You Don't Know Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (5 page)

Tasha Evanoff

I
stand a block away from my home. I look around me and there is no one. It’s still early and no one actually walks the streets in this neighborhood. There is a nip in the autumn air, but I am warm in the butter-soft, brown leather jacket that Noah insisted I wear.

‘I can’t be seen in it,’ I told him.

‘Then ditch it before you get home,’ he replied carelessly.

I stood still while he helped me into it. He lifted my hair out of the collar and zipped me up as if I was a child. Then he stepped away from me and let his hands drop to his sides.

‘So it’s goodbye,’ I said, wanting desperately to prolong those last moments.

He didn’t answer. Just nodded and opened the door, his hand clutching the handle so hard his knuckles shone white. I didn’t want to go, but my legs moved and I walked over the threshold, down the steps, and straight into the cab. I smiled automatically at the man called Sam as he shut the door.

As he got into the driver’s seat I turned my head and looked at Noah. His tall frame filled the doorway, still, dark and mysterious. I lifted my hand and waved, but he did not wave back. Then the cab began to move and I wanted to scream for him to stop, to take me back where I belong.

But I didn’t.

I just sat in the cab, numb and silent, until we were nearly at my house. That’s when my sense of self-preservation kicked in and I leaned forward and told Sam to drop me off a block before my house.

‘Just there, by that post box would be great.’

That’s how I come to be standing a block away from home hugging Noah’s jacket. A cold October wind ruffles my hair as I take the first step towards the place I call home and my legs work. I take another step and another step. With every step my body starts rewiring itself. I did what I wanted to, and it was the most beautiful fantasy I could have dreamed of, but now it was over, and real life had to begin again.

When I am half a block away I take the jacket off, but I cannot bring myself to throw it away. I roll it up into a ball and walk a bit further down the road. My hands are itching to throw it away. If I get caught … there will be hell to pay for not just me, but Noah too, but my heart won’t let me. It is the only thing I will ever have of him.

As I get to my best friend Lina’s house, I pop into her front garden and stuff the jacket in the blue recycling containers left outside. It must be collection day. I know the trucks don’t come until mid-morning. I’ll either come back in a couple of hours and retrieve it, or I’ll just call Lina and ask her to keep it for me until later.

When I get closer to the house I take out my mobile phone and call my grandmother. Although it is five-thirty in the morning, she answers her phone on the first ring and sounds completely alert. My grandma wakes up at four every morning to do her prayers. She prays for hours for my father’s soul.

‘Tasha,’ she says.

‘Baba, can you give me a hand?’

For a moment she is silent. Then she exhales the breath she is holding. ‘Of course.’

I walk to the wall at the back of the house and wait across the road. The gates have CCTV cameras running 24 hours a day, but the walls only have cameras that swivel on a 180% arc. So if you time your journey to or from the wall carefully you will never appear in it. I wait, half hidden by a cherry tree. Five minutes later a rope comes over the wall and I run to it.

I have less than 45 seconds before the camera will return to that spot. I run across the road and climb the ladder nimbly. I have been doing this since I was six years old. I jump onto the springy grass and pull the ladder up behind me. I carry it with me and run to the ancient Yew tree. Less than ten seconds left. I reach into the roots of the tree and pluck the rope out of the metal hook hidden within. I yank it but it gets stuck.

Shit.

Five seconds left.

I get on my haunches, untangle it, it comes off, and I heave it free. Clutching the ladder and rope to my chest, I roll on the ground and get behind the tree. I push myself upright and lean against the back of the tree. My heart is hammering and adrenaline is buzzing through my veins, but I’m smiling. Three Rottweilers are licking my hands and face.

I made it.

I speak softly to them, patting their muscular, well-trained bodies, and fishing little treats from my cardigan top to give to them. ‘Go on. Off with you,’ I tell them, and they trot off to resume their guarding duties.

I stand up and wait for the camera to do its complete sweep before I run back to the house. I throw the rope ladder back into its black bag and dust myself off. Thank god, it is not raining. Although I have made this trip in the rain, I would have made a right mess of myself, rolling on the wet ground. Carrying the bag, I walk coolly into the kitchen.

