I’ve known several of them, and every single one of them turned to stripping and thinly veiled prostitution to pay the bills.

I’d hate for Eliza to fall into that bullshit. She seems like she could be a genuinely good person, a rarity these days.

Perhaps I’m pessimistic.

Or maybe I’m an optimist for thinking Eliza is any different.

I take a quick swig of my scotch, the buttery oak flavor washing over my tongue and biting it soon after, like a kiss followed by a slap in the face. That’s how my last relationship ended, but there wasn’t a tear shed on either side.

Love is just hate by a different name.

The only thing that’s real to me is obsession.

But I try not to fall into that as I receive another text from Eliza, giving me her full address like she actually trusts me not to break down her door and carry her back to my cave.

If I were a lesser man, I’d do just that, but perhaps she realizes I have control of the evil that dwells within me. There are layers, safeguards of a sort, and one must peel them back to release the beast inside.

The beast that squeezes when he should let go.

Who keeps going even when he has nothing left to pump inside of her.

The walls I put up around my soul are to protect people like Eliza just as much as they are to protect myself. The consequences of tearing them down are severe, but so is the pleasure derived from the experience.

The trouble comes when the walls are brittle, and the chains holding back the beast are dissolved by such a beauty that they can be broken with something as simple as a feathery touch.

Or a kiss from a set of candy apple lips.