Chapter 26 – Age 17
ISEULT
“Please,” I cry, choking on my sobs. “Please stop!”
“Zatknis', malen'kaya suka!” Sergey bellows, his foot pressed into my nape, the blowtorch feathering over my back as it burns through my flesh. “I’m not done yet. Must be patient.”
The heel of his shoe delves even harder, but I don’t feel it because the torment he rains across my skin is far worse.
No matter how many times he tells me to shut up, I can’t. The pain is unimaginable and indescribable.
All I want is to be free.
But it’s been days, and no one has come for me. I’m all alone here with a monster. And not the kind they tell you about when you’re a kid. The real kind. The human kind. He’s the only monster I’ve ever met, and I’ll never be rid of him, whether I survive this or not.
With my eyes slammed closed, the raw screaming escaping my lungs, I imagine my mother the day she died.
Is that how she felt as he burned her alive? At least I could still breathe. She couldn’t. I could still survive. If only someone finds me before I’m dead too.
“You know…” he chimes through my brutal snivels. “If your father was an honorable man, we could’ve avoided this, but…”
The torch swallows me up again, and I shatter, barely hearing his words.
Burning…
Skin charring.
“He was never a good man, your father,” Sergey goes on while I’m barely able to listen. “So you can blame him for this.”
“F-f-f-fuck y-you,” I grate through a snarl, my neck turned to him, staring up into his dirt-filled eyes.
He laughs cruelly, his shoulders rocking. “My God, you’re a tough one, aren’t you?”
Hatred blooms inside me as he shuts off the torch and shakes his head, as though mocking me.
“All the things I have done to you and you’re still talking back to me, huh?”
For one fleeting moment, I think that maybe he’ll finally leave me alone for the day. Maybe he’ll let me lie here and rot.
But instead, he kneels, torch in hand, his putrid breath invading my nostrils, like the decaying of flesh. Or maybe all I smell is me.
With his teeth gritted, he grabs a fistful of my hair and twists my head back until my neck spasms.
“You better watch your mouth when you talk to me, you got it, suka?” And as he straightens himself, his foot connects hard with my ribs.
“Ahhh!” I scream, new tears rolling over my old ones, crusted to my face.
I remain here on the floor of the warehouse crying, wishing I could just die.
My back pulses, the burns on my front almost numb, but I still feel the throbbing pain from when he burned me days ago.
I can’t take another moment of this. Where is my father?! Why hasn’t he found me! I know he’d never give up hope. But I’m close to giving it up.
It’s been seven days of this. Seven days of torture. Seven days of hell.
I close my eyes, my body cold, trembling, my shirt burned into my skin, and it’s then I see her: my mother, her beautiful smile, her hair gleaming in the sun.
“Get up, Iseult. Don’t you dare give up.”
Her voice. Her face. It’s as though it’s right here. Right in front of me.
“I can’t, Mom. I can’t anymore,” I speak under my breath.
“Did you say something, sweetheart?” he taunts, his leery grin churning my stomach.
My mother’s voice is still there as I stare into the devil’s face.
“You have a warrior’s heart. A warrior keeps fighting, Iseult. Keep fighting, darling. Don’t let him take your light.”
When he comes nearer once more, a wicked sneer beneath a set of pale yellow teeth, something blooms in my gut. Something wild and free, a whisper of the girl I was before he snatched me and made me his victim.
But I’ve never been good at being a victim.
When he kneels this time, I don’t think. I just react.
With a grunt, my body flips to my side, my foot connecting hard with his balls.
“Suka!” he growls as he stumbles backward, collapsing to the ground, the torch clinking beside him.
I gasp, not wasting this opportunity. Rushing to my feet, I run for the torch, my entire body surviving on the sheer will to make it out alive.
He groans, holding his crotch, sagging in a fetal position as I jump over him and turn on the torch, and that’s when his eyes grow.
“What are you do—”
I stomp on his balls harder, hoping I busted both his tiny nuts, and when he screams, a grim smile tugs at one end of my mouth.
The torch flips to life in my hand, and I stare at the brilliant blue light. So beautiful, yet so deadly. And I swear that when I survive this, I will be like this flame.
“I’m gonna kill you!” he shouts, but makes no move to get up.
And slowly, torturously, I lower the flame until it meets his eye, until his screams scratch up the walls, until there’s nothing there but blood.
His hand grabs for my ankle as he shrieks. I fall to the floor, the torch collapsing on the ground, almost connecting with my thigh.
My pulse thrashes as the silent fear returns, as he glares at me with one good eye. But before he can, I grab the torch once more and let the flames eat away his thigh. He screams in agony as I leave the torch behind, away from his grasp, staring at the man who tortured me for seven days.
