Cool weekend, right?
It was ten minutes to twelve on Monday, and Ella decided that the store needed a good sweeping. Well, not really, but she needed a semi-decent distraction to the boredom wracking her brain and the sharp pang of annoyance as her brain kept wandering back to Anatoly, Vladimir, and Matt who still had not shown their faces in the store. She briefly wondered if the brothers had actually left New York and failed to send her the memo, and if Matt had walked into an open manhole and was stuck in the sewer system fighting Ninja Turtles. It was going on a week by now, and Ella repeatedly told herself, and anyone else that would ever dare to ask, that she didn’t miss them, she missed their company.
“Stupid mobsters, stupid cinnamon roll ninjas, stupid would-be robbers…” Ella grumbled as she cranked up some music on her phone. By this point she wasn’t exactly sweeping, per say, but more beating the floor with the broom. Her grumbles eventually morphed into ground out song lyrics as the clock ticked towards one a.m. As she finished the Goofy Goober theme song from Spongebob, and yes that show is absolutely for adults too, a pair of hands cinched around her waist and hoisted her a foot into the air. Ella shrieked, flinging the broom down and backwards, connecting solidly with her attacker’s knees. An ‘oof’ sounded, before the attacker, and it was male, definitely male, fell bodily to the floor, taking Ella with him, his arms winding tightly around her waist. His chest was against her back– she couldn’t see his face, but when she did she’d claw his fucking eyes out. “I’m going to shove this broom into places it was never meant to be–” Ella began to growl, but stopped when the man spoke.
“Broom may be my weapon of choice from now on,” Vladimir stated, laughing. Ella froze, then violently wiggled from his arms and onto the floor, cursing him to Hell (taking a millisecond to laugh at the pun) then taking off her shoe and swatting him with it. “You asshole!” she shrieked, batting him over the head with her Converse, thwarting every attempt he made to get off of the floor. “I have told you time and again about my heart, you don’t sneak up on people– do you know how rude that is?! Pretty fucking rude, and I’ve always been hesitant about being airborne, you bastard, so lifting me without my express permission is a solid no. You interrupted my Spongebob song, Vladimir! You know what, I might just go back to calling you Steven–”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Vladimir chuckled, interrupting Ella’s lecture. She swatted him one last time, breathing ragged, before collapsing beside Vlad to put her shoe back on.
“Missedyoutoo,” Ella hissed, her glare half-hearted as she flicked the side of the Russian’s head for extra measure.
“I apologize for my brother, as usual,” another voice spoke up, and Ella turned to see a very amused Anatoly leaning against a rack of fruit snacks.
“Don’t you smile at me, you’re an accomplice to what just happened,” Ella snapped, rising to her feet, Vladimir doing the same.
“Sorry,” Anatoly said, but his smile didn’t falter in the slightest.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ella snapped, waving him off and retrieving her broom from the floor, “tell it to the tomato soup, you liar.”
“I see the store is as busy as usual,” Anatoly said, completely ignoring her last statement. Ella rested her back against the counter and squinted her eyes.
“Must be because you’re here,” she replied, giving both brothers a sugary sweet smile as they donned glares of their own.
“Enough of insulting, what have you done for this week? I want to hear amusing stories of you beating people with broom,” Vladimir said, retrieving one of the chairs that had taken up permanent residence beside the counter. Anatoly and Ella followed suit.
“Well… last Saturday a guy broke into my apartment and I almost beat him with a bat, so that was something,” Ella said, and the Russian’s stiffened, Anatoly immediately interjecting before Ella could continue.
“What did he want? Did he hurt you?”
“Nah,” Ella said, reclining further back, “he was actually looking for somebody else, so he left, no violence required, and I totally would’ve been the one who initiated the violence. I was mistaken for a man by three of his lackeys, too–”
“Who–” Vladimir began, only to be cut off by Ella.
“Hush! Let me finish,” she snapped, and Vladimir sank down into his chair, disgruntled.
“So, he came back on Sunday with a pretty shit attempt at an apology, which was weird in and of itself. He brought this woman Vanessa with him– oh, and his name is Wesley, pretty old fashioned and my mind immediately went to ‘Blade’, but anyways, we went to an art gallery where Vanessa let me take a painting. It’s sitting in my living room, and is totally out of place, but it’s beautiful. Anyways, I picked out art and then met his bossman who is fucking huge, I mean the guy could’ve been an overweight linebacker–”
“His…boss. What is his name?” Anatoly said, and the timidity of his voice instantly caught Ella’s attention.
“Wilson…” she said, eyes darting between the brothers, “Wilson Fisk.”
“WHAT!?” Vladimir screamed, rocketing from his chair. Anatoly only stared, a mixture of horror and barely concealed rage coloring his paling face. His eyes scoured Ella, looking for any sign of injury, hands closing into impossibly tight fists in his lap.
“Yeah, well, crazy weekend, right?” Ella muttered, half-smiling, half grimacing as Vladimir’s face threatened to go purple. She hadn’t been expecting this reaction to her the tale of her weekend adventures– she thought that it would be a good laugh, not heart palpitation inducing.
