Page 75 of Bratva Sacrifice

I have no ready answer for that. The truth is, I do not know this answer. I was still riding the storm of my anger when Anatoli confronted me. “You were never meant to be punished like that,” I tell her, and that much is honest. “When Anatoli brought the video to me, I was—” Disgusted. Horrified. Furious. All these things are true. “I didn’t know, koshechka. I brought you out as soon as I did.”

Too late, I realize that I have also told her that I would have ignored her situation longer had it been possible. That my anger overrode my good sense; that she might be there still if not for Anatoli. That my promised protection turned out to be empty words. That I was negligent with her safety in favor of nursing my spite.

Perhaps that if I had let her languish a little longer, she would even now be dead and beyond her pain. One final escape that eludes her still.

She turns her back on me, slowly, gingerly. “Next time,” she says, and there is no inflection to her voice, “kill me.”

Chapter Thirty Six

Alexei

By the end of the following week, it is impossible to deny it any longer. Katya is trying to die. Not by her own hand—she is trying to make me kill her. She has as little care for her life as she thinks I do, and there is only one thing that gives me the tiniest spark of hope.

Her emptiness is now filled with anger. Where once she was flat and lifeless, she burns and seethes with fury. There is no room in her for anything else; not even self-preservation. The light which called me to her is no longer that sweetness I adored. It’s a volcanic explosion, and every bit as violent.

I can’t decide if this is only a test, or if she truly is looking for a way out. My first indication that something is wrong is a splintering crash from the gallery, followed by an ear-piercing shriek. At first I think she must have dropped a glass, but I race toward the sound anyway, hoping she has not acquired a new injury.

Katya stands, bare-footed, across from a newly vacant pedestal. The ruins of a priceless imperial Ming vase scatter across the floor. She twirls a fireplace poker stolen from another room in her hands, like a batter setting up for the next swing.

This is not the first of her rampage. It is only the most audible. Three masterpiece paintings are in tatters already. Millions of dollars in art, gone in an instant. Probably she does not even know the true value of what she has destroyed.

Her chin juts out. Her face burns with color, but her eyes—they are assessing. Challenging.

I know what she sees in me now. Her captor. Her killer.

“Are you trying to make me angry, koshechka?” I am angry. There is no denying that. Anyone would be angry over the senseless ruination of such valuable works of art. But Katya is worth more to me than all of them. I step over the shards scattered by my feet and count the cost up in my mind. The Picasso—six million, when I acquired it. The Monet, twenty million. The Caravaggio, a staggering thirty-five million. The vase that lies now in shards…truly priceless. Without equal in the world.

With a sharp motion, she draws back the fireplace poker, and strikes out again. A renaissance-era bust explodes into little more than dust and fragments. Irreparable.

“Don’t move.” The words come out sharper than I would have liked, but then I am angry.

A shaky sigh slips from between her lips; her shoulders slump, and her eyes close. This is resignation. The moment she believes she will know the full force of my anger, and what it is to be directed at her. She does not flinch from it, not even as the soles of my shoes crunch over the shards.

I bend, gently brushing the bits of porcelain and marble from the tops of her feet. She loses her grip on the poker as I swing her up into my arms, and it clatters to the ground.

“If you wish to be destructive, koshechka, you should wear shoes. You could have cut your feet.”

Her throat is much improved; she unleashes a feral scream makes my ears ring. Her feet kick out as her arms flail. Her nails are like claws, and she manages to take a swipe at my face before I sling her over my shoulder instead.

Her knee catches me in the chest. I deliver a firm swat to her ass. Not enough to hurt, but enough to capture her attention. “Stop that. I do not want to drop you.” She can’t claw me through the thick leather of my jacket, and so instead she pounds her fists upon my back. Vicious strikes, with all of her strength. She is not nearly strong enough to wound me.

“You think I don’t know what you are doing?” My voice grates with annoyance, and she stills, instantly on guard. “I was careless with you before, but I have learned better. There is nothing that happens in my house that is secret from me.” She bounces over my shoulder as I proceed up the stairs. “I know you tried to steal a kitchen knife. I know you still seek a means of escape—which you will not find. I know you propositioned Anatoli.” That was the worst of it all. I tell myself she did not mean this, that she is only desperate. That my second was her chosen victim was a deliberate act. I know she expected it to get back to me. And it did—but I did not give her the reaction she sought. “You think I will kill you for a tantrum? Koshechka, you know nothing at all.”

Angry wheezes break from her lungs, and it is only when I toss her down upon the bed that she gets her breath back once more. I pin her arms above her head with one hand before she can lash out with them, straddle her wriggling body so she cannot kick out at me. I let her buck and struggle, working out the tempestuous fury that consumes her until her throat is raw from screaming, until she breathes in short, sharp gusts. At last her head falls back and her eyes close. A tear streaks toward her temple. I wipe it away, cradle her chin in my hand.

“I said never, koshechka. No matter the provocation. Test the limits all you please, but remember this.” I find the shell of her ear with my lips. “Ya tebya lyublyu. I love you. Okay? I love you.”

These are words I have never said to her before—to anyone before.

I have known lust before her. I have known desire and envy. I have known passion. But now I know fear. I know hopelessness. I know despair. I know the shatter of Katya’s heart, and the futility of trying to mend it with my clumsy hands. I know a love so violent that it makes prisoners of us both.

And as her anger turns at last to grief, I know, too, that this is the cruelest thing I could ever have said to her.

∞∞∞

“Tell me what you want, koshechka.”

“Nothing.” She speaks in whispers and only if I speak first. Anguish is a shroud that weighs heavily upon her. She eats—not enough. She drinks—too much. Not her sweet white wines or the mojitos she once enjoyed, but liquor straight from the bottle.