12. Kazia
12
KAZIA
T he sound of shuffling feet echoed in my head. My mom's desperate voice. Don’t do that! Leave her alone! Smack.
Every second those rough hands gripped at the back of my neck was like a ticking time bond; the cracks shifted, and the jagged edges of old memories sliced open anew.
Darkness surrounded me as I looked through the slits of the closet door. Black boots and heavy footsteps vibrated the hardwood as the thud of my mom hitting the floor worked through my psyche. I wanted to scream, to tell him to leave her alone, but my whole body froze. Terror filled my throat, blocking my airways as my heart raced, trapped in a vicious cycle of fear and helplessness.
“What the fuck?”
His sickening, sugary peanut butter and chocolate scent filled my lungs, clogging my throat, making every inhale a struggle. Gasping for breath, I tried to push that terror into that black box I envisioned in my head.
Watching those black boots head my way, I squeezed my eyes tight, curling up into a ball to make myself smaller, invisible. That was until the door to the closet opened, and he grabbed me by the neck. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?!”
Thrashing around, I flung my legs all around, kicking everywhere and anywhere as hard as I could. I wouldn't let him get me; I couldn't. I repeatedly told myself that as an unending sea of fear flooded my mind.
“Fuck!”
The hand holding me disappeared, and I scrambled to the floor, crawling on all fours like an animal. The room around me felt like a cage, its walls closing in with each breath I took. I needed to hide, to be faster than him .
Safe. The word ran through my mind repeatedly, the only mantra I needed when he was around. I needed to find a safe place. Swinging my head around, I saw a desk in the corner and scrambled to get underneath, knowing every second counted. If I could disappear before he saw me, I could do it myself. He would be pissed, but it was better than being caught.
Safe. I need to stay safe. I pressed my nails into my palms, digging in, grounding me. Mom gets so upset when he hurts me. She cries and cries when she thinks I don’t know. She prays to the ancestors to help us survive, to endure, but I just want him to go away, to leave us alone.
“What the fuck are you doing to her?!”
A familiar voice bellowed across the room. Recognition itched in the back of my head, but I didn't move from my spot under the desk to look.
“Doing to her? She’s the one that kicked me in the nuts!”
That voice wasn’t her mom's boyfriend. Did he bring others with him this time? Tightening the grip on the pen in my hand, I raised it, ready to use it as soon as a hand tried to grab me, but I hoped they would just leave me alone. If I hid for longer than thirty minutes, he would give up and go drinking. I just needed to disappear for thirty minutes. I never wanted one of my mom's Romani spells more than this moment.
A violent scuffle broke out, fists slamming into bodies, shoes skidding, and a heavy thud as someone hit the floor. I pulled my legs in tighter, trying to make my body as small as I could make it. Please don’t let them hear me; please don’t let them see me.
“I left for fucking five seconds, and you already broke her! I’ll make you pay for this Ion! Brother or not, I warned you, didn’t I?”
A loud bang had me flinch; a cold, hard voice broke above the others. “What the fuck are you two doing in my room?” My body trembled because even without yelling or cursing, this voice demanded that I pay attention and do as he said, or something much worse would happen.
“He fucked with my Roma, and now she’s broken. Ion is never careful with anything, and now I have to patch her up, but she won't get out of her damn bunker!”
His Roma? Why did that sound familiar? That man never called me that. It was either ‘brat’ or ‘little bitch’. Shaking my head, I realized that the voice talking was one I had heard before.
“I told you! I. Didn’t. Break. Her!” Are they talking about me? Was I broken? “She fucking broke me! My dick still hurts from being kicked so hard. Fuck!”
Cezar didn't waste any time responding with no apathy. “It's obvious that it's your fault. I don't know why you won't man up and take your punishment.”
Cezar. Yes. I know him. He’s…
Ion’s exasperated voice exploded. “Because you want to kill me as punishment! How the fuck is that fair? Also, why the fuck was she in here unattended, huh?! I heard the shower on but remembered that Nicu said he would be out early, and I went to investigate only to find her snooping around.”
