Chapter Text
New York, 2005; it’s cold outside. 1:00 AM— precisely 1:27 AM. The months are slipping into January, the coldest month of the year in New York. It’s dark out and Kirill wonders why Iosef has been gone for a week and two days since the clock struck 12:00.
Here are the numbers: twenty-three, nine, zero. Twenty-three missed calls from Mr. Tarasov to his son, Iosef who was supposedly staying at his friend’s apartment; nine voice messages from Mr. Tarasov all left unread and unchecked, and zero replies from Iosef who God knows where he is. Dead, running away, kidnapped, out sleeping at another friend’s place that no one in the mob knows— who knows. What Kirill does know is that if Viggo is agitated, so is everyone under the name of the Tarasov mob. Iosef isn’t with Abram who lives just north of Queens, and he isn’t with the few close friends he has. They haven’t checked a few others since neither of them know where each one live
Avi shoots a look towards Kirill, and they exchange glances. Kirill doesn’t show much on his face but Avi looks like he’s treading the lines of being fired or being slaughtered like a live animal by Mr. Tarasov. Most likely, he’s drunk. Or on his way to it. Kirill exhales, and it’s a little too forced as Avi shoots him a look that says “are we f*cked?”. To Kirill? The answer is yes. Avi and Kirill are speaking with their actions and facial expressions, glances being shared with knowing feelings on the matter. Tarasov’s phone is on the table, and he’s long given up on contacting Iosef.
“Sir,” Avi says and it breaks the moment of grace that came with silence. “has he…. responded?” Kirill looks at the phone. 1:36 AM, ten minutes have passed, ten minutes of silence.
Tarasov is silent. For a moment, Avi, Kirill— and the other men in the room think he’s asleep or f*cking dead, but he’s silent and still. Corpse-quiet. Kirill almost wishes, but that would put either Abram or Iosef in charge and he doesn’t think he wants to deal with either. Viggo Tarasov is the better option of the three, Kirill and Avi know that well since they started working.
“Kirill,” Tarasov says.
“Sir.” Kirill says back.
“Find him.” Tarasov says. “Лучше если бы я его отдал.” That’s something, Kirill thinks. Something that one shouldn’t say to their own offspring. Avi’s gaze follows Kirill as he strides out of the eerily cold, silent, and tense atmosphere that follows around crime bosses like Viggo Tarasov himself.
That little kid is impulsive, and with a driver’s license and money, Kirill’s sure that Iosef is off elsewhere. Worst case scenario, out of the state. Iosef recently just had his own car, Tarasov having bought it for him for business and Iosef doesn’t use it much for that; just mostly driving to places where he won’t have to see his dad or anything that resembles him.
Kirill has no leads at all, he’s merely in his car in the early hours of the morning. Sparse are the cars that pass by him in the streets, as he thinks of his next move. He fixes the rear-view mirror in his car, the keys in his hand as he looks at what he has now. Information that he has. Here is what he had; Iosef has a car, it’s black like the rest of almost everyone under the eyes of the High Table, he’s an impulsive young kid with said car, he has money and he’s always with his equally impulsive, rude friends.
Kirill has to call his impulsive, rude friends. Starting with that guy named Victor, some guy Iosef met and they’ve been insufferable together ever since, bullying the members of the Tarasov mob. He quickly rummages through his camera roll, trying to find the pictures he has saved from when Tarssov first assigned him to guard his son; all the contacts of his friends from nearly a year ago. Victor, there it is, his number spelled out right in front of Kirill’s eyes.
Kirill memorizes the number before dialing it, and it takes a moment for this kid to pick up.
“Who’s this?”
“Kirill.” He says. “Iosef’s bodyguard. Victor are you?”
They’ve never really talked to each other, it’s Iosef who tries to speak to Kirill but he doesn’t wish to make their business relationship a friendship. Friendship hurts, Kirill knows that well— Iosef doesn’t.
“Oh.” Victor says. “What the f*ck do you want? It’s, uh…. two in the morning.”
