24. Thanatos
What my brothers don’t know is that our father has nightmares. Throat-clenching, unable to breathe, night terrors. He used to wake up screaming in the middle of the afternoon, lying on a filthy mattress in broad daylight in an abandoned, run-down house in the middle of the woods.
I used to watch him suffer.
I’d get close to him while he slept, imagining all the ways he could die. Strangulation seemed too simple. Drowning was too loud. Stabbing could work, but I wanted him to bleed out for a long time, and I only had one belt that I wasn’t about to sacrifice to use as a tourniquet. I thought about dousing him with gasoline and setting him on fire as a fucked-up tribute to his sins, but then his suffering would be over.
I couldn’t allow my brothers’ tormentor to go unpunished.
It was one thing for him to come after me. Growing up with bruised ribs and black eyes was my induction into manhood at the ripe age of nine. But after my dad remarried and my brothers were born, our father changed. Foolishly, I thought that he might have turned a new leaf for his new favorite son Nikolai and his perfect wife who provided him with such a gifted heir. Even after Emil was born, our father attended t-ball games, barbecued on the back porch on the weekends, and kept his shady business deals under wraps so that my step-mother could answer honestly when the police came knocking with questions.
But once my youngest brother Yuri was born, everything changed. I’m not sure what tipped our father over the edge—the way his mother would sing Russian lullabies to stop him from crying, or how he lost his job at the meat-packing plant when they shut down an entire factory, or the phone call from one of the bratva’s vors at the time, saying that he needed to pick up slack in our part of town and start contributing to the Baranova’s legacy.
I don’t think he ever anticipated becoming a made man. The previous pakhan Tolkotsky was known for his obsession with bloodlines, and ours was so watered down that our father never got the call to officially join the bratva’s ranks. It wasn’t until a skirmish at the city’s borders took out a few dozen men that Tolkotsky started recruiting from the dredges of Russian society—even going so far as to induct orphans from the Harlin Heights Home for Children .
Sometimes, I think that Ezra and Andrei were lucky not to know their parents. At least when they look in the mirror, they won’t have to see every fatal flaw their parents passed down staring back at them.
As I watched my father’s body seize up in blind terror on that dirty mattress over and over again, I wondered if I would end up like him. Choking on my own spit, unable to break out of whatever nightmare I’d created.
I have no doubt that he smells my step-mother’s charred flesh in his dreams.
He fucking deserves that memory. The rest of us have to live with the remains of our unhappy childhood and subsequent descent into aggression as an outlet. I took to brawling in the streets when I was a teenager. That’s how I met Ezra, the two of us climbing the bratva ranks in record time. It’s why I wasn’t there when our house burned down; I was beating the shit out of some lowlife who hadn’t paid his protection fees.
Like my brothers, I’m good at violence.
But that doesn’t mean that I enjoy it.
My father’s pain, on the other hand, is the one crucial exception. A year or two ago, he finally noticed that I was following him and tried to flee, so I shot him in the leg and fractured his femur. As he crawled to a hospital and later claimed a local Catholic Church as sanctuary, I waited for him to run again.
I waited so long that I got careless, letting him slip back into the city like a rat returning to its hole.
It’s my fault that he noticed my brothers’ dedicated attention to Celia, because I’m the one that failed to kill him before he could come crawling back. When I first returned to the city, I thought that I could rejoin the bratva and reunite with my brothers so that we could kill our dad together. In a sense, I wasn’t wrong—but I wasn’t entirely right, either. All three of them were distracted by the pretty girl with tears in her eyes and a fire in her heart. Inevitably, we would kill our dad—but what was the rush when he wasn’t doing us any harm?
It was stupid to underestimate him, and now, we’re paying the price. We’ve been paying for weeks, between all the dead girls and the threats on our family, until now—this very moment when our youngest brother slips from our grasp, right beneath our noses.
Was I not calculated enough?
Fast enough?
Did I let Ruin walk away from me too quickly, or was I too focused on getting the girl to safety to realize what my brother was planning?
Have I been too blinded by beauty to recognize its cost, or did I think that, no matter the sacrifice, it would be worth a taste of her lips?
I clench my fists as I watch an old, beat-up, red pickup truck tumble down a dirt road that spirals up the mountainside, one of the truck’s taillights flickering as the bulb threatens to blow. Ruin is in that truck—but so is our father.
The bastard has to die tonight.
I slide into the driver’s seat of Rage’s SUV and turn the key, revving the engine and hitting the gas to follow the truck. It turns on another dirt road, this one cutting a straight path across the mountain. We aren’t going to the snow-capped ski cliffs like most people do.
We’re heading for the half dozen natural springs dotting the hills, each one hosting a simple log cabin built decades ago to increase tourism to the area. Local college kids rent them out for orgies and hazings, but otherwise, they’re in decline, the beach scene in the summer and the ski lodge in the winter stealing nearly all of Harlin Heights’ tourism.
Our father must have known that the cabins lay empty most of the year. He also must have known that dropping bodies in back alleys and behind sand dunes on the beach would keep our attention inside city limits, rather than have us explore the outskirts in search of him.
For a man who pisses alcohol and wets the bed, he’s been strategic ever since he returned to the city.
Which means that in order to beat him, we have to be twice as smart.
I keep my headlights off as their vehicle pulls up to one of the cabins, the police tape blocking the driveway having been broken long before our arrival. Somehow, it both drags in the mud and flaps in the icy breeze, a testament to how little the city’s police force cares about its citizens’ safety. I doubt they properly cleared the scene if my father has been holing up here for weeks.
