“Jesus Christ. What was that?” Kelly asks. “Was that a gunshot?”
“Nyet, someone at the office got mad at the printer and kicked it.”
“Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”
“I’m fine. But the person got fired.”
“I regret calling. I’m just … whatever. I wanted to ask if maybe we could go out later or something, like on an actual date.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, still holding the gun. We can’t do that again. It’s too risky. I was stupid for doing it that one time.
“You know we can’t.”
“Never mind. Just ignore it,” he mutters, his voice going cold and defensive.
“Zaychik. Please.”
“No, it’s fine. I know the rules, and I’m sorry I brought it up. I’ll see you later.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, hating how this conversation is ending.
He hangs up.
I drop the phone and press the barrel of the gun to my forehead. Close my eyes. One of the men lets out a wet, shaking breath and starts sobbing again. Begging. I don’t bother listening to what he’s saying.
I was seven years old the first time Father handed me a knife.
The man was already tied to the chair, already bleeding from somewhere I couldn’t see. Father stood behind me, close enough I could smell the cigarette smoke on his coat, and told me exactlywhere to cut. How deep to go. What would happen if I fucked it up.
I didn’t fuck it up.
Blood went everywhere. My hands, my clothes, spreading across the concrete in pools I had to step around. I stood there after, watching it drip off my fingers, waiting for something to hit. Guilt, fear, disgust, anything.
Nothing came.
Father clapped me on the shoulder when it was over. Told me I did good. Said most kids my age would’ve cried or thrown up or run screaming.
I asked where to clean the knife.
That’s when I got it. This was what I was built for. Not school or friends or whatever normal kids did. This. Blood and silence and doing what needed to be done without hesitation.
I’ve lost count since then. The number’s in the hundreds, maybe higher. They all blur together after a while. Faces I don’t remember, names I never bothered learning, bodies that had to disappear one way or another.
I don’t feel mercy for any of them. Not then, not now, not ever.
My brothers think I’m broken. That Father sharpened me into a weapon and pointed me at whoever needed killing. They’re not wrong. But they don’t understand that I was always this. That seven-year-old kid standing in someone else’s blood wasn’t traumatized. He finally understood what he was for.
Most people are born with something that makes them hesitate before they hurt someone. I don’t have that. Never did. Father didn’t destroy it. There was nothing there to destroy. I don’t feel guilty about the killing. Don’t lose sleep over the screaming. Don’t give a single fuck about these two bleeding out in front of me right now.
But Kelly? He looks at me and somehow sees past all of it. The blood, the bodies, the cold thing my family carved me into. He knows what I am. Knows exactly what I do in rooms like this. And he stays anyway.
He looks at me like I’m something worth keeping. Like I matter beyond what I can kill.
I don’t understand it. Can’t wrap my head around why he’d want someone like me. But whatever he cracked open inside my chest won’t close again. This desperate, aching thing that makes it hard to breathe sometimes. Makes me want things I don’t have words for.
I open my eyes and lean back in the chair, looking at both men. Really bad day to be you two. Because now I’m even more pissed off than I was before Kelly called, and you’re both about to pay for his disappointment and my inability to give him the one normal thing he asked for.
He sounded so fucking sad on the phone. Just wanted something simple. Something easy. And I had to say no because god forbid Roman finds out his son likes men instead of women.