Ion. My face tightened into a scowl at the thought of his name. The faint edges of reality started to blur around the vision in front of me. Everything is so mixed and blurred. Time and space weren't making sense. Why were Cezar and Ion here? Why did it seem they couldn't see the man who had been my childhood nightmare? Biting the inside of my lip, I tried to think it all through when a pulsing, fiery sensation danced behind my eyes, searing and unyielding.
Clutching my head, I heard voices in the background, trying to hear them when I knew they were talking about me, but the relentless throbbing echoing through my skull was making it hard to hear anything else.
“Leave.”
That one chilling, harsh word sliced through the chaos of my mind, making just enough room for reality to slither into my consciousness. I'm in their house, my kidnappers, not the house my ten-year-old mind tried to bury from my memory.
“She is my response-”
“No. My room, my say.” Nicu . He was the only man I knew whose spoken words were so cold and forceful they were like commands from death himself. Unbreakable, even with his equally dangerous brothers.
A scuffle sounded, and a couple of grunts came out when Nicu whispered, “Trust me, brother.”
The room went quiet; the temptation to peek out and see what was happening clawed at my conscious, but my body refused to move.
Nicu's tone changed as if he was trying to calm the beast before it went on a rampage. “Just stay outside the door, and I'll call you in when she's ready.”
Cezar’s voice went low, more menacing than I've ever heard. “Nan and Cal are telling me you're a lost cause, not to let you near our salvation,” he paused before he spat out with venom, “but M says to let you. That you know what you're doing. Let's hope she's right.”
I didn't know what that meant, but I heard two steps leave and the door closed. My pulse jackhammered as I heard slow, measured steps coming my way. My fingers dug into my arms, gripping so tight my muscles groaned in protest. I braced myself on instinct, trying to make myself so heavy that dragging me out was more hassle than worth it.
Tracking those fancy black leather dress shoes like a hawk, I watched them move around the room, stopping beside the bed before me and sitting down.
“Are you hurt?”
That firm yet gentle question rocked me to my core. When was the last time someone asked me that? The vision of a cop came up, flashing blue and red lights streaming across his face. His lips moved as he asked the same question gently yet firmly.
A sob worked its way out, “No.”
His heavy sigh made me want to grow smaller. It was clear to me now that I had an episode from when my mom and I were living with Mark, the man she had a six-month relationship with. The man who had been an abusive prick who hit her in front of me, and when that was no longer enough, he started to come for me.
They must all think I'm so pathetic. They didn't know they kidnapped someone with repressed trauma.
“Who hit you?”
Resting my chin on my knees, I knew I should figure out how to make him connect with and care for me. He was one of my kidnappers, after all, but I wasn't in the right headspace to figure it out. “Ion didn't hit me,” I admitted with a sigh. “He just grabbed my neck and said something similar to someone in my past.” Thinking back to that moment, my mind went dark; I remembered that smell, the candy Mark always kept on hand.
“That's not what I meant. I know it wasn't my brothers.” His voice vibrated with something I couldn't quite put my finger on…anger? Resentment? Annoyance? Whatever it was surprised me.
Why would he care in the least? I was just some woman his brother brought home one day. The daughter of the woman he was trying to find. Maybe that was the reason he was keeping me around. He thinks I know whatever it was he wanted from my mom. Sucks for him, though. Unless he wanted to know a ritual for protection or the logistics of proper communication with nature, he’s all out of luck. My mom never talked about her past. Always told me that talking about evil brought it to your door, and she tried very hard to hide from its all-seeing eye.
“Who?”
His voice was so close I felt the vibrations press deep into my skin, rolling further like distant thunder. My gaze slammed into his, like velvet shadows of nightfall, ready to consume me immediately. My whole body went rigid, fear skittering on the outskirts of my mind, but something in my heart and soul wasn't afraid of this deadly and dangerous man.
Even crouching down so far to be eye to eye with me underneath his desk, he gave off the aura of authority and power. Like nothing could touch him if he so wished it. Having his steady, full gaze on me felt like I was laid bare before him, and while it was embarrassing, I didn’t hate it. Man, was I fucked up. Nothing that I felt about these three men made any sense to me.
