Anatoly Medlov (4 page)

As she walked off, he caught a whiff of her perfume. He had bought it for her in Jerusalem. He bought it because when he smelled it, he thought of her. She was his little pudgy friend –someone that he could talk to, confide in
to a point
.

Only tonight, he didn’t want to talk to her. At that very moment, he wanted to kiss her as a way of thanking her and feeding his own need. He clenched his jaw and looked away.
This was Renee for goodness sake.
The bump on the head today had obviously been harder than he had first suspected.

As she took off her apron, he noticed that she wore a black silk sundress that showed a lot more cleavage than normal. He took his seat and put the napkin on his lap, then looked up at her and shook his head. Since she had lost
the weight
recently, she was starting to look less and less like an employee and more and more like a prospect.

“
What’s the dress for,” he asked, pointing at her breasts. “Are you planning to feed a tribe of starving children tonight?”

Renee looked down and smiled. “I’ve got a date,” she answered with a bright glimmer in her eyes. “They do look big in this dress, huh?”

Anatoly choked. “A date? With?” A territorial jealousy boiled in the pit of his empty stomach.

“
A guy who came into the shop today. A basketball player. I almost said no when I first saw him. He looked like a freaking Medlov – only he wasn’t Russian. He’s from the east coast. He’s here to check out the team.”

“
Why was he at the store?” Anatoly asked.

“
He thought we sold men’s clothing,” Renee answered with a shrug.

She turned and went back to get the bottle of wine, instantly recognizing his jealousy but choosing to ignore it. Anatoly never liked anyone to have anything that he didn’t already have or hadn’t had. She didn’t expect this to be any different.

“
So, am I eating alone?” he continued, trying to put a guilt trip on her.

“
No. He and I are just going to Beale Street to watch a band play later. I figured that you and I could eat dinner first and then...”

“
Oh.” Anatoly fixed his plate. “You wanted to get me out of the way first,
eh
?” His plate clinked.

“
Basically,” she said, sitting down. “So eat fast. I might get laid tonight, and a sister has been on a serious dry spell, you know.”

Anatoly coughed into his napkin.

Renee laughed. “I’m just kidding, Ana.”

“
What did I tell you about calling me that? It makes me sound like...sissy,” he laughed.

“
We all know that you’re no sissy.”

“
You know this how?”

“
I’m the one who has to explain to these women that you’re not
available
when they come lurking around my shop,” she said, sneering at him. She stabbed the chicken. “They all think that I’m the devil.” Her southern drawl thickened.

Anatoly grinned. “You are.” He tasted the food and forgot his worries.
Man, did he love her cooking.
He sank his teeth in the crispy, golden, juicy chicken and planted his rigid elbows on the table. He winced again as he remembered his bruises.

Renee watched him in complete satisfaction. She smiled and placed the napkin on her lap.

“
Is it good?” she asked, tasting her food.

“
Better than pu...”

“
Watch your mouth,” she interrupted.

Anatoly grinned and quieted down. They sat in silence, enjoying their food as the
Food Network
played in the background.

***

His father had never opened the windows of the master bedroom. It was too much of a security risk, but Anatoly couldn’t imagine anything better.

The wind blew in and rustled the curtains, cleansed the room and cleared his thoughts. He lay in bed awake with his hands behind his head thinking of his mother.

It was still early, barely nine, but as early as he had to wake to get a start on his day, there was no need to stay up all night.

In the darkness, he recounted his childhood, the smell of his mother’s hair on Sunday morning before mass, the smells of breakfast. Even though they were poor, she still worked so hard to give them a happy childhood. Her attempts had not been successful, but it was the effort that he had always admired, especially after finding out that his father’s mother had been a whore.

Her photo flapped in his hand under the powerful push of the ceiling fan above him. He looked at her, her thin lips, her pale skin, her bright blue eyes and hopeful smile. A tear formed in the corner of his eye, but he quickly pushed it back.
There could be none of that.
He simply wouldn’t allow himself to mourn her.
Alexandria.

Sitting up in bed, he reached over for the bottle of vodka on the nightstand and thought of his newly recovering step-mother and put the bottle down.
Was there no solace?
He had no friends, outside of the men who called him boss and followed his orders, outside of Renee who was on a date with a strange man, outside of Anya, who was a child thousands of miles away.

Even his last lover, Victoria, crossed his mind. He hadn’t called her since he left her in Prague two months ago. The word from his father was that she had been extremely angry
to put it lightly
. The last thing that he needed to do was to talk to her.

So, he was alone. His father had warned him of the cost of being the boss. It was the worse form of solitude. Everyone feared him. No one would risk getting close to him, not even his own family.

A knock at the door disrupted his thoughts. He recognized the hard tap on his door. It was Vasily. He sat up, wiped his tired eyes and turned on his lamp - the turn of the knob audible through the door.

“
What is it?” he asked loudly.

