Athletic, charming, beloved by women of all ages. Lucky for him, it’s one of the few jobs in the Bratva that can be done from home. He’s the head bookkeeper for our territory in Moscow, with a team of accountants beneath him.

I feared that my father had been neglecting his work as much as his hygiene, but the stack of ledgers strewn across his desk seemed to indicate that he at least had not forgotten how to do his job. I will NEVER allow love to make me weak again. I learned my lesson from that infatuation. It’s like he wants it to collapse on top of him so he can suffocate in the rubble. I scaled the stairs in anger and resentment at how far he had allowed our house to continue to decay.

My father hadn’t met me at the airport-I had no expectation that he would. I doubt you could offer them a king’s ransom to return. He banned the maids from the house years ago. Rats certainly, and perhaps even a pigeon or a cat. Where the house used to smell of dust and mold, now I had to pull my shirt up over the lower half of my face to filter out the stench of something that had died beneath the mounds of garbage. My father’s burgeoning collection of trash overflowed into the entryway: stacks of books, newspapers, magazines, boxes, bags, and packages piled to the ceiling in labyrinthine channels that forced me to weave my way down the hallway and up the stairs. But the moment I opened the front door, I was hit with a wave of fetid, rotting air. From the exterior, the sandstone facade looked as expensive and well-maintained as ever. As accustomed as I’ve become to the chaos inside our mansion, I was still shocked when I came home from school in the spring. He’ll have to leave our house on Noble Row for the first time in months. T MOSCOW he Bratva high table meets tonight in a private room on the top floor of the Bolshoi Theater.

The Bully by Sophie Lark