“Iosef’s dad wants me to find him. He’s been gone for a week.” Kirill explains the situation, one hand on the steering wheel of the car starting up and one hand on his phone. Kirill doesn’t move his car out of the parking lot of the building.
“What do you want me to do about that?” Victor laughs, Kirill remains dead silent, and it’s almost like Victor can sense the seriousness of the situation. “What? Are you gonna get fired or something?”
“Do you know anything?” Kirill asks.
“I don’t f*cking know.” Victor replies back. Shuffling in the background. Kirill is attentive and there doesn’t seem to be a single sound out of the mouth of that loud, egotistical child. “What do you know by now?”
Kirill pauses. He doesn’t know much, when it comes to actually placing where Iosef might be. There’s three ways he can go, north, west, and south. All of which can take Kirill a whole month searching and by then, maybe Iosef’s completely detached from the grasps of New York. The Tarasov mob can only stretch so far with its territory and Iosef has left that area until he comes back, maybe a month or a year later.
“He’s been gone for a week. And two days.” Kirill sighs. “He won’t answer Mr. Tarasov.”
“Okay.” Victor says back. “I don’t f*cking kno-”
“If you don’t tell me where the f*ck he is or where he might have went, there’s a good chance he’d be dead or picked up by a rival of Mr. Tarasov.” Kirill’s had it with this little kid on the other end of the phone and it feels more like he’s trying to negotiate with a child more than him asking for information on Iosef’s whereabouts. “Do you want that to happen, huh? Knowing that your friend is dead or missing?”
Victor falls silent on the other end. He hasn’t hung up yet which is a surprise. With people like Victor, they usually just leave their messes and don’t look back but Kirill’s words may have sparked a bit of something. God, f*cking finally.
“He’s in a sh*tty motel. I told him he could crash at my place for a week but he was too much of a bitch. He told me he didn’t want to be in New York for a bit.” Victor says. “A motel. Near Lake Ariel.”
“He’s- where?” Kirill notes that down in the back of his head. So he’s hitting the brakes towards Pennsylvania now it seems. Pennsylvania, Queens. Queens to Pennsylvania. And Kirill sometimes wonders why Iosef was ever given a car to begin with.
“Pennsylvania, last time he texted me.” Victor says. “That’s all I have, f*ck off.” Victor hangs up almost instantly after he hands Kirill the words: f*ck off. How mature.
Pennsylvania. f*cking Pennsylvania. Of course. Kirill has found Iosef many times before, only because Tarasov had forced him to text or call Kirill on where he was going. Kirill sighs, it’s a deep sigh. He checks his watch, 2:03 AM. This is gonna be long. He inserts his keys and maneuvers his car out of the parking lot. That’s two hours of driving and Kirill already feels like the energy has left the confines of his body.
Before Kirill’s car leaves the nearly empty parking lot under the building, he hits his head on the edge of the steering wheel. This family is giving him grey hairs. f*ck it, actually. Maybe he should have stayed as an assassin, since he had the right to refuse hits and spend his time doing things that won’t take away pieces of his soul and decreasing his life span by the millisecond.
His car moves into the street, pulling out of the parking lot as the bright lights of other cars seem to flash him like the thundering visual of a flashbang. It’s nearly 3:00 AM and Kirill’s beyond f*cking tired. He starts to follow the street that turns down south and the drive is as silent as it can get. There’s nothing but Kirill and his thoughts. It’s dead silent, and he looks at himself in the rear view mirror. There’s only a few cars that come by every so often, which is a surprise for a city like Queens, in New York.
The route he’s taking is two hours long, maybe more if traffic persists but the route he’s taking isn’t that popular. Kirill passes by a church, golden lights inside, and in the corner of his eye, he sees just a few people praying at the wooden benches. There’s nothing of interest to Kirill as he looks back to his map, the knuckle of his pinky tracing the fastest way he can take to near Lake Ariel in Pennsylvania.
Iosef has been gone for a week. Last text message he sent to both Tarasov and Kirill were about a minute and a half apart.(‘gonna crash @ my friend’s place 2night’ Iosef texts Kirill casually at around 10:58 PM. ‘Which one?’ Kirill texts back a minute later. Iosef leaves his message unread for an hour and several minutes then replies: ‘vic lol’.)