“He could have killed you, этот ублюдок , я буду иметь голову!” Vladimir growled, raking a hand through his hair.
“What did he do? Does he know where you live? Did he threaten you?” Anatoly demanded, and Ella only shook her head.
“Wilson and Wesley only dropped me off at my apartment. There wasn’t any mention of seeing each other ever again or anything. I didn't even really talk to him, he just rode with us,” she muttered, shrugging her shoulders as the brothers continued to pace anxiously before her. They were speaking rapid fire Russian to one another, Ella’s head whipping back and forth as she followed their trek from chair to chair. “How do you know him…them?” she finally asked. She thought of the irony that anyone in her unconventional trio would know the men, but she didn’t really stop to think of how.
“Fisk, he almost decapitated my brother, he ruined our reputation, he lied to us–”
“Fisk is not a man, he is animal.” Anatoly finished his brother’s sentence with an equal amount of venom. Ella blinked at them, her half-smile wilting on her face. So, another psychotic trio had found its way into her life. How…nice?
“You will stay with us,” Vladimir announced, which had Ella on her feel in an instant. Anatoly was already grabbing her coat, but Ella slapped Vladimir’s hand with a discarded Twix bar as he reached for her bag. “No, no, no, that’s the very definition of suspicious! Let’s just say for arguments sake that they’re watching me. if I suddenly up and leave, won’t that look a little…funny? I mean, I’m no expert, but I’ve seen enough action movies to know something. Besides, I'm a capable, badass woman with a broom and a bat,” she said. Vladimir stared her down for a moment, always ready to argue, before Anatoly placed a hand upon his arm.
“It’s... unwise,” he said, and Vladimir shook off his hand with a curse, almost going as far as to stomp his foot.
“Fine. But we are walking you to your home– I don’t trust Fisk or his lap dog,” Vladimir spat, and Ella’s eyebrows shot sky high.
“What– No, you’re not! Your history with this guy is apparently some guillotine like shit, and I’m not going to take you to a place where he most likely will be…possibly. I warned Wesley about waiting in dark corners, so I think he got the message, but besides that, you could barely contain yourselves when you ran into Blindfolded Ninja, and I don’t need any blood spilt on my new hardwoods!” Ella said, chest heaving as her rant drew to a close, cheeks flushed and hands perched challengingly on her hips. The brothers were silent for a moment, shocked by her outburst, before Anatoly’s expression softened.
“We… I know what he is capable of doing. We will not let you walk into an ambush alone. If he is there, we will deal. If he is not, we know you are safe,” he stated, and dammit, Ella was not going to cry. She wasn’t.
“…Alright. But can you guys at least pick up hoodies or something? I dig the leather jacket look but it’s not doing much for covering your faces…”
****
Two hours and one stop to a thrift store later, the brothers arrived at Ella’s apartment with her, begrudgingly, in tow. The sky was just beginning to go pink, far out over the bay, and it was a beautiful view.
“Home sweet home,” Ella muttered, as they sauntered through the lobby and up seven flights of stairs, “I’m right over here.” Just before she could reach for the knob, Vladimir snatched the key from her hands and was inside of the apartment in moments. Ella grumbled under her breath but let him go. It was dark within, as Ella suspected, and remained dark as the brothers looked around, peering under tables and into the only closet Ella possessed.
“It is clear,” Anatoly called out after a few moments, voice emanating from the kitchen, and Ella breathed a sigh of relief. She swung the door shut and ambled over to the kitchen, dug through the fridge and retrieved a leftover pizza from earlier in the week. “Do you guys want anything? You eat food, right? Mobsters do that? I mean, you obviously eat, but like, I think the souls of children suit you more,” she said, quirking an eyebrow and collapsing onto the couch.
“We’re fine,” Vladimir deadpanned, as him and Anatoly took up the spaces beside Ella, the trio relaxing into the cushions as the first rays of light started filtering in through the curtains. Ella finished up the pizza, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and letting loose a yawn. The trek to her bedroom seemed incredibly difficult, the bed a million miles away; not something she was willing to do at this hour. Without much, or any, deliberation, Ella kicked off her shoes, placed her feet on the coffee table, and leant heavily against Vladimir’s shoulder.
“What’re you doing?” Vladimir murmured, his eyes still shut, arms crossed in an effort to become more comfortable.
“Shhhh,” Ella whispered, pressing one hand across his face, patting it once, and then retreating back into herself.
“странная женщина,” Vladimir said, a small smile turning up the corner of his lips.
“I don’t speak asshole,” Ella hummed, smirking as sleep took her under.
“We stay until noon?” Anatoly asked, removing his jacket and settling in for a few hours of rest. Vladimir quietly agreed, heaving out a sigh and keeping one ear tuned toward the front entrance.
They all awoke in a state of disarray at 4 in the afternoon to a heinous ‘bang’ that rattled the front door, nearly sending it flying off it’s hinges.
Russian Translations:
этот ублюдок , я буду иметь голову: "That bastard, I'll have his head!"
странная женщина: "Strange woman."