“Oh…,” Now that he was in front of me, I tucked back my hair, trying to look less animalistic. “A man named Mark. He… dated my mom, and when he got bored with her…” I left the rest off, knowing he could connect the dots.
His face didn't change; not a single twitch or movement of his body indicated how he felt, but his eyes spoke a different story. Those inky orbs swirled like violent molten tar, threatening to spill out immediately and demolish everything you are in this world.
He looked away like he was ready to bolt out of this room at any second. “Where is he now?”
“Dead,” I replied. My voice hollowed as my mind tried to drift back to that night, the last night I ever saw him. I don't know if it was because I didn't want to relive those memories, or because I knew the man in front of me had done worse in his life, or if I had such a mental breakdown that I was spilling the only secret I promised to take to the grave. Still, I found myself looking at the floor as the words formed. “I killed him.”
The silence in the room felt like a heavy fog, dense with lingering tension. Silent tears fell from my face, something I couldn't help even if I wanted to. Now that the memories had broken free, I couldn't stop myself from remembering that night when I’d had enough when he searched for me and paused at the stairs, yelling at my mom to get off the floor and cook dinner.
I don't know how I even thought of the idea in the first place. Someone else was whispering in my ear, telling me how to survive. That we needed to survive. Then I got out of the shadows I was hiding in, tiptoed up behind him, and shoved him down the stairs with all my might.
The crack of his neck rang so loud I knew that once he hit the bottom, he was dead, and we were free. I didn't even feel bad about what I did, and I knew that for a ten-year-old to feel that way, something was wrong with me. Maybe I wasn't any better than these men. Maybe I deserve this.
“The wounds disappear, but the scars on the inside are always felt. Making you weak, powerless.”
He wasn't looking at me as he said those words, instead looking at his own hands. A tortured look flashed across his face so fast I thought I had to have made it up, but his words rang so true I knew he had suffered something similar.
His eyes went distant, lost somewhere I couldn’t follow. “At least you got rid of your monster.”
Shaking his head, he held a towel out. “Take a hot shower. Cry, rage, do whatever you must in the next fifteen minutes, then Cezar will take you back to your room.”
I willed my body to move and take his hand, but my limbs wouldn’t listen. Not a single finger moved. Get the fuck up! He will yank you out from under here, and you’ll be in more trouble than you already are!
Yelling at myself did nothing to help. His head bloomed across my face as his waiting hand stood before me. His face was the epitome of calm patience like he knew it would be hard for me, and for some reason, this pissed me off.
That anger warmed up my veins. I wasn't about to be pitied by a stone-cold killer. Nope. Not me. I was going to get past this like he said. I was going to take a shower, rage, and then go back to my prison. Maybe I should drink some of that drugged water from Cezar and get myself a nice long sleep before I go back to my regular self.
Survival. It has always been about survival.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep, shaky breath, moving my trembling hand at a glacier place into his. As soon as our skin touched, the warmth from his hand flowed to mine like a quiet current, sinking deeper with each second we were connected.
His other hand gently scooped me up, careful not to tug or move too fast until my feet were firmly planted on the ground. One hand was in my hand with his other practically wrapped around me, and our bodies were only a few inches apart, so I made the mistake of looking up at him. Those eyes that spoke of our shared darkness grabbed me and kept me entranced as they searched mine. I don't know what he was looking for, but once he found it, he let go of my hand like it was on fire. Taking a few steps away from me and pointing to the shower that I just realized was still running.
“You have fifteen minutes.” His tone was rough and demanding before stomping out of the room like he couldn't get out any faster.
I stood there for a second, looking down at my hand and the lingering warmth he left there, a subtle echo of the connection we had imprinted on my skin. What the fuck was that? I never pictured Nicu as someone who could comfort another person. He was frigid and ruthless. He wouldn't hesitate to kill me the second my use ran out.
So why did I feel a kinship when I looked into those unyielding, lifeless eyes? That he was the only one who understood. Why did it have to be him?