Page 74 of Bratva Sacrifice

Her shoulders are slick beneath my arm. I can feel her fading into herself. Enduring again.

A fluffy white towel soaks up the worst of the water, but blood still oozes from the scabs she has managed to open. The towels will wash, and so I pat these new wounds dry, pressing firmly until the bleeding stops once again. There’s a first aid kit beneath the sink, and I apply myself to the now-familiar ritual of antiseptic, ointment, bandages.

“You don’t do this to yourself,” I tell her brusquely. “Never again, koshechka. Do you hear me?”

If she does, she does not acknowledge. She lives with the marks of someone else’s choices upon her skin. But these bleeding wounds she has created—these are her choices. She takes back her body with pain she inflicts upon it.

She was never meant for this life. And still, I cannot let her go. My empire suffers for want of direction, and yet I have placed that responsibility onto Anatoli’s shoulders while I tend to Katya. Her needs are the greater.

She is smothered beneath the bathrobe I sling around her, but she is limp and pliant as I carry her from the room, down the long corridors to our room. She does not see the staff we pass in the hallways, does not care any longer that she has been witnessed in such a condition. There is a futility that enshrouds her. A despair; a shedding of all hope.

There is no protest as I set her upon our bed. She cares for nothing. Not her nakedness. Not the cold damp of her hair plastered to her face and neck. Even the relative chill of the room fails to bring about the goosebumps that ought to be reflexive.

The first sign of life I get comes only when I rub my fingers across a bruise on her wrist. It is an instinctive action to withdraw, but I don’t let her pry her wrist from my hand. My fingers are gentle but firm—I pull her wrist to my mouth, press a line of kisses across the wound. This is the sort of comfort I have heard about in stories for soft American children; a parent easing the aches of a beloved child. This sort of softness has never existed in my life, but for Katya—for Katya, I can be soft.

A ragged sound tears from her throat as my lips move from her wrist to the long scar down her arm. The flesh is pink and tender. I am careful with her. Gentle. Tender. I find the edge of a fresh bandage—there is already a spot of blood seeping through.

Her skin is so pale. She has not seen the sun in too many days. Her ribs are sharp, pointed; a delicate cage peeking through the flesh that is too thin, almost translucent in its pallor. The blue of her veins is striking against it, and I trace one up with my fingertips to where it disappears into the ugly purple bruise that I know is a remnant of a sharp kick delivered.

She trembles. “Don’t.” It is only a shred of sound, nothing more than a painful rasp.

My fingertips trace the outer edges of the bruise. “He paid for this.”

She hates remembering. Her body shakes like she has gone hypothermic. I find other wounds, more bruises. I tamp down the rage they evoke, browsing over them with gentle fingers, gentler kisses.

“You think these marks make you less. In my world, koshechka, they make you more. These are a warrior’s wounds. They are proof of your courage—”

“I begged.” The flat finality of the statement shreds through my words. “I begged them to stop.”

This I already know. I retched twice watching the video. But I had to know what was done to Katya, so that justice could be done for it. So that there could be parity for what she was made to endure. The truth is that anyone would have begged in her position. The truth is that only surviving such torture requires a strength few possess.

“They begged as well. They begged before even half of what was done to you was done to them.” I wasn’t going to tell her this. I have separated as much of that part of me as possible from her, since she has so inconvenient a conscience. The less she must consider the quantity of blood upon the hands that touch her, the better. But now, I think, she needs to know this. She needs to know that those that tormented her are gone from this earth. That their deaths serve as a lesson in my capacity for violence, for retribution, should anyone think to use her in such a manner again.

They will know, now, not to expect mercy.

“You never have to fear them again, koshechka.” I turn my lips to the flat of her stomach, to the slightly raised ridge of fresh pink scar tissue there. “You come now from a disgraced line of the Russo family, and there is no one willing to avenge them. And Piotr—he begged before I even touched him.” A coward in the end. A snake, willing to make deals in the darkness, but without the fortitude to withstand the consequences of it. “They all died with your name upon their lips so that they would meet God with the worst of their sins still clinging to them.”

This brings her no ease, no relief. I know it is because the worst of her tormentors still lives—and holds her in his arms every night.

“Next time,” she murmurs, her head turning away, “Next time—kill me.”

My heart stutters. “Katya, I will never doubt you again.”

“Promise me.”

She is not asking me to promise her my trust. She is asking me to promise to kill her. “No, koshechka.”

“Do you want me to beg?” Her flat gaze matches her flat tone. Begging means nothing to her now. It is only a means to an end. She already feels the shame of it. What is one more plea when weighed against all of those that have come before?

“No, koshechka, I want you to heal from this.” If there is someone who must beg, it will be me. I grapple for something, anything, to tell her to mitigate her suffering. “What Piotr did to you—I did not order it done. Katya, I would not have left you there in the dark. I would not have starved you, or beat you, or chained you.”

And it is only now that I realize that I have given her no reason to trust my word. That my intentions do not matter half so much as my negligence in assuring her safety. That I could just as easily have ordered her confined to a bedroom, but that I wished to punish her for her desertion. That I made her confinement uncomfortable intentionally, to suit my whims. That she languished for days in the darkness, broken and bleeding, because I did not care even enough to see to her personally.

“How long was I there?” she asks, and I know it is because there is no natural light in the pit. No clock, no sunshine. No way to mark the passage of time, aside from the meals delivered to her, which could have simply been a lie, another form of torture.

It is in my nature to lie. But I cannot win her back with less than the truth. She deserves that from me. “Three days,” I tell her. This elicits no reaction.

“How long was I meant to be punished?”