Chapter Thirty Five #2
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.
Her shoulders are slick beneath my arm. I can feel her fading into herself. Enduring again.
A fluffy white towel soaks up the worst of the water, but blood still oozes from the scabs she has managed to open.
The towels will wash, and so I pat these new wounds dry, pressing firmly until the bleeding stops once again.
There’s a first aid kit beneath the sink, and I apply myself to the now-familiar ritual of antiseptic, ointment, bandages.
“You don’t do this to yourself,” I tell her brusquely. “Never again, koshechka. Do you hear me?”
If she does, she does not acknowledge. She lives with the marks of someone else’s choices upon her skin. But these bleeding wounds she has created—these are her choices. She takes back her body with pain she inflicts upon it.
She was never meant for this life. And still, I cannot let her go. My empire suffers for want of direction, and yet I have placed that responsibility onto Anatoli’s shoulders while I tend to Katya. Her needs are the greater.
She is smothered beneath the bathrobe I sling around her, but she is limp and pliant as I carry her from the room, down the long corridors to our room.
She does not see the staff we pass in the hallways, does not care any longer that she has been witnessed in such a condition.
There is a futility that enshrouds her. A despair; a shedding of all hope.
There is no protest as I set her upon our bed. She cares for nothing. Not her nakedness. Not the cold damp of her hair plastered to her face and neck. Even the relative chill of the room fails to bring about the goosebumps that ought to be reflexive.
The first sign of life I get comes only when I rub my fingers across a bruise on her wrist. It is an instinctive action to withdraw, but I don’t let her pry her wrist from my hand.
My fingers are gentle but firm—I pull her wrist to my mouth, press a line of kisses across the wound.
This is the sort of comfort I have heard about in stories for soft American children; a parent easing the aches of a beloved child.
This sort of softness has never existed in my life, but for Katya—for Katya, I can be soft.
A ragged sound tears from her throat as my lips move from her wrist to the long scar down her arm. The flesh is pink and tender. I am careful with her. Gentle. Tender. I find the edge of a fresh bandage—there is already a spot of blood seeping through.
Her skin is so pale. She has not seen the sun in too many days.
Her ribs are sharp, pointed; a delicate cage peeking through the flesh that is too thin, almost translucent in its pallor.
The blue of her veins is striking against it, and I trace one up with my fingertips to where it disappears into the ugly purple bruise that I know is a remnant of a sharp kick delivered.
She trembles. “Don’t.” It is only a shred of sound, nothing more than a painful rasp.
My fingertips trace the outer edges of the bruise. “He paid for this.”