Pink

“MR. ARSOV, would you be a dear and let me steal you for just five minutes?”

Lev hadn’t even turned the key in the deadbolt to latch the lock on his apartment door when the building’s manager came up behind him. He swore the old woman, Martha Mae, who looked like a strong gust of wind would make her bones rattle, kept a day planner right beside her door to track his schedule.

Because he couldn’t tell her no—the old girl knew it, too. She reminded him of a grandmother he never had, for fuck’s sake. What kind of an asshole would he be to refuse help to a senior citizen managing a sixty-unit building mostly by herself? The actual landlord—a company, not a real person—did very little for the tenants in their part of Harlem despite the fact that the city had been on the company’s ass for a few years now about the heating, lighting, and code issues.

To no avail, clearly.

One only needed to give the hallway he currently stood in a good glance to see the truth staring them right in the face. Water stains on the ceiling. Lights that flickered. Worn carpeting and holes in the walls where exposed wires and pipes ran between units.

The place wasn’t great. Sometimes, he took more cold showers in a month than he wanted to. Often, his one-bedroom apartment wasn’t worth the rent he paid to keep it every month. It kept him off the streets, though.

That’s all Lev needed considering the streets had been a real fucking reality for him just a few short years earlier when he finally hit eighteen, and the foster care system that he grew up inside decided … fuck him. Out on his ass he went with the same garbage bag of clothes and personal items that he’d hauled between homes for the better part of his entire teenage life. He only entered the system because his father passed away in a drive-by shooting in the Bronx when he was two months shy of his thirteenth birthday, and his mother was … well, who knew?

Life had not been kind to Lev Arsov—he still struggled to get by because education had been a secondary thought in his mind when surviving needed to come first. It kicked him in the ass now when all he could manage to get for job opportunities were ones that included back-breaking manual labor or severely underpaid positions in the back of kitchens washing dishes and hauling garbage.

He did those for a while. Until he landed something a bit better—and dangerous—through the connections he made while proving he was the kind of employee that would do what he was told, keep his head down, and his mouth shut about the things he saw while he did it. In a place like New York City, where corruption was everywhere, he was appreciated by certain individuals. Even if those individuals were criminals. He figured … whatever kept the flickering lights on and the shitty roof over his head, right?

“Well, could I be a bother and steal you to help me?” Martha Mae asked again.

Plastering a smile on his face, Lev turned the key in the lock and kept a tight hold on the backpack hanging over his shoulder. Spinning to face the woman who peeked out around the doorjamb of her apartment unit at the very end of the basement floor, she was only a head taller than the goddamn doorknob. In her usual get-up for the evenings, from the rollers in her white hair to the pink, fleece nightdress, her smile welcomed him. Her large, glassy blue eyes always held a bit of hesitation, though.

Like she knew he wouldn’t say no. But she still wondered if he might.

“She holed up there again?” he asked.

Martha Mae sighed. “I tried—I really did.”

He was sure she did. It wouldn’t be the first time. It wasn’t exactly like the old woman was equipped to handle the newest situation that landed in her hands in the form of a truant granddaughter dealing with some serious issues. The kind of things her grandmother certainly couldn’t manage on her own.

But that was the system. It fucked everybody six ways to Sunday. The only thing the system afforded Lev was the skill of survival, and the knowledge that he could and would do whatever he needed to do at the end of the day.

Was he supposed to be thankful?

He wasn’t.

Lev resisted the urge to check his watch if only because he didn’t want Martha Mae to feel as though she was burdening him when he knew her sad reality. Nobody else would help her today—certainly not another tenant. She did her very best to not call the cops on her granddaughter because that almost always never ended well for anybody involved, and it was just yet another strike against a troubled teenager that needed help more than she needed the law. Nonetheless, he’d known the time before he left his apartment, and he was quite aware of the minutes passing him by now.

And the fact he was going to be late for work. On a very important night when he really couldn’t afford to be late if the warning his boss gave him the evening before was any indication. It was a thirty-minute bus trip from his place in Harlem to the bar in the Kitchen where he worked, but shit …

Martha Mae’s worry showed on her forehead where the wrinkles were more apparent than ever when she said, “She stopped answering my calls through the door twenty minutes ago.”

Well, Jesus …

Lev spun on his booted heels and headed for the old lady. “Why didn’t you start with that, woman?”

She tittered and waved her small, frail hands to usher him inside her apartment as she replied, “I will next time.”

Right.

Next time.

There was always next time.

• • •

Lev shouldered through the group of young men lingering in the back hallway of the bar to where the crowd began to spread out nearer his boss’s office at the far rear. His task was made quicker by the fact he towered higher than most of the men waiting in the space as he topped out at six and a half feet tall with shoulders that could fill a doorway easily, and a demeanor that screamed he wasn’t to be fucked with. It was hard to miss him coming into a place, all things considered.

And life had taught him to make sure everybody knew he wasn’t easy prey before anything else. Made things a hell of a lot simpler for him, honestly.

His main job at the bar was keeping a drink in every hand that could buy one. It was his side hustle when the fights came up that kept him motivated enough to run six miles every morning and to use the gym across from the bar where a lot of the underground fighters in Hell’s Kitchen liked to train. Usually, after his work was done in the early mornings because it was the only point he had the time to do so.

Everyone in the hallway separated like the sea had parted to let Lev through when he moved down the hallway toward his boss’s office. Except for the guy at the end who didn’t look old enough to even stand inside the back of the damn bar. Right in the middle of the hallway, he crossed his arms at Lev’s approach. He never understood his boss’s need to have open fight nights where anyone could put their name in for a bid to fight when all it did was invite the stupidest fucks off the streets who only needed cash and nothing more.

Then again … wasn’t that what all of them needed?

He sure did.

“Move your ass,” Lev told the guy as he approached. “Before I move you.”

Stupid didn’t move.

In fact, he folded his arms and held his ground.

Because he was stupid.

“Hey, asshole, I was here—”

“Shut that hole in your fucking face before I fill it with my fist, yeah? You’re going to move, and if you’re really smart—but I doubt you are—you’ll head out of here entirely. You’re about forty pounds underweight, and they’ll use you as filler tonight between the main fights. You know what happens to the filler in the ring, kid?”

At least this time, the guy had the decency to give Lev a second look. Which meant he had to tip his head all the way back to stare up at the man towering over him wearing dark-wash, ripped jeans and a black leather jacket that had seen better days but a hell of a lot of nights just like these. Stupid also had the nerve to swallow—a good sign of the fear he really didn’t want to be showing in a place like Nickie’s.

Fed by the underground, corrupted by a variance of organized crime figures that regularly made their way through the door for meetings, entertainment, or whatever else Lev’s boss could offer, and controlled by a code this young man couldn’t possibly understand … shit, he was doing this boy a favor.

Bending down, Lev came eye to eye with the kid and uttered, “They’ll put you in there with a guy like me just to teach your stupid ass a lesson. Need money? Here’s not the place you want to find it. Move.”

Who knew what did it?

Maybe Lev’s words.

Maybe the gleam in his eye.

Either way, the kid’s gaze darted between Lev and the line of waiting men that had backed up all the way out to the floor where the ring was being set up for the fights that should have already started. Stupid didn’t need to be told again before he grabbed the backpack from the ground and scooted around Lev without a look over his shoulder.