He starts to rise, and fear and anger creep up my spine. And as much as I want to kill him, I know that I must get out of here before I end up dead myself.
Jumping up, I rush out of the room, down the metal steps, and out into the assailing light. Two cars honk as I blink against the rays of the sun, getting my eyes to adjust.
My heartbeats are a deafening sound in my ears, the enveloping fear eating me alive as I will my legs to run, needing to find a phone.
“Hey!” Someone rolls down the window of their black SUV.
A woman. Mom’s age, maybe older.
“Are you okay, honey? Do you need an ambulance?”
“I…I need to call my dad.”
“Do you want me to drive you to a hospital?”
Her eyes are kind. Soft brown, golden flecks within them. Like my mother’s. Tears fill my eyes, and I smile, knowing that somehow my mother sent this woman to me.
“I need a ride home. Please.”
“I…uh…”
“Please! Someone is after me.”
“O-okay. Get in.”
I rush around to the passenger side, and when I pass her windshield, I can see the moment she takes in my full condition, and her own eyes water.
Stuffing down my emotions, ignoring the roaring of my stinging pain, I open the passenger door and get inside.
“Please just drive,” I beg her just as Sergey rushes out the door, looking every which way for me.
I lower myself down and she looks at me, perplexed, before she glances to her left and sees him.
“Just go!” I whisper-shout. “Before he kills us both.”
When the light turns green, she keeps the car at normal speed and gets us away.
My breath rushes out of me, and when we’re finally gone, all my emotions pound at me, and I burst into silent tears.
She lets me cry, not saying a word. But a second later, she’s handing me a phone.
“Call your dad, honey. I’m sure he’s anxious to know you’re okay.” Her voice trembles.
I nod, taking it, and as soon as I dial his number…
“Hello? Who’s this?”
His gruff, tortured voice only makes me wail.
“Iseult?” He breaks into a cry. “Darling? Is that you? Oh my God. She’s on the phone!”
Voices. So many voices. Tynan. My other brothers.
“Where are you? Tell me where you are so we can get you.”
“I r-ran. A lady picked me up and is giving me a ride. I…” I sniffle. “I need a shirt.”
Silence. The silence grows until it’s all I hear.
“Okay,” I hear Tynan next, as though my father can no longer handle it. “We’ll bring it. Tell her to drop you off at the restaurant on Sixth.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Iseult, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Tynan.”
“It is. It was up to me to protect you, and I failed. Fuck!”
Something smashes in the distance.
“I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you in about forty-five,” I tell him.
“Okay. I love you.”
“Ditto.”
GIO
As she recalled the time she was taken, all I could do was stare at her in disbelief.
“You were just a kid.” My words are filled with awe. “Fuck, Red.” I clasp the back of her head. “My little fighter even back then, huh?”
She shrugs. “My mother once told me I had a warrior’s heart. I guess it kinda stuck with me.”
Her lips jerk, and she smiles softly now. It’s good to see her smile that way, even while reliving all that trauma.
“He didn’t take me far,” she goes on. “Some abandoned warehouse about thirty miles from home. I was glad he didn’t take me to Russia. If he had, I know I’d have ended up dead.”
“Did your father go back there? The place he held you?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “It was empty. He searched everywhere. My brothers too. They didn’t stop for years. I don’t think they ever did. They just don’t talk to me about it anymore. Tynan took it the hardest out of the three of them. He felt like he failed me.”
She lays her cheek against my beating heart, my utterly broken beating heart.
“And no matter how many times I reassured him it wasn’t his fault, he wouldn’t stop hating himself for it.”
“Shit. Speaking of, I was supposed to text him to let him know you’re okay.”
“What?” She jerks back and her eyes enlarge, but she makes no attempt to escape my arms. “What did you tell him?” Her voice turns feverish. “What does he know, Gio?”
“Hey.” I brush a hand down her hair. “I just told him you might be upset and to let me pass the gate.”
“Is that it?”
“Mm, well…” I grimace.
“Oh, no…I don’t like that face you’re making. What did you do?” She punches me in the shoulder.
“Fuck, woman, you gotta hit me that hard?”
She glares like she’s got my death certificate already written. “You know…I have a new gun I’ve been dying to test out.”
I chuckle. “As long as you let me hold you for a bit more before you kill me.”
“Gio…” Her eyes expand. “Tell me.”
“Okay, okay. Geez.” I clear my throat. “After he caught me leaving your place earlier, I told him I liked you.”
“You said WHAT?!”
I don’t think I’ve quite seen her face this red before.
“He won’t say anything. So stop worrying.”
She sighs heavily and drops her forehead against my shoulder. “My life has imploded ever since you walked into it.”
“Well, my life has only gotten better since the moment you stabbed your way into it.”