Gilded Tears: A Russian Mafia Romance (Kovalyov Bratva Book 2) by Nicole Fox (novels to read for beginners txt) 📗

I raise my eyebrows and choose my words carefully. I know the moment I meet Tonya with anything close to sentiment or pity, she’ll pull back and completely ignore me.

“That must have been hard.”

Tonya shrugs. “It wasn’t like I could keep her,” she tells me. “I didn’t know what the fuck to do with her. I could barely keep myself alive at that point. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that.”

“How old were you?” I ask.

“Fifteen.”

“Fuck.”

She smiles. “I love it when you swear.”

I frown. “Why?”

“Because you’re like a little Pollyanna princess,” she tells me. “It’s funny.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m no Pollyanna.”

“Yeah, no one buys that shit,” Tonya says.

I feel eyes on me suddenly and I turn slightly to catch Nancy enter the dining area. She’s scratching her arms wildly, her eyes skitter over the crowded tables, looking for a spot to fill.

“Cracko’s here,” Tonya warns me. “Thank fuck our table’s full.”

A part of me feels sorry for Nancy. She looks at Phoenix with a longing that’s impossible to deny.

But I’m also frightened of her.

She’s high through most of the day and prone to bouts of manic emotional highs and lows.

Yesterday, she’d gotten into a fight with someone in an adjoining room.

She went back to cut the woman’s hair off in the night.

She shuffles down the food line and then settles into a table on the far corner of the room. I’m not upset about that in the least.

I’m almost too exhausted to care, though. I haven’t been sleeping very well. Each night, I hear every creak, noise, snore, and nightmare from the other women in the shared room. Sleep is elusive.

Quite apart from them, I have to wake up every three hours to feed Phoenix. I’m so worried that his crying will wake them up and piss them off that I spend most nights tip-toeing along the line between sleep and consciousness, jumping to attention at Phoenix’s slightest stir.

The lack of sleep is really starting to weigh on me. This will be my fourth night at the shelter and it’s still pretty early, but already my eyelids are heavy with exhaustion.

Phoenix lets out a sharp cry and Tonya winces as though someone’s just knifed her.

“Stop being dramatic,” I tell her.

We’ve fallen into an easy and unexpected friendship, though I knew better than to categorize it as that to Tonya.

“That sound makes me want to pull my ears right off,” she says.

I roll my eyes again and force the pacifier into Phoenix’s mouth. He’s been rejecting it for the last hour, but now, he finally accepts it and quiets down a little.

“Jesus, finally,” Tonya says. “Why the fuck didn’t you do that before?”

“I tried.”

“All right, all right,” she says, holding her hands up as though I’m brandishing a gun in her direction. “Don’t bite my head off.”

I take another mouthful of soup-soaked bread and sway a little from side to side in the hopes of coaxing Phoenix to sleep.

His eyes are tired but he just keeps staring up at me stubbornly.

“Suit yourself,” I whisper to him, running my finger across his cheek.

“Tonya?” I ask cautiously. “What happened with your daughter?”

She looks down at her now-empty soup bowl. “Gave her up for adoption,” she says. “The closed kind. Nice couple. Fucking picture perfect. That’s the whole reason I picked them. Apparently, they’d been trying for ages to have a baby and it never happened for them. Fucked up.”

“What was?”

“Dunno,” Tonya says with a shrug. “The whole fucking situation. People like them who have their shit together and can’t have a baby. And then there’s people like you and me. Lives are shot to shit. Can’t hardly take care of our own damn selves, much less a little rugrat. And we still end up knocked up. Don’t have two pennies to rub together, but we got babies. That’s what’s fucked up.”

The ring I’ve hidden in my bra pricks me right on cue. The diamond is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.

And yet, I can’t bring myself to sell it.

I can’t bring myself to let go of the one last thread that ties me to the past.

“I used to have my shit together,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” Tonya asks. “Had yourself a man?”

I see Artem’s six-foot-three frame in my mind’s eye so clearly that for a second it’s as if he’s just walked through the door.

Then I blink and his image fades, leaving me feeling cold and lonely.

“Yeah,” I reply shortly.

“He left you?”

I shook my head. “I left him.”

Tonya frowns. “Did he beat you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Cheat?”

“No.”

She stares at me as though she can’t quite comprehend any other reason why a woman would leave a man who was still interested in sticking around.

“Then why?” she demands, as though she’s owed an explanation and I’m obligated to give her one.

“…It’s complicated.”

She rolls her eyes. Hard.

“That’s such a fucking crock of an excuse,” she says, practically snarling at me. “You know what my man did when he found out I was pregnant? He told everyone that I was a slut who fucked so many guys that he was definitely not the father.”

“Oh, Tonya—”

“Wipe that fucking look off your face,” Tonya says as she glares at me. “It’s fucking ancient history. I’m over it.”

“What did you do?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I considered an abortion,” she admits. “Made the appointment and everything. But… then I couldn’t go through with it. So I dropped out of school, had the baby, and handed her over to a woman who was ready to be a mom.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Who are you sorry for?” Tonya seethes. “My baby got two great parents and I… well, I got to live my life.”

“Right,” I say. I don’t bother pointing out that she isn’t living much of a life at all.

For the first time, I see Tonya’s eyes land on Phoenix’s pink cheek and linger there a moment. Almost… tenderly.

But then she notices me watching her and she turns her face away instantly.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she reminds me.

But now