Page 73 of Bratva Sacrifice

Her nervousness manifests itself in shaky little movements; a persistent tremor. “It is forgiven, koshechka,” I tell her. “Already forgotten.”

Her gaze drifts as far as my shoulder, the letter opener protruding from my flesh. Doubt is a severe mask upon her face.

A knock at the door. Katya startles—but it is only the doctor, coming in with his bag. Probably he has been briefed in what might be relevant already, if I were to judge from the way he has already set down his bag, assembling equipment. Sutures, gauze, antiseptics. The trappings of his trade.

“It’s deep,” he says. “It’ll want numbing before I remove it.”

“No.” I take a seat upon the bed, and Katya jumps up, ready to run. I seize the back of her shirt in a tight pinch between two fingers. “Sit, koshechka.” I want her to see. Not for cruelty, or for punishment. I want her to know I can be hurt. I want her to know her own power.

It is not the first time I have had a blade removed from my flesh. I know what to expect. The pain is still excruciating, but it is also familiar. Things happen very quickly as the blade emerges. I shed my shirt; the doctor shoves a wad of gauze against the wound to stanch the bleeding. He threads the curved needle that will stitch my skin back together, and I am given four neat stitches. He tapes a gauze pad over the wound, and hands to me a bottle of antibiotics to fend off any hint of infection.

The doctor leaves quickly, quietly. He will return in a day or two to check on the worst of Katya’s wounds, but he knows better than raise questions that were not invited this evening. He knows better than to make comments which could prove unwise.

I clutch the ruins of my shirt in one hand, the letter opener concealed within it. “In bed, koshechka. It’s past time.” And then I give her a few moments of privacy while I clean up in the bathroom, tossing my shirt in the waste basket, cleaning the blood off of the letter opener, and wiping up the last traces of it on my chest.

I know she will be using the scant time I have given her to drown herself in the thickest, most oversized clothes she can. She thinks she can make herself undesirable to me in this way. She does not understand that it is not only her body I covet. I want her heart again. Her mind. Her soul. She hides these with far more efficacy than she hides her body.

When I return to the bedroom, she is already tucked into bed, as far away as she can get. There is a sharp edge to the pain in my chest; perhaps half of it is the fault of the letter opener. Her blonde hair is a tangled wave over the pillow, gilded by the light of the lamps, which I extinguish one by one, leaving the last on for her comfort, as always.

I slide into bed at last, crawling across the empty space between us until I can mold myself around her. She has always been asleep when I find her in whatever corner of the house she has hidden herself in, sedated into a deep unconsciousness. She knows nothing but waking in bed within the circle of my arms in the morning—a circumstance she is quick to remedy.

Tonight, she cannot avoid it. But she tenses, tightens. It is as if I can hear the creak of strained muscle and sinew beneath the surface of her skin. Her breath catches as my arm extends, reaches over her.

I tuck the letter opener into her hand and press her fingers closed around it. “This is yours, koshechka. Your trophy.”

Her hand withdraws, disappearing beneath her pillow with her prize as if she fears I might snatch it back from her. She does not have the stomach for violence or bloodshed, so I do not fear that she will gouge my eyes out while I sleep. But from the slight easing of her tension, I think it must make her feel just a little better. Perhaps even a little safer.

“Ask anything of me, koshechka, and it is yours.” I give the words to the silky tangles lying across the pillow. So desperate for just a shred of the voice she denies me that I would promise the moon.

A minute stretches out in taut silence. And at last— “Let me go. Let me leave.” Her voice is hoarse, choked. Little more than a thin whisper.

My eyes close on a wave of despair. “Ask anything but that.”

Only silence follows. There is nothing else she wants of me.

∞∞∞

Two days later, I find Katya hidden away in a distant guest bathroom. She is curled beneath the spray of the shower, her head buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. A few of her worst scabs are bleeding, as if she has tried to scratch them free of her skin. In some places, there is the pink of freshly-scarred flesh. Her back is a mass of sickly yellow bruises. Her longest scar stretches from just beneath her breast to her hip, straight across her stomach. It is the sort of cut that would have been made with a box cutter, purely to inflict pain.

In my world, these kinds of wounds are just a fact of life. They become a status symbol, a currency. They become stories which often become embellished past the point of belief. A man with no such scars is a man who has not yet earned his place in the bratva. But for her, each is a reminder of what was done to her. What I allowed to happen; what I inflicted upon her. Whether through malice or indifference, this is irrelevant to the woman who still bears these wounds.

I see the mottled skin around her throat, bruises in the imprint of fingers. There, at the hollow of her throat—two deeper, violent purple smudges in the shape of thumb prints. This was done to restrict her breathing, to force her to struggle for every breath. I know because I have seen it in the video that Anatoli found saved on the Russos security system.

I know because the same was done to them in return.

Her flesh is still healing, and in time those bruises will fade. But the memory lingers deep beneath the surface of her skin. Her skin will surrender those bruises eventually, but her mind will remember. The scars will remain; an unwanted souvenir she would scratch off of her body if this were possible to do. And now she cries alone and in silence. Perhaps she has no words to give me not only because I do not deserve them, but because it still pains her only to speak them.

High on her ribs is the dark impression of Piotr’s boot, and at least two others in varying stages of healing. Piotr, too, has suffered for his sins. Now, seeing again the evidence of what was done to her at his hands, I wish I had extended his suffering. There are more bruises even than I was aware of when I first called for the doctor—bruises that had not yet had time to reveal themselves from the deep muscle in which they had been buried.

In this world, regrets do not exist. You make your choices, and then you accept the outcome of them. Death and suffering, these things are natural. The way of the world. But this—this I regret. I regret that Katya has been the one to suffer for my choices. I regret that I cannot take it from her.

“Koshechka,” I say, and she startles, withdrawing further with a choked sob. Shamed to have been found like this. Shamed that I see her like this. “Come out now.”

A bottle of shampoo glances off my shoulder. She wards me away with the few weapons available to her. A bar of soap; a sponge. All are insufficient. Her feet slide, squeaking across the floor of the shower stall as she scrabbles for purchase, but she cannot fight my strength. Her fingers have gone past the point of pruning. Probably she has been in here for hours already.

She lands in a wet, naked heap in my arms, and, like she is a balloon deflated with the push of a pin, all the fight leaves her at once. Her spirit is smothered beneath layers of pain and fear. She knows when she’s been beaten. The ferocity in her I once admired is gone.

The men of the bratva do not believe in such things as mental health or therapy. It would be a sign of weakness, and there in the shadows of the mafia, there is always a contender prepared to strike. Betrayal is a matter of course. But I think Katya, raised gently here in America, with her soft heart and gentle nature…she needs someone to confide in. Someone qualified to discuss things like feelings in a manner that is antithetical to my nature. Someone who can help her in a way I cannot.