Iosef is usually at Victor’s place almost everyday. He wakes up at the crack-ass of dawn and puts on a hoodie or his leather jacket and leaves to go to his place, only to come back later in the evening if Tarasov wants him to. Iosef doesn’t have his own place, surprisingly. Kirill thought the kid would get kicked out but, no. It was Iosef who was willingly leaving everyday just to go to Victor’s sh*tty apartment about a twelve minute drive away from Tarasov’s honestly better place. Kirill doesn’t know why Iosef even leaves, when the place he’s given is better. Kirill’s seen the sh*tty state of Victor’s apartment which is a building behind other buildings. It is always the same when Kirill has to pick up his boss’ fresh-out-of-highschool kid from his friend’s apartment.
The pattern goes like this: Kirill gets called up by either his boss or his boss’ brother who’s more better when it comes to actually being talked to; Kirill takes his car and drives down there; he parks his car in front of this Walmart and has to walk inside dark and awful alleyways with a gun in his pocket; then he has to walk up some stairs and reach the fourth floor and knock on the door of Victor’s apartment. Sometimes it’s his roommate that answers, sometimes it’s Iosef who rolls his eyes and tells Victor he’s gonna leave but most of the time it’s Victor who answers the door.
Kirill’s phone rings, an unknown number. He presses on it, puts it on speaker as quickly as he can despite free space on the road and the sparse cars that come and go like flashes of thunder.
“Kirill speaking.” He says.
“Dude what the f*ck?” Iosef.
Kirill’s face twitches in annoyance, his grip on the steering wheel grows a little tighter when he hears Iosef’s voice on the other end of the line.
Calm yourself, Kirill, he thinks to himself. “Where are you? Everyone’s been searching for you, you’ve been gone for a week now.”
“Okay?” Iosef says back. “Not my problem.”
“It’s your family’s problem. Your friend’s problem.” Kirill puts an emphasis on the second part because in reality, Iosef’s not really bound to New York because of the Tarasovs. It’s his clique of assholes and impulsive kids who peaked in highschool and turned to being sh*tty people.
Iosef is silent on the other end of the line and Kirill can hear the faint noise of a television in the background.
“Where are you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, FBI agent.”
Kirill groans, clicks his tongue and continues being on the phone with Iosef. It’s a short moment of silence as it’s just Iosef on the other end of the phone audibly not caring at all, crunching on chips most likely and watching some sh*t show that Kirill can hear.
“Where are you going with this, Iosef?” Kirill asks.
“With what?”
Kirill lets the words slip out, God f*cking damn is he tired of this kid. “Where are you going exactly with leaving?”
“You think I’m runnin’ the f*ck away like some puss* TV show drama or something” Iosef asks back on the other end of the line.
“Everyone thinks that.”
“Well I’ll tell you this, old man, I’m staying the f*ck away from Viggo.” Viggo. The name strikes a chord in Kirill’s chest, and it almost catches him off guard with how Iosef says his name. Viggo. Not Tarasov, not sir, not even dad or papa.
“Okay.” Kirill says. “Alright.” He clicks his tongue, lips pressing into a thin line. “And he wants you back. Now. Drive back to New York, Iosef.”
“I can do a job, Kirill, I actually f*cking can. All of you literally just, like- f*cking look at me like I’m a middle schooler.” You act like one, Kirill doesn’t say. “And besides, he has loads of people who can do sh*t for him and I’m just kind of f*cking here.”
“And it’s a matter of proving yourself or something?” Kirill asks back. “I-“
Iosef shuts his phone.
Kirill looks at the screen and tries calling him again when the street lights turn red. Ringing, declined. Ringing, declined. The pattern continues until the phone is left ringing and ringing, and it almost gives Kirill some semblance of hope or something. Avi texts him; you found him yet?
‘No. Dumbass.’ Kirill hits his head on the top edge of the steering wheel, the lights turn green and he’s off again back to driving to Pennsylvania. f*ck.
