13. Roman
CHAPTER 13
Roman
Few things enrage me enough to make me lose all control. As beastly as I am, I’m often tactical. I’m restrained enough to make moves that are in my family’s best interest. I’m working to bring pride to my father and impress the sovietnik.
One and the same, technically, but different halves of the same man.
Opening the closet door and finding my kitty cat beaten on the floor is enough to unleash my fury. She really is curled up like a kitten, defenseless and terrified.
Uncle Leonid stands over her looking every bit a fucking pit bull on the attack. The fat fucker has drawn back his foot to deliver what must be another kick.
With the door wide open, he looks up in mild surprise.
“Zver,” he says. “Your whore was being bad?—”
My fist slams into his face and cuts off anything else he was about to say.
He doesn’t get a moment of reprieve. Once my fist’s collided with his face one time, I’m wrenching him toward me by his shirt. I rip him out of the closet and toss him out into the hall where the rest of the family attending tonight’s event is watching.
Uncle Leonid stumbles, dribbling blood, trying to regain his footing. I don’t give him the chance to even come close. I descend on him the way I imagine he descended on my kitty cat. He’s pummeled by a barrage of my fast and powerful fists.
One after another.
He drops to the ground and still my fists rain down.
I bash Leonid’s face in. I break his nose, eye socket, several of his teeth. In my blackout rage, I unholster the largest knife I have on me and pin his squirming body down like the sweaty fucking pig he is. He’s on his belly while I’m kneeling on his back, grabbing the hand that must be what he used to touch her—his ring finger’s already half-bitten off.
Planting the hand palm-side down on the ground, I slice at his thick wrist. He screams in sheer agony and jerks against me, begging for mercy and forgiveness.
“ZVER!” he screams. “ZVER!”
The crowded hall watches on in fascinated silence as I proceed to hack his hand off until I’ve cut through his flesh. His screams and cries become deafening against the sawing motion of my huge blade. Sinew and tendons are severed. Blood gushes out.
Bone peeks through to match his half bitten off finger.
I grit my teeth and finish the job. I slice through the rest of the appendage, relishing the sick joy I feel at the sight of his severed hand in a puddle of blood on the floor.
But it’s only the beginning.
I’ll do the same to the rest of his body. Piece by piece.
In front of an entire audience or alone in his agony for my ears only. It doesn’t matter to me.
All that matters is that this piece of garbage suffers for harming my kitty cat.
“DOSTATOCHNO? * !”
My father’s thunderous voice contradicts his otherwise frail body. It echoes across the hall as he and his closest guards break through the gathered crowd.
I pay them no mind. I’ve stuck the blade into Leonid’s back, wrenching it free only to bring it down again on a different part of him.
“Ostanovit yego? * !”
Father’s men descend on me. Several latch onto my arms to pry the knife out of my grip. A few others climb onto my back to subdue me that way. The last few grab an unconscious and bleeding out Leonid and drag him away by the ankles.
If the scene was chaotic before, it turns into a clusterfuck now.
It takes eight different men to finally wrestle the knife away and get me to stop going after Leonid. Even after they attempted to pull him away, I fought off the guys strapped to my back and went for a second round. Stealing a glass of vodka from a bystander, I shattered it in my grip and used a broken shard to lodge into Leonid’s thigh before they tugged him out of my reach again.
Once he’s taken away and I’ve been restrained, my father demands everyone leave. He orders the rest of the group gathered in the hall to disperse. I’m told to follow him to his private office. I shrug off the duraks who grip my arms, casting venomous looks of warning that make them pale.
I’ll follow father as he’s requested, but that doesn’t mean I’m not fuming.
That I won’t find where they put Leonid and finish the job.
“ You ,” I bark at Ivanka, one of the few who remain in the hall, “take Kat to her quarters. Stay with her until I return.”
The blonde madam gives a nod despite the sourness on her withered face. She goes to collect a brutalized Katerina off the closet floor and escort her upstairs to her room.
I watch them disappear up the stairs, huffing ragged breaths into my lungs. Barely contained rage still courses through me, begging for freedom. I’ll be up there soon to check on my wounded kitty cat.
