Lilies from Hell (Blossoms of Death Duet #1)

01

Moscow

I woke up to the sound of a bang coming from downstairs.

My vision remained blurred from sleep. I pushed the comforter off the bed and jumped out of it with a little hop.

The air from outside hit my legs, making the hair on my arms stand on end, but I didn’t dislike the cold of the harsh winter nights.

My father used to say that all living beings could become accustomed to the worst things without realizing it.

I walked through the hallways until I reached a room lit by a dim light and filled with someone’s pleas. My body froze the moment I saw a gun pointed at her chestnut hair. I wanted to disappear and run back to my room, but it was too late. His eyes had locked onto mine.

“Just in time, son.” The way he spoke was something that I didn’t like.

Seeing that I wasn’t moving, he grabbed my arm and pushed me until I was standing in front of that woman.

Her teary face showed swelling from the blows.

Behind her, a couple of burly men made sure she couldn’t go anywhere, although it would have been difficult given the ropes that bound her hands and legs.

“Mom,” I stammered with teary eyes as I recognized her, receiving only a look of disgust and resentment.

“You’re creating a monster, Kristoff,” she whispered with rage.

My father slapped her and abruptly turned her face right after she finished speaking. Her lower lip was now broken and stained with specks of blood that splattered the floor.

“I won’t allow you to speak that way about my son, Katerina. You lost all rights to him when you abandoned us for your stupid lover. Now he’s mine, and I’ll raise him however the fuck I want.”

I felt sick to my stomach. More than once I wondered why she had left us.

I still didn’t understand some things, but I knew well that she never loved us.

Not me, at least. She always preferred Viktor, my brother.

At some point, I may have learned to love her like a mother, but that love faded away with every rejection and every unpleasant word that came out of her mouth.

Everything fell apart when she abandoned us.

“She doesn’t deserve you,” my father said. Gun in hand. His eyes fixed on my mother’s face with furious eyes.

“What are you waiting for? Finish her.” He looked at me, and I reached out my hand, waiting for him to hand me the gun with trembling fingers.

Disobeying any of his orders terrified me, and it wasn’t the first time I had used a gun, although I had never done so to take another human’s life.

“I will not risk you wasting bullets and leaving holes all over the wall.” My father’s mocking voice stopped me.

He then took a silver knife out of his pants pocket and placed it in the palm of my hand. I swallowed hard, shifting my gaze between the knife and my mother. My fingers trembled so much I was afraid I would drop the knife, and my chest heaved with anxiety.

“I… I can’t…” I whispered, breathing heavily.

“It’s you or her. Choose.”

His abrupt threat encouraged me to take a step forward, noticing her bruised torso covered by a T-shirt as dirty as her hair. I didn’t want to receive another of my father’s brutal beatings because of someone who had done nothing but break me.

“You disgust me,” my mother spat from the floor.

Her hateful gaze brought new tears to my eyes.

What had I done wrong? Why can’t I be more like my brother?

Why can’t she love me? “You should never have been born. You’re nothing but a mistake that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.

I conceived you with disgust and gave birth to you with hatred. ”

I clenched my fingers around the knife when it threatened to slip out of my fingers. Tears rolled down my cheeks as soon as I lifted my head and saw the way she looked at me. So different from how she looked at Viktor, as if I were nothing but trash and not the child who also came from her womb.

“Do it now, damn it!” My father’s roar snapped me out of the stupor my mother’s words had put me in.

I closed the distance and plunged the knife into her chest in an act of desperation. I just wanted everything to end and stop feeling.

A faint moan escaped her lips and hung in the air.

Her eyes were still open. Her blood stained the floor.

Unable to help myself, I brought a hand to the wound, then held it close to my nose.

Despite having heard her cruel confession earlier, I wanted to feel her warmth before her body would become cold. I hated myself for it.

I took out the knife and stabbed her repeatedly, attacking her body with increasing ferocity. I was so absorbed in the moment and the iron smell under my nose that I didn’t hear my father laughing. He picked me up and carried me away from the body.

