Sex, Lies & Nikolai by R.J. Lewis

feel the bones of another crack beneath your fist,” my father use to say. “You’re not a man until you make another man bleed.”
    The first time I got into a fight, I was ten. The other boy was twelve. He was the son of a man that had betrayed the Bratva, and his father ate a bullet and the boy was sent to our house to be the punching bag of all the other boys in training.
    I was the first boy to beat him. I remember the terror on his face as I clobbered him senselessly. He never fought back, and I remember how much that angered me. I knew my father was watching, and I wanted to impress him, to let him know I was worthy of the brotherhood. And when I drew blood from the boy, I felt a rush because I was doing it right. I was feeling bone against my fist and blood against my flesh.
    Still, my father just stared at me, expressionless. When I stood up and turned to him, the boy half-conscious on the ground behind me, I raised my hands out to him, smiling as I proudly showed him the bright red. I’ll never forget what he said in that dead tone of his.
    “It’s not enough blood.”
    I look at my hands now, the spark in my body vacant, the transgressions of my past as present as the remorse I feel in my heart.
    The darkness is unsettling. It swallows the light, like a feast to the serpent that dwells inside of me.
    Fuck, I need a release, and I can’t have it in the form of violence. I need it sexually, but Valeria does nothing. Right now, my skin itches for different skin, different eyes, different lips.
    I know why that is.
    I know who to blame for this.
    That store girl and her lips have fucked with my head. I won’t seek her out though, not after what I offered her this morning. What the fuck was I thinking doing something so brash?
    Valeria backs away from me, unhappy about my disinterest, before moving on to someone else.
    “You should fuck her,” Andrei mutters as he takes a seat beside me, watching her move seductively around the small room, doting on all the men that asked for a taste of a one-on-one experience with the beauty. I didn’t ask for it. I just need a place away from the crowd to conduct business, and so far, there has been none of it.
    “Mind your business,” I tell him for the hundredth time this week.
    “She is very sexy.”
    “Then fuck her yourself.”
    “It’s more important if you do it.”
    I look at him when I hear the solemness in his voice. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Andrei?”
    “People, they talk, that’s all.”
    “They talk?”
    “Yes.”
    “And what is it now?”
    Andrei looks uneasy. “It doesn’t matter, boss. Drop the subject.”
    I grit my teeth. “ You brought it up. Tell me.”
    “They say” – he shrugs vaguely – “you know, you’re not very obvious about your…you know.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Your wants, Niko. Your wants, okay?”
    “Get to the point.”
    “They say you’re gay. There, I fucking said it.”
    I want to laugh because I’ve just spent my morning thinking about fucking a convenience store worker in her tiny little shorts. And at the same time I want to beat someone’s face in because I suspect I know who’s talking.
    “Who’s been talking?” I ask him anyway, my voice neutral.
    Andrei studies me for a moment, confused that I’m not cursing. “Uncle Dmitry. He says ‘people won’t want to do business with men who don’t fuck women.’” He shrugs again at my stern look. “That’s what he said. Not me. I didn’t say it, Niko, he did. I don’t believe it, okay? I have no problem with people who sway that way either. I’m just saying.”
    “You’re just saying, I get it, but did you defend me?”
    “You’ve seen Dmitry. If I defend you then I’m probably in bed with you.”
    “So you didn’t.”
    “No, I didn’t,” he admits, looking sullen now. “I’m a piece of shit, I know.”
    I nod, agreeing. “Yes, you are. How many times must I tell you how important loyalty is? You insult me by