Chapter 20 - Viktor #2
My eyes fall shut, and I slam my head back against the wall so hard it threatens to split my skull in two. Good. Maybe I’ll get one last leg up on this shower of cunts and die before they have a chance to kill me. It would feel fucking great to win one last time.
I brace myself to bash my head against the corrugated wall again, but a hand fists in my hair and holds my head in place.
“Fuck you,” I spit in Valentin Yuri’s face, my back teeth grinding when I clench my jaw, refusing to let any evidence of my pain escape.
If my girl can fight, so can I. So will I.
“Go on. Shoot me, you fucking pussy. She’ll never forgive you, and I’ll win anyway. ”
The bastard twists his grip and yanks my head back, forcing my venomous gaze upward. “You don’t understand love, Zakharov,” he sneers, spitting back. His spittle lands on my mouth. My face burns with outrage.
“Haven’t we established that you know nothing about me?”
“We looked into it,” he admits. “Your parentage. Since it’s clear you’ve been spending time in New York, my wife had the genius input that you surely couldn’t have helped but gotten your ass beaten up one time or another.
We searched for a crossmatch with your blood and DNA.
One piece, if it’s big enough, can be big enough to figure out the big picture of a puzzle. Even Trifon’s little girl knows that.”
An icy ripple runs up my spine.
“Your mother is a drunk on the precipice of cirrhosis. Milena Belova, huh?”
“Keep my mother’s name out of your fucking mouth,” I bark, yanking against his grip. I don’t give a fuck if he rips hair out of the fucking root. I’m going to goddamn kill him.
“You mean, the way you kept your dick out of our sister?”
I swallow against the rising bitterness in my mouth. “Don’t.”
“Why? You did. Shouldn’t you pay? Wouldn’t you make me, if it were the other way around?” Valentin doesn’t wait for my answer. “You would fucking end me, and you’d take your time with it. I can see it in your eyes even now, Viktor.”
My insides twist. “You fucking bet I would. So fucking what? That’s what this world is. You eat before you get fucking eaten.”
With an irate shove, he shoves my head back against the wall with a dull thunk. Just when I’m nearly happy he’s going to fuck off, Valentin recaptures my interest by dragging a rickety chair over.
I can envision him beating me to death with it.
It wouldn’t be fucking pretty, but at least memorable.
Like the uninteresting piece of shit he is, Valentin just sinks down into the chair.
“You want to know something, Viktor? Nadya is a good person. She can be fickle and impetuous and fucking crazy. But her heart is fucking pure. She gives and gives with it. She deserves everything good the world has to offer her.”
I’d tell him to shut the fuck up. To fuck off to hell.
I’d say I don’t give a shit, that I couldn’t care less.
But I want to hear this. I am desperate to know.
Any piece of Nadya I can have, I’ll settle for.
I’ll take scraps beneath the table, just to have any piece of her.
It’s better than a feast for anyone else.
I nod to Valentin, admitting that he has all my attention.
Though I do despise the way it quirks a corner of his mouth, as if I’ve fucking amused him. Fucker.
“I don’t know what your game is. But you’re not going to play it with her.
I’ll end you in cold blood, and if she hates us for it, fine.
We don’t need her forgiveness. We need her safe and fucking happy, because she’s a kind, compassionate person who’s too brave for her own good.
We will do what we have to in order to protect her from herself, whenever we have to. ”
My pulse misfires in protest. “She isn’t a game.”
Valentin laughs in my face.
“Believe what you want,” I dismiss sourly. “It’s the fucking truth.”
“Do you even know what truth is, Viktor? Because I have a sneaking suspicion you’re a second away from confessing your love for my sister, and I’m going to stop you right the fuck there,” he says viciously, rising to his feet. The stool screeches against the ground.
“Just get it fucking over with.”
Valentin sighs, peeved. “If you understood love, you’d already know that we’d never break our sister’s heart,” he says.
“But it makes sense to me now, why you’re fucked in the head.
No one’s ever loved you, have they? You’ve been an unwanted mutt since the miserable day you were born.
One that was almost put down, once upon a time.
Maybe your life would’ve been easier if you had been.
Instead, you got damned to this hollow fate. You exist in no man’s land.”
What the fuck am I supposed to do here? I watch this bitch roll his fucking eyes, like all Yuris seem perpetually inclined to, and shake his head like I’m failing him.
Again, his fist bangs against the steel door. And again, someone pulls it open. Yet Valentin dawdles in the doorway, not leaving.
Finally, he looks right at me. He says, “I’d consider feeling sorry for you, you know. If I didn’t fucking hate you.”
The door slams shut behind him, the light buzzing audibly with nothing else filling this cold, vacant nothingness.