Find out from her firsthand what the fuck happened.
My father is waiting for me when I turn up. He’s seated behind his desk, flanked by a few men on both sides. I enter without deference, fists clenched and teeth bared.
“Shut the door,” he tells Pavel, who is on his left.
Pavel does as he’s told. The door snaps shut behind me, signaling what I suspected. I’m about to be scolded for what I did in the hall.
Leonid might have harmed one of the pets—as far as everyone else knows—but I hurt my father’s brother; I hurt a boss within our ranks.
I would’ve killed him if they’d let my attack go on any longer.
My offense is greater in their eyes.
Silence drags on for several more seconds. I stand before the sovietnik and wait his reprimand.
“Explain,” he says in his thick, raspy accent.
“There’s nothing to explain. I made it clear tonight that my pet was not to be touched. Leonid took her away and touched her. He was hurting her. She was bruised on the floor?—”
“Why does it matter?” he interrupts impatiently. “You are upset because you wanted her first?”
I bite down hard on my jaw, a fresh wave of anger washing over me. It’s no surprise this will be treated as a trivial matter. The women that the family buy and sell are treated like expendable chattel. Katerina is no different in their view.
“I told him she was mine,” I say simply. “He disrespected me.”
“You cut off his hand.”
“It was the hand he used to touch her.”
Father’s eyes shrink into a cold, suspicious glare. “Why not buy a new one? We have more like her.”
You are missing the fucking point, you old fool.
“I won’t stand for disrespect,” I say instead. “You have a problem with that, you tell Leonid to keep his hands off what’s mine. If he survives the night.”
“This girl. I have never seen her at other dinners. Where did she come from?”
“What does it matter?”
He reclines in his chair and juts his chin at one of his men to fix him a drink. It’s only a moment later that he’s handed his vodka tonic.
“She appeared out of nowhere,” he says. “You seem attached.”
“You seem not to understand it’s about respect. I don’t know how else to tell you. Warn your brother to not touch what’s mine and he will keep his other hand.”
I turn away and stride toward the door, regardless of how insolent it comes across. There’s nothing else I can say to explain why I reacted the way I did. As far as I’m concerned, I did not react harshly enough.
Leonid should be in pieces on the floor right now. Not being treated for his wounds.
I make it a few feet from the door when the sovietnik stops me in my tracks.
“I think…” he says slowly, pondering, “I will make a point of finding out who she is. You have important work to do. Do not let some pussy get in the way.”
Katerina is sitting on the window ledge when I finally make it up to the room I’m keeping her in. Ivanka meets me at the door, an impatient air about her.
“She’s fine,” she says. “Just some swelling. Some bruising. Girls have come back worse from jobs. I don’t see why she is so special.”
I scowl at her. “Get out of my sight.”
Ivanka huffs with as much attitude as ever and makes a point of slamming the door.
I don’t give a shit. She’s a non-factor like many of the sovietnik’s other employees.
At the moment, my concern is my kitty cat. Katerina hasn’t so much as blinked or given the subtlest hint she’s fazed by my presence.
She peers out the window with an unmistakable sense of longing. I approach slowly, taking inventory of the harm done.
It seems Ivanka didn’t do much to clean her up.
Her satin dress is torn, one of the straps ripped entirely. Her hair’s no longer pinned up but come undone in a cloud of unruly lavender curls. Bruises mar her golden-brown complexion, some black, others blue.
Leonid must’ve struck her hard. Right in the fucking face.
I recognize the signs. The swelling along her cheekbone. The discoloration covering her entire jawline. Dried blood clings to one of her nostrils.
Tears shine in her eyes. But still she doesn’t take her gaze away from the window.
Night has fallen and the view is unremarkable—trees and more trees with only the distant skyline of Northam in the backdrop.
She stares anyway, a stray longing for freedom.
“Devochka,” I say. “Let me have a look.”
When I reach for her face, she turns it away from me. She angles her body toward the window even more as if she can’t stand to be touched.
I’m not sure I can be angry by it. The last man who touched her had her on the floor cowering in terror.
