The Don Shielded Her. So I Became Bratva Queen. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Photo on the Dash

The photo came from her own dresser; Simona offers Kirill her father's piers for Vin's ruin, Kirill wants her instead, and Vin's cars pull up outside.

It was my wedding picture.

Me alone on the steps of Saint Monica's, in my mother's long-sleeved gown, laughing at something off to the side.

Vin had been standing to my left.

Someone had cut him off with scissors.

The edge was clean and careful.

"Where did you get this?" I said.

"I told you. The dashboard."

"No. Where did they get it?"

Kirill turned it over.

On the back, in blue pen, someone had written a single word.

Window.

I knew that photo.

It lived in a silver frame on my dresser, next to my mother's rosary.

I had dusted it on Wednesday.

"That's in my bedroom," I said.

The men at the table had gone back to their drinks, but none of them were drinking.

Kirill looked at me for a long moment.

"Sit down before you fall down, Mrs. Cammarata."

"Don't call me that."

"What do I call you?"

"Simona."

"Sit down, Simona."

I sat.

He said something in Russian and a man brought a first aid kit and a bottle of vodka and set both by my elbow.

Kirill pulled a chair close, sat facing me, and held out his hand.

"Arm."

"A doctor already did it."

"A doctor in South Philly at two in the morning, with your husband in the next bed? Arm."

I gave him my arm.

His hands were enormous and covered in faded ink, a letter on every knuckle.

They were also very gentle.

He peeled back the tape, looked at the stitches, and made a low sound in his chest.

"An inch to the right," he said, "and he'd be choosing flowers for your funeral."

"He'd let her choose them."

Kirill glanced up.

His eyes were the palest grey I'd ever seen.

He poured vodka on a pad of gauze and pressed it to the cuts on my cheek without warning.

I hissed.

"That's for being stupid enough to drive here alone with a gun in your pocket."

"How do you know I have a gun?"

"Your coat hangs wrong."

"It was my father's."

"I know. He showed it to me once. He said it pulled left."

He wrapped my arm with clean gauze, slowly, round and round.

"Why did you come here?" he asked. "Tell me the real reason."

"Because you're the only man in Philadelphia who wants Vin Cammarata on his knees as much as I do."

"And?"

"And he's going to come for you tomorrow, for something you didn't do."

"Tonight," Kirill said. "He'll come tonight. He's not a patient man."

"Then let's talk fast."

I put my good hand flat on the table.

"My father left me two piers on the Delaware. They're in my name, not his. My father's men work them for Vin because I'm Vin's wife."

"I know what you own."

"They're yours. The piers and whatever my father's men will give you. In exchange you keep me alive, and you help me take everything Vin has."

The man to Kirill's left said something in Russian.

Kirill answered without looking at him, and the man shut his mouth.

Then Kirill tied off the gauze and sat back.

"No."

"No?"

"I don't want your piers."

"Everybody wants my piers."

"I'm not everybody."

He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees.

"Three years ago I stood at your father's grave," he said. "Every Italian in that cemetery looked through me like I was a hole in the ground. You walked over in the rain and shook my hand and thanked me for coming."

"My father liked you. He said you paid on time."

"You were married. So I went home."

He let that sit.

"When you're free, you marry me. Until then you sleep under my roof, you eat at my table, and nobody in this city touches you. Not your husband. Not my men. Nobody."

My face went hot under the vodka sting.

"That's insane."

"That's the offer."

"I've known you for twenty minutes."

"Three years," he said. "You weren't paying attention."

Across the room, a tall girl in a Temple hoodie pushed through the kitchen door with a tray of bread and stopped dead.

"Kirill. Why is there a bleeding woman at the table?"

"Nadia, go to bed."

"It's my kitchen."

She put the bread in front of me, looked at my arm, then at her brother.

"Did you do that?"

"Her husband did."

"Oh." She sat down beside me like we'd been friends for years. "Then eat. You look like a ghost. I'm Nadia. He's terrible, but he's not a liar."

I tore off a piece of bread because my hands needed something to do.

"I'll think about it," I told Kirill.

"Think fast."

Headlights swept across the front windows.

Then another pair.

Then a third.

The man by the door spoke into his collar.

Kirill didn't turn around.

"Your husband," he said, "is outside."

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