Page 126 of Filthy Little Fix
That's when a vibration starts. Low, against the wood of the dresser opposite my side of the bed. His phone.
Dante grunts against my hair. He tightens his grip on me. I see the reflex—his hand flying under the mattress and stopping halfway as he realizes: it's just the phone.
The vibration continues. Insistent.
Svetlana, for sure. The only one with the nerve.
After a full minute of torture, with no one saying anything, the phone stops. Silence returns. I almost sigh in relief.
Then, from the nightstand beside me, my phone starts to ring. It used to be on silent mode all the time, but with the Volkovs, I was forced to change that. A missed call from Svetlana always meant a huge lecture. Now I regret it. My ringtone is loud and shrill on purpose, the annoying kind. It makes my head hurt. It's too early for this.
Dante curses without moving away from me. "What the fuck is that?"
I love how his voice sounds when he wakes up. Deeper, hoarse.
I try to remember. Today isn't a day off. So I reach for the phone purely out of obligation. With the Volkovs, schedules don't matter much either. I've been summoned at questionable hours more times than I can remember.
The name "Svetlana Volkov" glows on the screen.
"Yeah?" I answer. My voice is still a little thick with sleep.
"Leonel," she says, with no ‘good morning’. "Put your boyfriend on. The idiot refuses to answer his own phone and we have a problem with customs in Rotterdam that needs his attention."
Your boyfriend. She intones it like an offense.
Like Dmitry, she's also noticed. In fact, she noticed evenbeforehim and has protested at every possible opportunity.
At the beginning of the year, she said I was a statistical anomaly. Asked if I was going to throw myself off a bridge when Dante got tired of me. She also asked how Dante had never killed me, considering how often, and I quote, I am "inappropriately disrespectful". According to Dante, the initial impression I gave her was that of a vulnerable and cordial boy, but that image crumbled with each new interaction. Good. Since then, she's made her opinion my problem.
In March, she told me I was too young to understand that intensity burns out fast. As if the age difference between us was decades. It's seven years. She predicted that, in a month, Dante would be tired of his new toy.
In May, she was perplexed that whatever Dante and I had was still going on. She told me I was proving myself to be a very valuable yet very unstable asset, and then I heard her yelling at Dante somewhere in the mansion about the black eye he'd given me the night before (which had also made me come, but she didn't find out about that part).
In June, she cornered me in a hallway after a meeting. This was after I convinced Dante to use a rival as an infiltrator instead of killing him. She said Dante listens to me, therefore I am a problem, because he could make a bad decisionbecauseof me and themind control abilitiesshe invented for me.
Last month, she gave up the fight. She had to notice at some point that the toy had moved into the dollhouse and redecorated the whole damn thing. She decided to include me in her calculations and attempts to keep Dante on track—she talks to me when she thinks he's overdoing something and making the wrong decision. Which is a little funny because, although Dante does listen to me, he'sstillDante Volkov. That means telling himwhat to do is completely out of the question. The best I can wish for her isgood luck with that.
Calling him my boyfriend is the most explicit acknowledgment she's ever given me. Even if it's laced with disgust. She knows that in the nights and early mornings, he's in my bed. The fastest way to him, now, is through me.
I lift my phone and tilt it back toward Dante. "It's for you. Your sister." I crane my neck to try to see him. "She said you're my boyfriend."
He grunts. But he doesn't protest. At some point, he started to accept it too.
He snatches the phone from my hand. "Why the fuck are you calling him?"
I nestle back into the pillows. Dante starts speaking Russian, which usually happens when they're talking among themselves or when they're fighting. Now, it's both.
I turn to face him, and he adjusts to hold me, without even paying attention. It's become so natural he doesn't have to.
I rest my head on his chest and trace one of his tattoos. I like listening to him speak Russian. I don't understand a word, but it's his voice. I could listen to it for hours.
I should ask him to teach me. We wouldn't tell Svetlana. She'd never know I understand.
I close my eyes. The anger in his voice is my favorite lullaby.
Yeah. Life is good.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art'sannual charity gala is, according to Svetlana, "a strategic obligation for the maintenance of our philanthropic facade".
