Page 84 of Nemesis

I miss my bed.

“This isn’t fair!” I deliver another hook that barely rocks the bag. “I’m right-handed,” I say, holding up the bandaged arm. “We should wait until I can use my dominant hand.”

“The best fighters train equally,” he responds simply. “You never know which direction your final blow will come from.”

“If my final blow comes from my left side, I’ll take it with open arms as a sign of divine intervention,” I say, wiping the sweat on my forehead with my pink glove.

“I said go again.”

The sound that leaves my throat is feral.

I take it out on the bag, slamming my wrapped fist against the leather as Vas yells out the combination.

“Keep your other hand up by your face!”

I lift my right fist, obliques screaming from every hook. He makes me repeat the movements until each part of the combination is ingrained in my instincts, ready to be fired off at the click of a button.

Walking back up the steps is torturous, but today, I find the will to get into the shower after our training and brush my teeth with careful diligence. When night comes hours later, I’m so exhausted that I sleep like a baby for the first time in weeks.

“You’re a cunt!”

The accusation flies through the lively kitchen with a notch of energy that no one should have access to this early in the morning. My eyes widen at the crazed scene before me. I haven’t had the chance to see my cousins again since that first day on the tarmac. Honestly, I didn’t even realize they all lived here in the compound until Vasiliy coaxed me out of bed to hit a giant bag a week ago.

“You should’ve been keeping better track of the shipment.” One of the guys ruffles another’s head. “Take it as a learning lesson, little brother.”

“Ben, what have you done now?” another voice says from the far side of the room, thick with exasperation.

When I disentangled my sore limbs from the blanket this morning and decided to venture to the kitchen, I expected the house to still be asleep for the most part. After all, what kind of rich people purposely rise before eight in the morning?

“He commandeered my latest weapons shipment!”

“Ben,” the mediator hedges.

“Not my fault he’s a fucking⁠—”

I clear my throat, dragging the argument to a screeching halt as four pairs of eyes leap my way. “Sorry to interrupt, but do you guys have any coffee?”

“Great, now the first name my little cousin has to associate with me is cunt. Thanks a lot, Kirill,” the one to my left snaps at the other before turning his back.

“Isn’t it best she gets to know the real you?” Kirill responds in a sing-song voice that summons another growl.

So, that did not answer my question⁠—

Suddenly, a delicious, steaming cup of liquid gold appears in front of my face.

“How do you like your coffee? Sugar? Cream?” the man in front of me asks with an easy smile. He’s the one who looks most like his father, down to the scruffy beard and sandy brown hair. A ring of barbed wire is inked across his throat, connecting to some other artwork hidden beneath the collar of his shirt.

“Uh, both if you have it,” I say, shocked by the switch-up from the raging shouts I walked into a moment ago.

“You need breakfast, too. You look lighter than a backpack, little cuz. What would you like to eat?”

I stare up, dumbfounded. In the span of my entire life, I don’t think a single person has offered to cook me a meal, let alone a man. Well, I suppose there was a cook at the orphanage, but she never asked what we wanted, just made a large amount of the quickest, cheapest staples she could think of. Lots of potatoes. Too much stew.

I still hate stew.

“Hey! You already got points for making her coffee. I should get to make her breakfast,” Kirill argues from my side.

“If you make her breakfast, she’d spend her first day up with a dentist fixing up a chipped tooth,” the other responds coolly.