It is empty, but for Baba. She is sitting at the kitchen table wearing the thick housecoat she wears to bed and a dressing gown over it. Her short, coarse iron-gray hair is uncombed, and her face is pale without her lipstick. There is a pot of tea and two cups and saucers laid out on the table. I walk up to the table and, dropping the bag on the floor, sit in front of her. Silently, she fills the cups with tea.

‘Isn’t the appointment for your wedding dress fitting today?’ she asks in Russian. Baba is the only one who speaks to me in Russian.

‘Yes.’

‘At what time?’

I look down at the steam rising from my tea. ‘Half past eleven.’

She pushes the container of sugar towards me. ‘Where have you been?’

I look into her deep set, dark eyes. They’re similar to Papa’s in coloring, but while his are cold and dangerous, grandma’s are warm and full of concern.

‘I was with a man,’ I confess.

Tasha Evanoff

A
look of deep sorrow and fear comes into her eyes. She clasps her pink, shiny hands on the table top because they have started trembling.

I love my grandmother and though I knew she would not approve, I never expected to see her look so desolate or frightened for me. It’s not like I’ve hurt anybody. I just took something for myself and I have been careful not to cause consequences to anybody. I reach for her hands and cover them with mine.

‘Oh, Baba, please, please, don’t be sad or scared,’ I plead. ‘Nothing bad happened and nothing will. I wanted him for a long, long time and I would have always regretted if I had not taken this night for myself, but now I’ve had him I can move on. I can put it all behind me and be a dutiful daughter to Papa.’

She blinks slowly. ‘You wanted him for a long, long time?’ she echoes in a daze.

‘Yes, for a very long time.’

She shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Have I not known you at all,
Solnyshko
?’

‘You’ve known all of me, Baba. This is just something my heart wanted.’ I smile. ‘It’s like how you sometimes still crave for your babushka’s
smokva
.’

‘
Smokva
? Yes, we called it dried paradise apple in our village,’ she says, her eyes misting with the memory. ‘It was very precious, but I have never crawled over a wall in the middle of the night, or … risked a man’s life for it.’

I take my hands away from hers. ‘Papa will never find out.’

She shakes her head. ‘You could have been caught. Someone could have seen you.’

‘No. I was very, very careful. I told no one. Not Mama, not even you.’

She sighs sadly. ‘Do you know
smokva
originally meant dried figs, but because they were too expensive for the ordinary person, somebody had the idea to boil up locally available apples, quinces, plums and rowanberries in honey or sugar syrup?
Smokva
was the poor man’s substitute for figs. You don’t need to make do with a substitute, Tasha. You can have the real thing.’

I stare into her eyes and whisper, ‘That was the real thing, Baba. That was the real thing. What I will have after him will be the substitute.’

Her eyes widen and she gasps. ‘Who is this man?’

‘You wouldn’t know him.’

Her eyes narrow. This is when she looks closest to Papa. ‘But my son does?’

I nod.

She draws her breath sharply. ‘This man, will he tell, boast to anyone about you?’

I shake my head. ‘He’s not a kid. He understands it could cost his life.’

‘And he will not try to make trouble?’

I shake my head again.

‘Will you see him again?’

‘No,’ I say and it is a wretched sound. I can see that it startles my Baba. ‘It was just the once,’ I say miserably, ‘so I’d know what dried figs taste like.’

‘Oh,
Solnyshko,
you don’t know what you have done.’

‘I have done nothing. It was just this once. I did it for me. My whole life has been one long Lent and just this once I indulged.’

‘You think you have had one taste of carnal pleasure and now you can walk away and never look back? You have only awakened the demon of desire.’

We are both staring at each other when the door to the kitchen suddenly opens. Both of us jump and swivel our heads towards it. Papa is standing at the doorway. He is still dressed in the clothes he went out in last night. My father is a balding, short, barrel-shaped man. If you saw him in the street you wouldn’t even notice him, but if ever you chanced to look into his black eyes you would shudder with something unnameable. Like looking into the eyes of an insect. Not evil. Just soulless. This man could kill a man with the same emotion with which he sneezes or takes a piss. 

