Chapter 3
RORI
Age: Eight
I fight back the bile trying to rise in my throat.
Years of training and conditioning is the only thing keeping me from embarrassing myself and pissing off my father.
Blood coats the room, me, and the other children at my side.
We’re here to learn, to desensitize ourselves, to be just as cold, methodical. To be the boogeymen in the dark.
It’s worse for me. The others don’t go home at night just to hear more screams, to see more violence. To pay for any transgressions that our instructor felt were committed and it’s over until the next time.
I resent them all. Even though I know their lives can’t be much better, that doesn’t blunt the anger and even hatred burning in my gut.
Someone retches behind me, which doesn’t help my own reaction, but I clench my fist so tight that I’m sure I’m going to draw blood from the nails piercing my skin.
The pain gives me something else to focus on, even as I hear shuffles from behind me of whoever is trying to step away, to hide their reactions.
It’s too late; they’ll pay for it. Perhaps with their life. After all, weakness is never allowed. Not even the slightest hints. They’re building us into what they want, and they won’t waste time or resources on any of us that don’t make the cut.
So I stay still, at the front of the group, only two others willing to be this close and in direct line of sight.
The boy to my right is just as cold and unfeeling, face a mask of indifference, but I’ve figured out his tell now.
He’s also horrified, disgusted, even though he hides it well.
There is the slightest tick of his jaw, the slight bob of his throat as he swallows.
To my left is another girl, as tall as me, just as still, but unlike us.
She looks almost lazy, like she’s bored or internally critiquing the show.
Blood has splattered on the side of her face, but she’s never touched it, just letting it drip into thin lines and down to her clothes.
And in her eyes is an anticipation that baffles me.
Is she actually enjoying this?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Out of all of us, there have to be a few who will excel. The rest of us do it out of necessity, but she’ll be one of the few who will do it just for the sheer pleasure.
The final screams fill the space, before they’re abruptly cut off, a well-placed knife to the throat ending the sounds and their life.
I keep my breathing steady, as do those next to me, but I can hear the hiccuped sobs of a few, and the desperate drawing of breaths from others, all trying to calm themselves.
I want to turn to them, to scream at them to shut the hell up. Do they want to die? I don’t do any of it. I simply stare into the eyes of death itself, refusing to back down or look away.
The eyes staring back at me are exactly like my own in shape and color, but that’s the end of similarities. Nothing but death and darkness stare back at me. He wanted me to fail. He wanted to show me that I was nothing, that I don’t deserve to breathe the same air as him.
I won’t give it to him. No matter what. I saw what happened to my mother the moment she broke. The moment she knew her life was done. I have her face, and when he looks at me, I know he pictures her, sees a way to punish her even from the grave.
Except she gave up. I won’t, and I won’t be the one to allow him to win. Not again. Not ever.
Others might be terrified of him, and while I count myself in that group, the only thing that matters is on the outside. What he can see, and what I can piss him off with every day for the rest of his miserable life.
He might be the boogeyman to the rest of the Bratva, but to me, he’s the devil that sired his own downfall. One day, he’s going to fall and it will be at my hand. I just have to get strong enough to make it happen.
So I need to be the best at what I do. I need to be the one that outshines them all, but I won’t be doing it alone. When my father finally looks away, I look at the girl next to me. My father won’t go down easily, so it might be better to have a back-up. She’s exactly the kind of one I need.
A plan starts to form. Now I just need to make it work.