“
There is woman at your door. She’s from this morning, boss. She said that she needed to talk to you. Should I send her away?”

“
What
woman
from this morning?”

“
The one who hit your bike,” Vasily explained.

“
How did she...”Anatoly stood up by the bed and slipped on his jeans. “Tell her I’ll be down in minute. Put her in living room.”

The woman stood in the living room in the same red suit from earlier. Anatoly rounded the corner with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His faithful dogs followed behind him. Barefoot, he walked up to her with a frown on his face. She turned and smiled at him.

“
Hi. I know it’s late. And it took me forever to find you, but I just had to come by and make sure that you were okay,” she said, offering a small box. “It’s a little peace offering.”

Anatoly looked down at the box and walked past her. “Don’t they have some kind of rules against contacting people after you assault them?” he asked sarcastically.

She looked at the box and raised her brow. “Yeah, they do. Look, I know that this is...
odd
, but I can’t tell you how horrible I felt about nearly killing you this morning.” She placed the box on the table.

“
Have a seat,” Anatoly said, lighting his cigarette. “How did you find out where I live?”

“
Well, up until this morning, I’d never heard of you, and then I went to work and told my co-workers what happened. I remembered your last name, and they told me about that incident that happened a few years ago with your dad. I Googled you, and there was few pictures of your house.”

“
I need to buy a new house,” Anatoly said under his breath. He took a drag of his cigarette and slapped his knee. His dogs came to him and settled by his sofa. “So you saw all that shit that they said about us online, and you still came over here in the dead of night?” he asked intrigued.

“
Well, it’s only nine. Actually, I just got off work and...I wanted to leave this with your butler, but he said that he would come and get you.”

Anatoly heard Vasily’s footsteps moving away from the room. He looked back at the woman and shook his head. “I don’t have a butler here. So, where do you work?”

“
For
Memphis Metro Magazine
,” she said, pulling out her credentials. “I’m a food critic. I just started with the magazine. I moved here from Birmingham about two months ago.”

Anatoly reached out for the box. It was more of a test to see how gullible the woman actually was. She quickly picked the box up and took it over to him. He opened it and removed the wrapping. It was bike reflector. He looked back up at her and grinned.

“
I thought you could use one,” she smiled.

“
I could probably use a sense of humor more,” he said, putting the reflector back in the box. “What is your name again?” He already knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.

“
Destiny Palmer,” she said, standing up a little straighter.

Anatoly stood up. “I tell you what. If you really want to make this morning up to me, then come by the restaurant tomorrow and do great interview on my manager and my food, but don’t show up at my door with reflectors and jokes like I’m someone to play with,
da
?”

“
Okay,” she said, taking the box back. “I just wanted to break the ice.”

“
Ice
broken,” he said, putting out his cigarette. “Vasily, show Ms. Palmer out of my house.”

“
Sorry,” she said, realizing that she had offended him. “Maybe this was the wrong thing to do, but I just wanted to see you again.” Her voice was softer now. She gave a nervous smile and turned to follow Vasily.

Anatoly watched her walk away and felt a little guilty for being so hard on the woman. In truth, he wanted to see her again too.

“
Tomorrow at noon. Lunch with me alone,” he said, rubbing his dog’s head. “Then you do my interview.”

She turned and smiled. “See you then.”

Chapter Three

Nicola Agosto perched his feet up on the park bench and watched as a group of men filed out of
Mother Russia
into the high-end luxury vehicles awaiting them and drove off into the sunset. He found it very cinematic in a wayiv font size="3">
The mafia always got away in the movies.
But this was reality, and he had a serious hard-on for the Medlov Crime Family. If it was the last thing that he did, he would put the lot of them in jail, where they belonged.

Folding his newspaper under his arm, he stretched his legs and pulled a couple of dollars from his pocket to give to the homeless man sitting on the bench beside him.

“Every time that you see them going in there, and you call me, you’ll get a little more, Louie,” he said to the old man as he passed him the money. “But it’s got to be
those
guys.”

“Hey, I’m homeless, Nico, not blind. I know what I’m looking for.” He took the money and shoved it into his pants.

“You got good pockets in there? I don’t want the money falling out.”

“I’m going to buy beer and get something to eat,” the man explained. “It won’t be in there long enough to get lost.”

“Alright, alright. I’m out of here, but you take care of yourself.”

“Same to you,” the homeless man said, standing up. “Say hello to the wife. Thank her for the food she sent down last week. She’s a freaking saint, your wife.”

“Tell me about it,” Agosto said, rubbing his lower back. How people lived on park benches was beyond him.

He walked down the trolley line to his unmarked squad car, jumped in and put the keys in the ignition. Then, he paused. In a rush, he’d almost forgotten. He got out quickly and looked under the car to check for a bomb. Since three years ago, he’d learned his lesson about the mafia and bombs. One had nearly cost him his eye...nearly his life.