My father drives right past the broken caution tape, clearly not intimidated in the slightest by the police’s potential presence in the area, and parks around back, out of sight.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I pin my location for my brothers to find, turn off the SUV, and step into the cold night air. Snow gently falls overhead, dusting the trees in white powder. It melts as it hits the ground, but it hovers over the spring’s glassy surface, tricking the naked eye into thinking that it’s solid.
I move on, not caring for the cold or the snow, determined to meet my father where he stands. I could pull out my gun and shoot him in the head, but we all agreed that Ruin would claim the kill.
If Ruin wanted to kill him, however, he would have already done so. What is he waiting for? An invitation?
The front door of the cabin is unlocked when I turn the handle, and I let myself inside. It’s dark, the living room eerily quiet. I pull my handgun from my waistband and carefully clear the room, moving methodically through the space in search of my father or brother. When I reach the back of the house, I realize that they aren’t inside—they’re in the underground basement, the outdoor hatch left wide open so that dull, orange light beams into the night sky.
It’s clearly a trap, but what choice do I have?
My brother is only in danger because of my failures. I can’t hesitate any longer. Playing judge and executioner hasn’t yielded any tangible results. It’s time to end this for good.
Slowly, I drop down into the musty, damp pit, the wooden steps creaking as I descend. A pungent, rotten stench fills my nose the deeper I go, and I hold my breath as I reach the landing.
My brother is sitting in a metal folding chair in the middle of the room, unbound and unarmed, his favorite hunting knife missing from his hip. He stares unflinchingly ahead as our father flicks a Zippo lighter behind Ruin’s back, the flame snapping on and off with each jerk of his wrist.
“Thanatos,” my father greets, a sinister smile curving across his lips. “Here to say goodbye to your brother?”
I was expecting to find the same man I’ve been watching deteriorate for the past few years, but my father looks good —healthy, even. His hair isn’t greasy or unkempt; he’s styled it and combed it away from his face. Clean-shaven and wearing a crisp white t-shirt and faded blue jeans that make him look ten years younger. He fiddles with a poker chip in his left hand, the only nervous tic I can find. A hunting jacket lay discarded on the back of a second folding chair, with a double-barrel shotgun resting on the table in front of it. Along the side wall, a cork board covered in dirty instruments catches my eye, each of the tools rusted over.
A whiff of copper fills my nose as I mistakenly take a breath, and only then do I notice the reddish stains coating the board, the rust having long since dried into a fine powder. Except, some of the stains are fresh, having dripped onto the worn workbench sitting below…
I clench my jaw and steady the unease churning in my gut, because that’s not rust .
My father’s gaze snaps to mine, the man unflinchingly confident as he takes in my appearance. “You didn’t happen to bring a pretty brunette with you? No?” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “I was telling Yuri how much I wanted to see her again. She’s quite a beauty, isn’t she? Your girl.” The last bit he says to Ruin, but my brother doesn’t respond.
It’s like he’s gone mute after talking nonstop on the drive over, his social battery run dry.
“You know,” our father continues, placing his hands on Ruin’s shoulders, “I really am disappointed in you boys. All that fucking, and you still couldn’t knock her up.” His smile glints in the orange light. “I bet I could get her pregnant. My swimmers are strong. I have four sons as proof of that.” He pulls something out from behind his back, and the flash of silver makes my stomach drop.
Ruin’s hunting knife isn’t missing—it’s stolen.
Holding the knife to Ruin’s throat, my father’s face twitches into the one I recognize—the unhinged maniac finally coming out to play. He cracks his neck with a quick jerk of his head, then exhales. “Well, I have three sons and one mistake. ” A tiny line of red appears on Ruin’s skin, the knife having made a new incision on top of the one that Celia left earlier this evening. He bends to whisper into Ruin’s ear. “But all mistakes can be corrected.”
Ruin finally looks up at me, and I can see the decision in their depths. He’s going to kill our father… but he’s waiting for something first.
We don’t have time to wait.
“Hold on,” I call out, keeping my gun trained ahead. “Just hold on. Let’s talk.”
Maybe I can stall for time?—
The knife digs deeper, making Ruin wince.
Fuck.
“What if we trade?” My heart hammers inside my chest as adrenaline kicks through my system. I swallow, knowing that what I’m about to propose will piss my brothers off…and undoubtedly sign my own death warrant.
But I’ll do anything to save my brothers from this bastard.
Even break their hearts.
“Give me Yuri,” I say slowly, lowering my gun, “and I’ll get you what you really want. Who you really want.” Searing pain wracks my nervous system as my heart and my head war with each other. Even Ruin, motionless until now, glares at me.
If I go through with this, I’m moving to the top of Ruin’s hit list. Quite frankly, I’ll deserve it and every second of Hell that awaits me.
The truth is, we’ve all wanted the same thing from the start: Celia Monrovia, the prettiest girl in the bratva. Our father is no exception, although he doesn’t want to keep her for himself…
He wants to torture and kill her.
A life for a life—our mother’s for Celia’s. A fair trade, in our father’s eyes.
I can’t force air into my lungs as guilt swallows me whole. Somehow, I manage to say the words that will bring not only my downfall, but my entire family’s ruin.
“I’ll give you Celia if you give me Yuri. Alive. ”
My father’s wickedness spreads like a wildfire, consuming every flicker of humanity dwelling within him until there’s nothing left but a devil grinning at his prey.
“You have yourself a deal.”
* * *
Claim your revenge in book four, Born to Riot.
Thank you so much for reading Bound by Ruin! Please leave a rating or review if you enjoyed spending time with these trauma boys.