Chapter 2 - The Blue 'E'
For three seconds, Victor Malenkov looked at the thin stream of blood running down Aliyah’s wrist as if he were staring at an unexploded ordnance.
"Everyone out," Victor said smoothly.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't turn his head toward the bar. He simply uttered the two words into the heavy silence of the room.
Mac didn't ask questions. Neither did the fifty dock workers. Within twenty seconds, chairs were pushed back, coats were grabbed in panicked haste, and the heavy oak front door of The Red Lion Pub swung open and shut until the main room was completely empty. The deadbolts clicked from the outside as Nikolai secured the entrance from the alley.
Aliyah tried to draw her hand back, her face flushing with embarrassment despite the sharp pain in her palm. "Mr. Malenkov, please, it's just a scratch. I can go to the kitchen and grab the first-aid kit—"
"Sit down," Victor commanded softly.
He didn't leave room for debate. He guided her into the leather booth, forcing her to sit on the cushioned seat while he remained standing over her, his tall frame blocking out the warm light of the brass sconce.
"I'm studying nursing at BU," Aliyah said, trying to steady her breathing and regain her professional composure. "I know how to clean a simple laceration."
Victor looked down at her, his jaw set so tight the muscles bulged along his cheeks. "Then you know better than to ignore an open wound."
A tiny, involuntary smile touched the corner of Aliyah's lips despite the absurdity of the situation. "Fair enough."
Victor reached inside the breast pocket of his charcoal jacket.
He pulled out an old, square piece of white linen. It was impeccably ironed, soft from years of careful keeping, but yellowed slightly along the stitched borders by the undeniable passage of time.
In the bottom right corner, embroidered in delicate, faded blue silk thread, was a small, ornate letter: E.
Victor knelt on one knee in front of the booth—a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars, kneeling among broken glass and spilled soup on a sticky pub floor.
He took her right wrist in his hand. His skin was warm, calloused, and remarkably gentle despite the massive size of his palm. He held her wrist steady, ignoring the blood that smudged his cuff, and carefully wrapped the white linen around her palm, applying firm, even pressure to the laceration.
His hands were shaking.
It was a subtle, almost imperceptible tremor, but Aliyah felt it through the linen. A man who controlled half the city with an iron fist was trembling while wrapping a thumb cut.
Aliyah looked down at his dark head, at the silver threads in his hair, and then down at the blue initial visible beneath his thumb.
She made the mistake that no human being in Boston had dared to make in twelve years.
"Who was E?" Aliyah asked softly.
Victor went completely, utterly still.
The low hum of the refrigeration unit behind the bar was the only sound left in the room. His gray eyes slowly rose to meet hers. The coldness in them was gone, replaced by a deep, ancient well of silence.
"My wife," Victor said flatly.
Aliyah felt the air leave her lungs. She looked down at the soft white cloth wrapped tightly around her hand.
"She died?" Aliyah whispered, her natural empathy as a caregiver overriding her instinct for self-preservation.
"Twelve years ago," Victor replied. His voice was devoid of drama, carrying only the weight of absolute, unyielding stone. "In November."
Aliyah knew the story now. Everyone in the city knew the bare facts—the car bomb intended for Victor that had detonated outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, taking Elena Malenkov instead. But looking at him now, kneeling in the dark, holding an old piece of linen, Aliyah realized that Victor hadn't just lost his wife that day.
He had built a tomb around himself and stayed inside it ever since.
May you like
He had carried that single handkerchief in his pocket for four thousand four hundred days. He had never let another human being touch it.
Until tonight.
