Chapter 15 Igor
FIFTEEN
IGOR
PRESENT DAY
Blood splashes against my mouth as I smash the skull of yet another of Misha’s enemies with a heavy duty hammer.
I like the weight of it in my hand. It makes for a quicker death. When I glance at my brother, the flash of annoyance in his brown eyes is so obvious that even his second-in-command bristles next to him. I was supposed to make this execution last. I blatantly disobeyed.
But by now, Misha isn’t sure if that’s because I can’t control myself. So he doesn’t push, as he did at the beginning, punishing me with the death of others. I have nothing more to lose.
Except him, but I know by now he’s forgotten about me. I made sure I destroyed hope and trampled on what we promised each other. That’s how I kept him safe.
And Misha has forgotten about him, too.
We barely speak these days.
What would we talk about anyway?
The people he abused, and sold? The ones he makes me kill?
I wipe my face with a clean rag, before grunting to his lackeys to clean up after me.
Misha stops me with a hand on my chest as I pass him. I growl.
“What the fuck happened?” my brother seethes.
I don’t know what the fuck happened. One minute he’s breathing, the next I smash his skull with a hammer. It’s not like we were expecting answers from him. This torture was just a sick, twisted game. And I have no desire to play it.
I don’t answer and Misha lets me go.
I exit the living room, noticing a child standing on the landing of the first floor. I frown. He shouldn’t be here. We lock eyes. Baby blues full of fat tears assault me. In his hand is a small piece of fabric. He clutches it to his chest
All the assets are locked in their rooms at all times. But the kid with the baby blues pins me with a stare that pierces the very dark soul I’m trying very hard to bury under dissociation and a crumbling mental state.
Rooted in place, I hesitate before I signal for the child to come down.
Trembling, he takes the steps one at a time, the wood silent underneath his small weight. My chest twists uncomfortably.
In the living room where Misha and his goons are getting rid of the corpse, I hear their argument mount. They almost whisper-yell and if I had any humour left in my body, I’d chuckle at their antics.
“How did she get it, umh? How?” My brother asks, enraged.
It’s his natural state so I zone out while the kid descends the stairs on trembling legs.
I want to shout to fucking hurry, but he’s already scared shitless.
“I had a whole shipment of them supposed to go to our client, and that fucking viper stole them!?”
“I don’t know, Pakhan. We were careful. No one knew of the shipment.”
“Obviously not, or are you not seeing the corpse at my feet, dumbass? He can’t have acted alone. Find the culprits, and prepare for war. If she thinks she can steal my product, I’ll take everything she’s ever loved.”
I don’t care to listen too intently to know who he is talking about.
My focus is on the kid. When he reaches me, I pick him up and dry his tears with my bloodied finger.
His small eyes widen even further, the broken capillaries making the whole sclera almost red.
He’s frail, so thin I can feel his bones against my arms.
I turn back the way I came, and address my brother.
“I’m taking this one,” I say, devoid of emotions. Inside me, my heart thunders, my whole skin getting clammy the longer I remain in the same room as the monster worse than me. I don’t want to take the war to whoever he was talking about. I don’t have the strength for more death. But I’m his weapon.
Misha’s brow hit his hairline.
“I didn’t know you liked little boys.”
I shrug, and don’t wait for his approval to march out of the main house and towards the shed. It’s easier when they think the worse of me.
I haven’t felt the urge to save any of them in a few months.
Not since the one who found me and called his parents via the abandoned landline.
I’ve lost track of time but I think that was six months ago.
Or maybe three. He came by a few times during Misha’s sadistic hunts with his ‘friends’, men and women of all ages and nationalities chasing around kids with weapons like they are some kind of endangered animal.
I don’t know what happened to him. Dead, most likely.
If this kid here ever gets caught, his fate will be worse than death. I’ve bore witness to it too many times to count. Maybe it’s the eyes that make me act. Or react, I should say, because there was no conscious choice on my end.
Those fucking baby blues that haunt me and refuse to leave me alone.
I enter my place of rest and drop the boy in the middle of the sparse room. Light barely filters through the small window above the sink, giving the whole space this unnatural dark aura.
