Chapter Twelve
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
Bela Palanka, Serbia
Twelve Years Old
Jax
The slap stings my face and I bite the inside of my lip to keep the tears at bay, more tears mean more slaps. My uncle, Vasilei’s dad and my father’s brother, stands over me, but I don’t dare make eye contact.
“Branislav. Do you hear me?”
I lift my eyes enough to look at the button on his shirt and nod my head.
“Don’t be so hard on the boy, Draco, he just lost his whole family,” Dimitri’s father and my father’s other brother, says from the rickety table in the corner of the small, dirty room.
His throwing knives are laid on the table in front of him and he is throwing them at a spot on the wall. He hits it dead-on every time.
In my peripheral, I see Vasilei sitting on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest. He found out his mom and sister died when they took us.
Dimitri is sitting on one of the stained cots with his little sister tucked under his arm, his mother and little brother is also dead.
Just a few weeks ago, we were all playing in the back garden of our family home, our moms laughing while our sisters played hide and seek, and Vasilei, Dimitri, and I pretended that the rocks we were betting on a hand of cards was real money.
My uncle’s hands are warm on my shoulders as he shakes me a little.
I look up at him. “I don’t do this out of meanness, Brana,” He uses the affectionate nickname my mother used, and I have to push the lump in my throat down.
“I do it because this is only the beginning. There will be many more things to cry about before we are safe again.” His eyes soften. “Do you understand, nec?ak?” [nephew]
His eyes are the same as my father’s and I bite my cheek again to stop the grief from taking over. I don’t even know what happened, one minute we were having a normal day, the next there was death and destruction all around me.
“What now, papa?” Vasilei asks, his voice muffled with his forehead resting on his knees.
Dimitri’s dad answers him. “We will go to America, it’s the only place we are safe. Our cousin has an outfit there in New York, and he says we can be a part of that.”
America.
My mother never had anything good to say about America, but I always heard my aunt tease her because she was just jealous. My other aunt would dream about the freedom they have there. When she would start talking about our lives here, my other aunt would shush her.
“We have to create fake identities.” Vasilei’s father says, his eyes trained on me. “I will make you my son on our paperwork to make travel easier.”
Nodding again, I push the memory of the men taking turns raping my mother from my head. I can’t think of the past anymore. Squeezing my eyes closed, I shut the door on the memory of my poor little sister lying on the damp stone floor. If I don’t turn everything off, I might lose my mind.