Chapter Six
In which we find the best way to make someone obey you, is to take everything they have.
Liria…
When Dritan Krasniqi demands something, his henchmen go above and beyond to make sure it's as soul-destroying as possible.
When the door shuts behind the bastard who sired me, Mom breaks into terrified sobs, and I pull her to me, wrapping my arms around her tight.
"I'm so sorry, honey, I'm so sorry," she wept.
"Dritan promised me he would never use you!
I told him we'd go to America, disappear if need be.
" My mom is so pretty, with black hair like mine and soulful hazel eyes.
She looks dainty, like a fairy princess, but she's got a steel spine to have survived that long, married to him.
"None of this is your fault." I hug her tighter. "He's Satan in a skin suit. This is all on him."
Mom insists on putting some arnica cream on my cheek. It isn't particularly swollen, but the cut on my lip still stings. I spend the night there because she needs it. She watches me closely, like she's afraid I'll disappear.
The next morning, I dress in some leggings and a t-shirt left in my old bedroom and find Mom in her solarium. "I've got to get home." I smile bitterly. "And start packing, I guess. Roan is with me, don't worry, I'm perfectly safe."
I say that a little louder for the benefit of the four new guards that showed up this morning and doubled the security rotation. They aren't here to protect us. Heavens, no. Father is keeping an eye on his asset.
"Satan in a skin suit?" Roan murmurs. "I'm bitterly jealous that I didn't think of it first." His eyes darken as he surveys my split lip. "I will be killing the guard that hit you. I'm looking forward to it. Do you want me to bring you his severed hand?"
"Eh, I have a bunch of those in the freezer and defrosting them is a bitch," I say, feeling my mood rise with Roan's banter.
He's not a deferential bodyguard, heavens no.
Behind that formidable suited figure is the rudest, most outrageously unsympathetic man in New England.
He's been my bodyguard for ten years and we've never stopped giving each other shit, though he's being nice today, which is unsettling.
"I'll take you home," he says. "The reek of sulfur and brimstone from the Fare's departure is still quite pungent." I stifle a snort of laughter - I need that after last night. "Ah, your dulcet tones, Miss Liria. So delicate. So demure."
"You suck," I whisper. "Let's get out of here. All these guards are giving me the creeps."
"That's because they are creeps," he murmurs back, taking me to my car.
Two more men insist on getting into the SUV with us. "And just what do you apes think you're doing?" Roan snaps. "I'm responsible for Miss Krasniqi's security. Get out." One of them, a bulky man with cruel eyes, simply shrugs.
"It is the Fare's orders," he says. "And I take my direction from him, not you."
"Let's go home, Roan," I say quietly. "They don't need to be in the house. Let's just put up with it for now."
He settles next to me, hands planted on his thighs and staring coldly at the men, who smile back condescendingly, mocking him and his frustration. "You've been babysitting all these years," the burly one says. "You've gotten soft, old man."
"Would you like to find out for yourself?" Roan says, tone frigid. Even in dangerous moments - especially in dangerous moments - he always keeps his cool until it's necessary to land the first punch. Or, shoot someone six times. Both things have happened.
The two guards' smiles fade, and they turn to talk to each other in Albanian, ignoring us for the rest of the drive.
They either aren't aware that I speak Albanian, or they don't care.
This is helpful because I think they're talking about the Morozov Bratva.
Most of it is ugly and cruel, exactly what I'd expect from my father's men.
One nudges the others and chuckles, "Who cares if he lost a hand?
As long as it's not the one he uses to jerk off.
" They both burst into uproarious laughter because what could be more amusing than another human being maimed?
There's a moving truck in front of my condominium.
"What the hell is happening?" I gasp, leaping out of the SUV before Roan can open the door. Workers are industriously carrying boxes out of my place like ants carrying crumbs from a picnic. They refuse to look at me until I try to pull one of the boxes away.
"What is in here? What are you doing?" I manage to rip open a corner and see my clothes. "Oh god, my underwear! Who told you to do this?" I snarl. "You don't have permission, this is theft –"
"Your father's orders," he says. “The Fare told us to do this in the quickest and most efficient fashion." He looks at me with a little too much interest. Stepping closer, he says, "You were always such a whiney little thing, even at sixteen."
My stomach heaves, and I slap my hand over my mouth.
I step back from him, bumping into one of the workers carrying a box.
It falls and the cardboard splits, my dishes flying out and shattering on the sidewalk.