I get to my haunches. For some reason, this kid looked at me with something else but terror. He’s scared if the trembles are any indication, but it’s not revulsion. He obeyed when I asked him to join me instead of running back to his room. He must be new.
“How old are you?”
He shakes his head. I try again in English. Another shake of his head. In Spanish.
“Seis anos,” he answers with a slight lisp. Six years-old.
Bile rises in my throat. I wish I could curb these bothersome bodily reactions.
But my disgust and shame are so strong some days that I fear my body will kill me before I can do the job myself.
Would help if the ulcer in my stomach could take me out.
Or maybe cancer since I smoke so much. But of course, with my luck, I’d survive and live to be eighty and grey and still a pawn on Misha’s board.
My Spanish is very rudimentary but enough to ask him if he knows where he is. He doesn’t. If he knows where his parents live. Malaga. What is name is. Santi.
He’s a long way from home.
If I send him out in the forest and out back where Misha’s defences are the weakest, or if I open a very small breach into the barbed wire there, enough for his small body to fit through, there’s no way this kid of six will survive long enough to go unnoticed and reach the other side of Europe.
He wears rags for clothes and it must be negative temperatures outside.
This is all I can do.
Unless I try my luck one more time.
“Do you have your parents’ phone number?” I ask in Spanish again but the kid’s answer is a sad no.
I stand back up, racking my brain for a solution.
Finding none. Despite my stature, the boy doesn’t fear me.
He pulls up one of the two chairs I have in the room and sits down, asking for food, I think.
I only have yoghurts in my mini fridge. And limoncello to put in my coffee, but I can’t give him that.
I haven’t touched the bottle in days. It makes me feel too raw.
The kid eats the yoghurt with gusto, as if it were the best sweet of his life. How long has it been since his last meal? I don’t know how to ask that, so I just ask if he wants another. He nods.
The longer he remains seated, looking at me expectantly like I’m his saviour, the harder the throbbing behind my eyes. The only number I remember is one I’m too scared to use.
This landline is a secret I’ve kept like the most precious treasure.
I thought Misha knew about it. After many meetings with his staff of security, it became clear he doesn’t.
He and his higher ups use analog cameras that are untraceable and army satellite-grade mobile phones.
They change them so often it’s hard to keep track of all the devices on hand at the compound.
None of his men are allowed personal phones.
If they have one, it’s one that gets checked every evening, confiscated for the night and only used for the job.
He’s killed too many men who thought they could order food via their phones or have a girl come to the barracks.
In the Moscow Bratva, you fuck the assets or your hand.
No one else. None of the men have a family of their own, and if they do, it’s a weakness for Misha to exploit.
I could have called them. So many times.
But threats and the atrocities I’ve been made to do have been enough to break me. That’s what will forever keep from redemption. I gave in. I fear him. And he knows it. Even if they could have helped me, rescued me, I don’t deserve to live among them anymore.
Yet, as I watch the boy and the traces of yoghurt forming all over his mouth, just like Lana’s sisters when they were little, I can’t help but think about my friend. Think about him.
They’d help.
If Misha finds out, he’d make me watch as he and his man destroy the boy. I can’t risk it.
But I need to.
My mind tears and fights as it goes back and forth between just taking this massive risk, my whole body racked with shivers and cold sweat at the prospect, and offering the boy a kinder death. That option makes me equally ill.
I slump into the other chair, dropping my head in between my hands.
Inhaling deeply through the nose and exhaling harder through the mouth, I don’t hear the boy come closer to me. His small hand lands on my shoulder, making me grimace.
I lift my gaze to his. He smiles a pure smile, one only children can give, and hands out his rag. The only comfort tool he has. This young boy gives it to me, the man who could kill him with a flick of my wrist.
I shake my head.
On autopilot, my feet guide me to my bed.
I get on my knees and pull the cable from underneath it. I dial the number that never left my mind. Despite how many times I tried to forget it.
The first ring jostles my whole body, like being awakened while in deep sleep.
The second has me holding my breath.
The third sends a wave of anticipation flowing through me. I forgot what he sounds like. I’m bracing for the moment he’ll answer.
“You’ve reached the voice mail of ‘Julian Bartoli’, leave a—”
I jump and hang up.