13. Laszlo
Tear ducts didn’t work.
Couldn’t work.
My father beat that out of me years ago.
No matter how much I thought about those years, imagining the horrors of what they did to me, to my little sister, Lilien, I could never cry. I turned hurt into anger, and anger became the flames that fuelled my revenge.
But what good was anger when it was directed inwards?
Last night, I took one of my worst nightmares and brought it to life. Not for Lilien, but for a girl so much like her. Innocent, undeserving of anything bad.
My heart tightened in my chest, but it was just blood and muscle and tissue. There was no capacity for love in me. But she made me feel something I didn’t know existed. I noticed a strand of hair clinging to my arm, so long it could only be hers, and I felt pain.
I didn’t deserve to have any part of her close to me.
She was sweet, she was interesting. She had dreams and ambitions. Looking at her was a portal to a world I’d never known. I had been entranced by her the second I saw her staring down at me as I tried to plant a god damned car bomb.
Then I took her innocence. I hurt her.
Violated her.
Stole something that couldn’t ever be restored, and didn’t even realize.
I raped her.
No. She said she wanted me.
But she didn’t have a choice. And sex without choice was…
Fucking Jimmy.
If he hadn’t got in the way, it wouldn’t have gone down like that. I had a plan. When I came back from my chat with Bodrov, I was going to pick another woman. One with more experience. Someone who wouldn’t mind that I used her to prove myself if I left her with a roll of bills.
That would’ve broken Evelyn’s heart. It would have made the road-trip to Idaho an exercise in torture for my already tortured soul, but I deserved that. I could endure that, knowing I protected her from something worse.
Then Jimmy laid hands on her, and I saw red. I prided myself on being calculated and strategic, but I snapped. I didn’t think, I didn’t plan twenty steps ahead; I broke his finger and wished I could’ve broken the rest.
Ever since I saw him outside of Nikolas’ flop house, I knew he’d be a problem. He had fantasized about ruining her. If I didn’t step in, he would have fucking destroyed her.
I had no choice.
No choice.
My lip twitched into a sneer.
Listening to myself made me sick.
Eye’s twitching, head throbbing. Haven’t eaten. The liquor rotted my guts. Neck’s cramped from laying outside her bedroom door all night.
I should throw myself off this bridge into the filthy river, let the rocks batter me as punishment for my sins.
But I can’t.
Evelyn needed me.
At least until Jimmy forgot about this petty shit. If I sent her away now, he’d search for her. Some of my background checks on him came back strange. It was patchy. He might be a fed.
I couldn’t send her away until I knew for sure I wouldn’t be singling her out for the slaughter. She said something like that last night. My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, my leather driving gloves groaning against the strain.
Evelyn needed her rest and I couldn’t sleep, so I took my new babysitter shopping on Main Street for a new wardrobe for my girl.
I asked him his opinion about all of the clothes I wanted to get Evelyn until he was sick of being around me.
When we returned back to the penthouse with her new outfits, I told him to keep an eye on her while I went to the tailor.
He didn’t want to leave me, but once I started rattling off about fabrics and trims and thread types, he relented.
I needed some time to myself before I faced her, and had been driving aimlessly in my Aston Martin all afternoon.
It hadn’t been planned, but I wasn’t surprised at where I ended up.
Every time my willpower faltered, or the fire of vengeance dimmed, there was only one place to go.
The place that put this raging inferno in me.
I stared at the dilapidated gothic mansion, ignoring the tremor that went through my body. I was a grown man, but the sight sent me back in time to when I was thirteen. It was unnerving to be in the driver seat of my car as the barrier between the past and present blurred.
I parked off the road, my luxury vehicle partially concealed in the brush.
Get out of the car.
My breathing was raspy as I approached the property. It had been abandoned over a decade ago. It’d been years since I last dared to visit; since I last needed to remind myself that it was real.
That what happened to me was real.
That Lilien was real.
The overcast fog helped make my approach feel less exposed. The mist hung in the air, obscuring everything. In the distance was the silhouette of the mansion, one edge of the roof sloping with age.
The forest had closed in on it, the mountain covered with foliage. The dark woods were ominous, and I averted my gaze. A century ago, there was a mine in those hills, and the mansion was built above some of the tunnels.
There was a place where the chain-link fence was weakest, along a side where the trees had grown through, warping it. It was like me. The seed planted in me would one day destroy Bratva steel.
The thick brambles of plant life were lower than when I last came. The winter had been harsh, damaging the vegetation and forcing it into the ground.
Dew clung to the bottom of my pant legs.
I kept thinking bugs were on my calves, but it was the grass slipping beneath my cuff.
The estate had an air of old money, despite it being unkempt, and I made my way to the servant’s entrance. I’d left it unlocked years ago, but someone had locked it up again. A property manager, I guessed.
Picking the lock was harder than usual; my hands were shaking. After last night, and my total lack of sleep, it was a wonder I could see straight, let alone pick a lock.
A few moments later the door clicked, and I was in.
The stale air hit me, earthy and unpleasant in equal measures. A faint hint of something chemical, it struck on an old memory. Someone else wouldn’t have noticed it. I couldn’t describe it if I tried, because to me, it smelled like the worst night of my life.
My shoes clicked on the marble tiles, and I passed by the kitchen. It was tidy, simple. A contrast from the grandiose hall it connected to.
When I was first here, the walls were lined with portraits of long dead princes, princesses, Tsars, and Tsarinas, lit up by candlelight. They were all removed now, rectangular shadows on the wall where they once hung. They shimmered back into place, a ghost of the past.
It was a soiree of other Eastern European aristocrats. Our parents took Lilien and I. A man spoke of how things had to be done the old-fashioned way. We needed to honour our past.
It was fun to see all the adults dressed up in traditional costumes that were generations out of date. I was fascinated by the curious beauty and craftsmanship.
When the children were ushered into a side room to play in, that was when I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t like those other parties. There was no maid expecting us, prepared to entertain.
Instead, there was a man.
His face was a blur. I could never piece together his features, or what he wore. The shrouded recesses of memory obscured them. It was my brain, trying to protect me from the truth I’d never fucking wanted to remember.
That night, he shepherded us to something darker.
It was impossible to say what. Every time I tried to remember, the pain became too much to bear. Trepanation would be a kinder anguish.
Drilling into my memories was the only way forward.
I had to go underground.