Page 234 of Hunger
“Coat off,” she orders, her weathered skin crinkling around her eyes from years of hearty laughter.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The thousand-ton silence from the living room nearby informs me that I’m expected and after removing my shoes, I steel myself for a frigid welcome, only to stop dead in my tracks in the doorway of the vast living room, its tones murky, its furniture cold and modern, the place the diametric opposite to the explosion of color and mismatched patterns of Indigo’s home.
As I breach the doorway, a man I had not expected to see slides into view.
Vitaly Bakhtin
Gabriella’s father.
Fuck.
I catch sight of myself in the huge silver-framed mirror above the marble mantelpiece opposite before greeting my mother, Sandra, kneeling down to kiss her on the cheek. She’s sitting in a dark-brown leather armchair to the left opposite two men—Vitaly and my father, Landon, standing next to him near a squat table in black wood bearing a silver ashtray and some glasses of bourbon.
My mother’s frame stiffens as I kiss her as I’ve been trained to do to avoid the consequences of not greeting her warmly enough. She doesn’t answer me. Instead, her gaze seeks out my father, her pale blue eyes meeting his thunderous glare.
Reading the thwart tension zigzagging its way through the room, I contemplate not shaking the men’s hands, but being the asshole I am, decide to anyway, eyeballing Vitaly as I stroll up to him, stretching out my hand. His piercing brown eyes, the same color and shape as his daughter’s, bore into me but he shakes my hand nonetheless, his grip strong.
Aware of my father’s glare, I don’t offer him the same courtesy but instead bow my head. “Father.”
He says not a word as I turn to sit down, scanning the room, the exits, their pockets, their bodies, the objects lying around them, including the engraved knife lying on a table nearby.
Vitaly’s lined navy three-piece suit does little to hide his muscular physique—one on par with my father’s… and with mine.
“Would you like a drink, Greyson?” asks Dorothy from behind.
“Just water please,” I reply.
“My wife will get it,” interrupts Landon. “Leave us.Now.”
My fingers curl around the edges of the armchair as I breathe through the disdain he has always shown his staff.
To my father, like all parents of the narcissistic variety, a therapist once informed me, hierarchy is everything, a fact that has stained every aspect of his relationship with me. I am inherently lesser than him by virtue of the fact that I’m his child. In his eyes, I owe him, no matter what he has taken from me, and the rage that consumes him when I don’t offer him the reverence he believes he deserves permeates our every interaction, as does the secret that hangs between us, poisoning the air, corroding me every time I inhale it.
My mother, already drunk I’d guess based on her gait and the fact that she’s taken everything off but a slip of a dress, which usually happens when she’s had too much to drink, heads over to the bar, pouring water from a bottle into a glass, managing to spill some along the way.
I watch a rivulet of water eke down the side of the tumbler as she places it onto the glass coffee table before me.
“Thank you.”
She scoffs, sitting back down, grabbing a cigarette from a packet and lighting it with shaky hands adorned with multiple gold rings.
“So,” I begin, if for no other reason than to attempt to shatter the tension befouling the room. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You know full well what.” My father’s gritted teeth make the words emerge like gravel spit out by spinning tires. “I've informed Vitaly of recent events.”
“And what events would those be, Father?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he growls, the cruel sound reverberating through the room. His fingers clutch the glass of whiskey on the mantelpiece so firmly that I feel sure it’s about to shatter. “We know why we’re here. We’re here to discuss your engagement… as well as the whore you’ve most ill-advisedly taken.”
I try to conceal the shudder rattling my body as my glare roughens as I absorb the insult. Luckily for both of us, I’ve spent my life listening to my father call womensluts, whores, cunts, and other less palatable words, so I’m just about able to mitigate my rancor at the word.
“So, who is the whore you’re insulting my daughter with?” asks Vitaly as he fills a seat on the chair to my right, the pale dregs of his faded Bulgarian accent still infiltrating certain words.
“She’s none of your business, Vitaly.”
His shoulders rise as his breathing quickens and he rubs one hand with the sturdy fingers of another. “Like hell, she isn’t. You’re supposed to be engaged to myfuckingdaughter.”