Truthfully, only weak men do this. I don’t like seeing any woman in this condition. But especially not my kitten. She has been brutalized and broken.
All it took was her being out of my sight for five minutes.
I grit my teeth at the thought of how Leonid must’ve dragged her away. She must’ve thought she couldn’t refute him. I had told her to avoid speaking.
To behave herself.
But I never believed this could happen. Leonid has crossed lines before, but never to this extent.
I excuse myself from the room only to return a moment later with an icepack.
“Devochka,” I try again. “Let me tend to the swelling. It needs to be treated.”
Stepping toward her, I grip her chin more firmly this time so she can’t turn away. She flinches, tensing up at my touch.
“It’s okay, kitty cat.” I gently apply the icepack to the apple of her swollen cheek and peer into her misty eyes so she will understand. So she can see I’m livid on her behalf. “He wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near you. I will kill him.”
She swallows, the sound loud in the silent room.
“What did he do to you, devochka? You can tell me.” I keep the icepack at her cheek while I caress the other half of her face with my free hand. “Don’t be afraid to tell me. I told you that you are mine. Anyone who hurts you answers to me.”
Her eyelids flutter closed as if she can no longer hold in the tears. I know this because a second later, a couple slip free, sliding down her cheeks.
“He came in here earlier,” she mumbles. “When you left to go get me clothes.”
“He what !?”
She flinches at my volume. I breathe through the outrage and urge myself to let her finish.
“I didn’t know what to do. He said he was your uncle. He told me not to say anything… but that he would be back for me. That I was… that I was a whore to be shared.”
“He was told the opposite. He was not to go near you.”
“During dinner he wouldn’t stop staring at me. He must’ve been watching when you were pulled away. He didn’t wait long to come up. I asked him not to take me, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to draw attention to myself.”
Tension clenches inside me. “He took you to the closet?”
She nods like she can’t bring herself to answer aloud, more tears falling.
“What did he do? Devochka, tell me…” I add when she tries to shut down again. I lower the icepack from her cheek and use the moment to gently stroke the swollen flesh instead. “I won’t blame you. I won’t be angry with you.”
I’m not the most intuitive man when it comes to human emotion.
It’s never been something important. More weakness than strength, I’ve viewed it as an inconvenience or detriment.
In the bratva, in the violent and cruel world I’ve lived in, it doesn’t matter.
But this situation with Katerina is the opposite. I’m paying attention to every subtle tell she gives, every clue that reveals how she’s feeling.
All the signs point to something traumatic in her past that makes her reluctant to share. Perhaps a time where she wasn’t believed or was punished for speaking up.
My kitty cat is a stray who has lived a hard life. She may not like the idea of being my pet, but so long as she is, I’ll ensure she is treated well. She is taken care of.
And that anyone else who dares bring her harm meets the same fate as Leonid.
“His fingers…” she says slowly. “He… he put them inside me. He hit me when I tried to push him off. Covered my mouth so I couldn’t scream.”
“You bit his finger off.”
She nods. “He was trying to unzip his pants and I went for it. That’s when he knocked me to the ground.”
“It’s good I came when I did,” I say. “I glanced up and noticed you were gone. One of the sovietnik’s men told me they’d seen Leonid leave with the same woman I was with. Out in the hall, I could hear noises from the closet.”
“He’s not…” she shudders out a breath. “Will he be coming back?”
“No,” I answer immediately. “He won’t ever be back. I chopped off his hand. I will murder him next. You did good, devochka. You fought him off as much as you could. You bit his whole fucking finger off.”
I return the icepack to her face, this time to the puffiness on her jawline.
It must hurt to speak or open her mouth. I’ve sported similar injuries many times in the past.
She needs rest.
“We will get you cleaned up, then you will go to bed. Get some sleep and rest. As long as you need.”
“Can you… I don’t want to be alone…”
She wants me to stay with her.
“Alright, kitty cat,” I say, thumbing a tear away from her cheek. “I will stay.”
* ? Dostatochno - enough
* ? Ostanovit yego - stop it