His cold, pitiless eyes narrow at the sight of us: my grandmother in her dressing gown and me all dressed as if to go out or … no, the thought will not even occur to him that I could engage in a dirty stop out night. Surreptitiously, slowly, I push the black bag with the rope ladder deeper under the table.

‘Good morning, Papa.’

‘Why are you dressed at this time of the morning?’ he asks, a frown marring his forehead.

‘The child has her first wedding dress fitting this morning and she is so excited about it she woke before the birds were up.’

My father’s face relaxes. He turns to me. ‘Who are you going with?’

‘Lina.’

‘Good.’ He comes into the kitchen. I stand and, walking over to him, dutifully peck him on his cheek. He smells of alcohol and perfume, a strong cloying scent. It makes me step away from him quickly, afraid that he will smell Noah on me, but he absently rubs his cheek where I have kissed him, and turns to look at his mother. When I was younger, I thought he didn’t want me to kiss him, and he was actually rubbing away the kiss, but when I stopped kissing him the next time I saw him, he looked at me with his cold eyes and asked me why I did not kiss him. ‘Never forget to kiss your Papa,’ he told me sternly.

‘Vasily is coming from Moscow this afternoon,’ Papa tells my grandma, ‘and he is bringing
Ptichie Moloko
from The Prague restaurant for you.’

Ptichie Moloko
or Birds’ Milk Cake is made from French marshmallows and chocolate and set on a cake base. It is the king of all Russian desserts and Baba’s favorite.

Grandma keeps her eyes on me while she smiles, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

‘Oh good. No one makes it like they do at The Prague restaurant. All the rest are plastic imitations.’

A dull heat spreads up my throat and into my face. My father looks at me. ‘You’re blushing. Why?’

I swallow hard.

‘Leave the child alone, Nikita. She is excited about her appointment,’ Baba says reaching for her cup of tea. She sips the cold liquid calmly.

Papa just grunts.

It never fails to amaze me the tone my grandmother uses on her son. This is the man who makes grown men shiver. He has never raised a hand to me. He has never needed to. The only time I saw something cruel and frightening in his face was when I came home from school and called him Daddy. Like all the other children in my school did. His head swung around so fast it was like the strike of a snake.

‘What did you call me?’ he asked, so softly I felt goosebumps rise on my hands. Anyone would have thought I’d used the f or the c word.

I thought he must have had misheard. ‘Daddy,’ I repeated.

‘I’m not your daddy. I’m your Papa. Don’t ever try to be like those miserable creatures you go to school with.
You can mix with them and pretend to be one of them, but never forget you are Russian and only Russian. You have my blood in your veins.
Never let me hear you exchange your culture and your Russian ways for theirs again.’

He had totally discounted my English heritage. The blood of my mother. Of course I never said anything. My mother tells me. Let sleeping dogs lie. Wake them up and they will bite you.

‘Yes, Papa,’ I said immediately, and since then I have never done anything that has earned that soft, menacing tone from him again.

The kitchen falls suddenly silent.

‘It’s been a long night. I’m going to bed,’ Papa says into the strained silence.

‘Sleep well, Papa,’ I say, and step forward to kiss his cheek again. My father reaches out a hand and plucks a one-inch-long twig from the elbow of my cardigan and drops it to the ground. I freeze with fear, but he doesn’t realize the significance, and turns towards the door. I watch him go out of the door with relief and hear the sound of his shoes on the marble floors echo through the empty house.

‘I suppose I better go to my room as well. Sergei will be waiting,’ I tell my grandmother.

She nods.

I bend to pick up the black bag and she grasps my hand suddenly in hers. The steely strength of her grip surprises me and my eyes fly to meet hers. Something strange and dark lurks in them.

‘
Solnyshko,
if you ignore your dreams they will limp away from you to die a sad death,’ she warns urgently.