“That’s enough,” he said, setting me down on the floor, still laughing. Then he crouched down to my level and brushed my hair. “Very good, buddy. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

My brother, three years younger than me, came shortly after.

“Mom!” he screamed. His gaze fell on the knife I was still holding without even realizing it and my red-stained clothes.

“What have you done to her!?” He threw himself on the floor to embrace our mother’s corpse.

“Why did you do this? You’re evil. Very evil,” he stammered between sobs, staining his pajamas with fresh blood.

Why? I didn’t know myself, but I think I would have done it a thousand times over. Was I evil for that? Maybe, but I didn’t care. She didn’t deserve to live. She was that word my father loved to use all the time with other girls… a bitch.

Three years later, in Toronto.

Age 13

I hated the new school my father had enrolled me in. I hated getting up early, and I hated being around other people.

“I’ll wait for you here at 3:30 p.m., not a minute more, not a minute less, understood?” he muttered beside me before putting a lit cigar to his lips.

I nodded, devoid of any emotion. I was already more than used to his harsh tone and brusque manner. For him, we would always be in a training camp, regardless of the place or situation.

I walked toward what would be my classroom for the new school year.

I paid little attention to the students who were milling around with the obvious intention of avoiding getting in my way.

Once in the classroom, I sat down at one table next to the large windows.

I was grateful that no one sat next to me when the students filled the classroom.

Perhaps it had more to do with the girl who died last year than with the apathy I conveyed.

The class was more boring than usual. The shaded scribbles in my notebook turned into words that reflected what I really wanted to be doing instead of sitting in a stupid chair listening to nonsense. Things that included the girl who was sitting a couple of tables to my left and kept looking at me.

At break time, I didn’t hesitate for a second to go down to the cafeteria.

I could say that the only good thing about that place was the food, if it hadn’t been because today they had what I liked least. Pizza.

I ended up just taking an apple and a glass of orange juice, then looked for an empty table.

I walked over to it and sat down, dropping the tray abruptly.

First, I took a bite of the apple, watching the others make noise and socialize with each other.

Far from bothering me, not having friends was something I enjoyed more than I would admit.

People disgusted me. Even I often disgusted myself.

I was about to drink my juice when a distant noise caught my attention.

A group of kids at a table were laughing uncontrollably.

In the middle of them was a redhead moving almost under the table, until she lifted her head from under the table and placed a metal pink bottle with ribbons on it.

For a few moments, I watched as her cheeks turned slightly red and her lips moved, saying something to her friends with an angry look.

Throughout the entire break, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. There was something about her that really caught my attention. Maybe it was her hair color. It was something I had only seen in movies.

I finished the apple and threw the leftovers in the trash, completely forgetting about the juice and the tray.

Then I quietly left the place. My curiosity became overwhelming.

Some of her friends were with her. They were an obstacle to distinguishing her hair among the crowd despise its unusual color.

I gritted my teeth in frustration as I tried to dodge the other students on the stairs until I stopped near classroom number 126.

Those were the fourth-grade classrooms. The girl was three grades below me.

“Your father is waiting for you outside,” whispered Anna, the nanny who took care of us, in that affectionate tone she always used. Sometimes I didn’t like it.

“I’m not hungry,” I replied, staring at the meat next to the rice.

“Are you sick?” I shook my head, not entirely sure of it. I wasn’t sick, but I hadn’t been feeling well for the last few days. “My brother isn’t coming?”

I didn’t really care, but I didn’t want to go through this alone.

“No. He’s tired,” Anna replied, avoiding the real reason he wasn’t coming.

I already knew why. It wasn’t hard to guess from the screams coming from his room every night. I nodded and left the kitchen.

My father’s eyes rested on me with a dangerous gleam as soon as I opened the back door of the truck and sat down in the back. Two burly men were sitting next to me, one on my left and one on my right.

“Today I want to introduce you to someone. As my heir.” My stomach twisted even more with a bad feeling that I ignored.

A house, much smaller than mine, was the first thing I saw when I got out. I entered the main room with the others behind me. My eyes darted around the room, searching for whatever was making my stomach twist so uncomfortably.

Hearing someone else's footsteps on the stairs, my eyes fell on a man.