This is one of my #FridayFlash fiction stories. Each Friday, members of the #FridayFlash group on Twitter write fictional stories of 1,000 words or less and share them. Join in the fun!
This short story is part of a new series called Twisted Family Bonds. It continues where the Frostbite series ends. It is a mixture of light and dark humor written in the soap opera episodic style about the happenings in the Kaszinov family, who live on a family compound in the Hungarian countryside near Budapest. Russian mafia members have family lives, too, they just behave a little differently, or do they?
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Episode 1 of 6: New Year, A Second Chance
Tasha slowly pulled herself out of her rental car and trudged through the deep snow. She could see the silhouettes of Mama, Papa, and her aunts and uncles through the curtains in the living room window.
“I know this will be a surprise for them, so it’s a good time to bring you here.”
New Year’s Eve celebration was in full swing at the Kazinov family compound. Two long years had passed since her fated Christmas day escape with the children. Tasha now dared to step foot back into her mafia family chaos for the sake of the children.
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“We really showed ’em, didn’t we? Ha! We had that jury in knots! They never could have convicted us with no evidence…” Viktor swigged his bottle of Vodka with gusto, celebrating his new found freedom with the men of the family. Inside the family mansion booze was flowing, laughter and screaming were heard throughout the house.
“Two years of that shit in court, we outta sue ’em, sue ’em all!” Alena ranted from the other side of the living room.
“Now Alena, I know it’s been hard on you, having the entire family stuck here in your house, and the press never leaving us alone, but look at Nadya and Grusha, could you have imagined?” Karina giggled and pointed at their two sisters.
Nadya and Grusha were sitting together in the corner of the living room drinking champaign. Nadya was gently touching her perfectly placed bleached blond hair. She still had bruises around her eyes from her latest plastic surgery. Grusha was laughing but her face wasn’t moving from the excessive botox injected into her puffy face.
“Those fools! Look at them, in their sixties acting like teenagers. Just because they got a ghost writer to write a book for them, they think they’re celebrities.” Alena snorted.
“But you gotta admit, it’s hilarious how they came out of their shells after “Two Framed Broads Cook Up Hungarian & Russian Classics” hits the book stores.” Karina downed a swig of scotch. “I loved it when they were on the morning show and did the cooking segment! What a disaster!”
“And that blasted incident at the book signing, my god, it took twenty security guards just to get them out of that mob scene. Half the crowd was tryin’ to get their autograph and the other half tryin’ to tear ’em apart. I think they made the whole bloody mess worse for us.” Alena wiped her forehead with a handkerchief and downed a large glass of vodka in one shot. “No one is gonna be able to move outta here, even with the trial over.”
“I kinda like it here with everyone under one roof. ” Karina watched as the men started crashing glasses in the fireplace.
Tasha’s cousins were joining in the party, hoping the pressure on them would go away since the trial was over. They were exhausted from the long hours of work trying to hold the family businesses together and keep it underground. The scrutiny of the press had become unbearable and the accused family members were keeping their fingers out of the daily business, at least on the surface.
One of the cousins walked up to Alena and Karina, “Is everything on track to have Tasha return the children now?” Pressure from the family prevented them from trying to reclaim the children during the trial.
“Oh yeah…I still think you should wait another year, for everything to settle down. No need to bring chaos back into this house again right now.”
“But you promised… as soon as the trial was over…I already called Tasha and told her!” She stomped her foot.
Alena glared at the men as they shattered more glasses and fragments were shooting all over the carpet. “You guys are gonna clean that up!” She screamed to deaf ears. She walked over to the bar to pour more vodka, looked around the disheveled room and shrugged her shoulders.
The doorbell rang just as a few of Tasha’s thirty-five year old cousins were running from the kitchen, throwing cookies at the ceiling and watching them explode into crumbles. “Fireworks!” they giggled and ran for more cookies.
A faint dusting of white powder decorated their noses and upper lips.
The doorbell rang a few more times before Alena decided to answer. She swaggered to the door, trying to grab the blurry doorknob, and opened it to see Tasha and a stern-looking woman staring at her.
“Mama, I’d like you to meet Inna, she is from the Hungarian Department of Child Welfare. She is here to start an inspection and evaluation.”
Suddenly, a semi-automatic weapon started a rapid fire that almost shattered their eardrums. In a split second, Tasha wrapped her arms around Inna pushing her full bodyweight as they both hit the ground.
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Continue reading Twisted Family Bonds in Episode 2
If you want to know what happened to get this family in this predicament, you can read more in, Frostbite: A Mafia Family Christmas, part 1, part 2 and part 3.
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Ever wonder what the influence of the Russian Mafia is like for those who live under their oppression?
Here is and interesting cartoon, you don’t need to understand Russian to enjoy:
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