That smell: sour sweat, so much vodka it oozes through the pores, and a heavy dose of bad cologne.
I remember him.
Bujar Krasniqi, a third or fourth cousin.
He was horrible to me when I was forced to stay with my father that summer.
He always stood too close. Always waiting outside my bedroom door, he arranged to be the one who would take me out on errands and he would make the trip so horrible that I gave up trying to leave the estate.
The dam broke the day he whispered, his greasy lips touching my ear, "You're almost ripe."
I ran sobbing to my father and told him what happened and he waved an impatient hand. "Then stop wearing those little dresses around the house. Can you blame these men?"
Stupefied, it took me a moment to form a sentence. "But I'm your daughter," I said with an embarrassing shaky voice. "I'm sixteen."
Father was impatient for me to leave; his cold black eyes were shuttered.
"You are wasting my time. Conduct yourself with more modesty.
Stop looking like an open invitation." I looked down at what I was wearing.
Jeans and a t-shirt. This was provocative?
When I didn't say anything else, he ordered, "Shut the door on your way out.
" He snapped his fingers at me. Like I'm a dog.
Bujar was standing there, and he gave a slow, mocking grin when he saw my expression. "Baba doesn't care, does he?"
I was shaking, my useless, floppy legs too weak to carry me away from him. I tried to open my mouth and say something scary like, "I'll kill you if you get near me again." Instead, my whole body gave a convulsive heave and I threw up all over him.
The eggs I had for breakfast, the roast from dinner last night splattered against his shoes as I kept retching helplessly
"You pig!" Bujar snarled, before several guards hurried over, along with the housekeeper, a grim woman so beaten down that she could never look at me.
She held a dish cloth to my mouth as she helped me up.
Bujar was crying out with disgust, taking off his jacket and trying to shake my vomit off of it.
Father must have decided I was too much trouble because he sent me home the next day.
Now that I remember, my stomach is churning and I fight back a gag. His smell is the same. Too much of some cheap cologne, cigarettes, and a heavy dose of nasty man sweat. He's got black hair like me, short, and stocky.
"The Fare sent me with specific instructions to make sure you… behave." He grins at me. His teeth are jagged like he chews tin cans.
Roan steps in front of me protectively, making Bujar step back.
"I will report your behavior back to the Fare.
Acting like a pig in Albania may still be accepted, but I'm happy to hold you to a higher standard here.
" His jaw is rigid and his fist curls. I can tell he's dying to punch Bujar in the face.
"You may be responsible for overseeing the handling of her items - since that is all you are capable of - but not of her.
Get near her again, and I will kill you and take my punishment from her father. "
Terrified, I tug on Roan's jacket. "Let's go in. He can stand out here in the hot sun. We need to see what's left."
***
I hurry from room to room. Furniture is wrapped in shipping plastic, the plants and vases of flowers I love are thrown away, the peony's pretty blossoms snapped like a broken neck.
My kitchen's empty, cupboard doors hanging open to show bare shelves, the little cat clock my grandmother gave me is gone.
"They wouldn't," I whisper.
Shoving past two of the movers, I race down the hall to my music room.
The best room in the condo, overlooking the Boston Harbor with a long bank of windows.
The perfect hardwood floor to feel the vibration from my piano and an ebony armoire with all the sheet music I'd collected over the years, even when everything went online.
The room is empty, just dust where my piano should be. "What have you done!" I scream it, charging at Bujar, fingers turned into claws, scrabbling at him, trying to rip his eyes out. "Where is my piano, you evil FUCK!"
Roan catches me around the waist and I leave a long scratch down his arm before stopping myself.
"Where is my piano!"
Bujar straightens his cuffs. "Now that you will be a wife in the Morozov Bratva, you will not have time for lazy pursuits." He's channeling my father, I can almost hear his bored voice. "Your father instructed me to put it up for auction."
"I'll kill you!" I'm sobbing, still trying to hit him as Roan gently cages me. "You piece of shit, it wasn't my father's to take! You bring it back!"
Bujar chuckles, turning his back on the desecration of my studio and goes back to barking instructions at the moving crew.
"It's gone, it's mine," I sob, falling to my knees. I touch the small impressions on the floor where the heavy piano legs dug in a bit. "Grandma Johnson gave it to me, he has no right. No fucking right."
Roan sits down next to me, breaking protocol and wrapping his arm around my shoulders. He doesn't say anything. There's nothing to say.
I cry until his dress shirt is soaked and my voice is just a croak, listening to the footsteps of the people dismantling my life.