Page 15 of The Mad Don
Kirill moves toward her. “Baby —”
“I was listening. Giorgio is Don Mondi. I heard it all. Do you need to go?”
“Annika,” Kirill says quietly. He has to quietly remind her that I was here to work first. Annika often forgets. She looks at him. Then back at me.
I reply. “I’m going.”
I hand the file back to Kirill, look at Annika for a moment to let her know I mean it, and walk out.
Outside, Dimitri is on the swing set at the far end of the lawn, pumping his legs. He spots me and waves with his whole arm.
I go to the lawn and sit on the bench beside the swing set and watch him.
“Yana,” he says, very seriously, “I am going to buy you a very big present.”
“Is that right?”
“Mama is going to take me.” He scrunches his face in concentration, pumping harder. “I haven’t decided what yet. Maybe a dinosaur.”
“I’ve always wanted a dinosaur.”
“A big one,” he says. I look at him, and I think about my brother. I think about being ten years old and running through streets I didn’t know, Christov’s hand in mine, the weight of his small palm, and I think about the moment I lost it in the dark. I think about what Kirill built from the girl who came out of that darkness.
This is the least I can do—thevery least.Help him understand who this madman really was.
Dimitri swings too high, and the swing lurches sideways, and he tips, but I’m off the bench with my hand at his back, catching the chain before the physics get worse. He wobbles and grips the chain, and for a moment, his face does the thing children’s faces do when the decision between crying and not crying is still being made.
I laugh. He blinks and blinks again. Decides, with some deliberation, that this is funny.
He laughs too.
I right the swing, and he settles back into it. I give him one more push, and I stand there with my hand still on the chain, and I think: one month. I go in, I watch, I come back. Kirill pulls me out, we go to Bratislava, and I find my brother. This is just the thing that happens first.
Footsteps on the path behind me. I straighten. Annika and Kirill come across the lawn and crouch beside Dimitri and say something in Russian that makes Dimitri’s face light up.
“Papa tucks me in?” Dimitri demands.
“Papa tucks you in.”
Dimitri launches himself off the swing, and Kirill handles it without visible effort. Dimitri twists to press a kiss to my chin, then to Annika as she reaches us, and then he pulls Kirill toward the house with both hands.
Annika looks at me and says, “You go and come back safe, okay?”
I smile and nod. We walk back into the house together.
Chapter Five
Giovanni
“The inflammation in the joint is — The nerve damage from the original injury creates a compounding effect —”
The doctor is explaining why he has failed again. I listen. I stand at the window with my hands in my pockets, and I listen to a man building an argument for his own inadequacy, and I watch the reflection of the room in the glass. Lucia, my sister, is in the bed, propped against three pillows, her face the color of old candle wax, her hand gripping the sheet through another wave of it as I listen to the doctor talk.
“Is it better?” I ask.
“The treatment protocol requires time —”
“Is it better?”
