Chapter Twenty-Three #3
In a house where I will never be safe so long as I live.
???
I wait over an hour after he’s gone to move again.
It hurts. Everything hurts, but I force myself up. I button my jeans, but I don’t reach for a shirt. There’s blood on my back, my neck, the indents of teeth in places I can’t even reach.
I can’t stop shaking. My legs tremble so badly I have to hold onto the wall as I creep down the attic stairs. I need the bathroom. I need the shower. That’s all I can think as I slip into the quiet hall. Bathroom. Shower. Bathroom. Shower.
Don’t think about the pain. Just keep moving.
Bathroom. Shower.
Cruel, rumbling laughter floating down the hall stops me before I reach the bathroom door. Instinctively, I know I should avoid that laughter, but something about this fugue state makes me follow it instead.
The door to my grandfather’s study is cracked open enough that I don’t have to look too hard to see inside. There’s a fire roaring. In front of it Andrei and my grandfather sit together, drinking brandy, smoking cigars, and laughing…
“How much did they pay you for the Domovoy?”
Grandfather snorts. “More than the usual. You know his kind are willing to pay extra for the discretion. I assured him no one would know a thing about his… Proclivities.”
They’re laughing at me, I realize. A hot wave of rage boils in my gut, my fists clenching at my sides. I’d hoped perhaps that Ms. Rossi was the one who came to my grandfather. That she paid for my time to cover up her brother’s proclivities, as my grandfather called them.
But Grandfather knew.
Mr. Rossi- his granddaughter’s fiancé- came to him and asked to use me and he accepted the money with a shake of his fucking hand and directions to my room.
Men can’t fuck other men, but Grandfather doesn’t see me as a man. He doesn’t see me as his grandson, blood of his blood. I’m nothing more than a pawn he can sell to whomever pays the right price. I’m his to abuse until the day I’m put in ground either by Andrei or himself.
My mother may have brought me into this world, but he didn’t blink an eye when her husband took her out of it. He won’t lift a finger when Sonya’s husband does the same to her. All the while using me to disrespect her in the shadows.
Tears fill my eyes. I’m in pain, my body ravaged and bruised, blood still trickling down my back to pool at the base of my spine.
My legs only hold me up by sheer power of will.
I’m done. I’m fucking done. I won’t take this anymore, not for another fucking second, but if I’m going down I’m taking the devil with me.
Unlike the door to the attic, Grandfather’s office door doesn’t creak when I push it open. The gun is still right where I left it this morning, resting loaded on the edge of the desk.
Quiet as the grave, I pick it up. There’s no need for me to cock the gun, thereby giving myself away. I did that this morning, as part of my expert loading. The safety comes undone with a flick of my thumb. I raise the gun, aim it at the back of my grandfather’s head…
Andrei meets my eyes in the mirror above the fireplace and rushes to his feet.
He tackles my grandfather to the floor before I can pull the trigger and then he’s coming after me.
I shoot, but he’s too close and I barely get his shoulder before his hands are around my throat, forcing me to the ground.
Spots start popping in my vision, my oxygen deprived brain seeking a way out as I writhe beneath him.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” he seethes. “Who the fuck do you think you are?! Worthless, spineless, piece of shit—”
I hit him upside the head with the gun, knocking him off me enough to scramble out from under him. And then I’m on top, straddling his chest, gripping his collar as I bash the butt of the gun into his face over and over and over again.
At first he tries to unseat me, but if any good has come from my treatment over the years, it’s that my core strength is absurd and my determination even stronger.
He tries but is unsuccessful and each time I bring the gun down onto his face he tries just a little less, and less until he stops trying altogether.
Until he lays still beneath me. Until his face is an unrecognizable mess of blood and teeth and whatever fluid lives in eyeballs.
Still, I don’t stop hitting him. I keep going and going, putting all my hurt and frustration and loathing behind every punch. My arms are sore. My back is tired. But I keep fucking hitting him—
Until the groan of a chair across wooden floors has me turning in a blink, training the still loaded gun on my grandfather’s haggard expression.
It’s the first time I’ve seen a hint of fear in his eyes, but either he’s trying to hide it, or the sensation hasn’t quite caught up to his lips because they tilt in placating smile.
“Put down the gun, Grisha—”
“Don’t you dare fucking call me that,” I snarl, pushing off Andrei to stand on unsteady legs. He notices when I catch myself on the back of a chair. “Don’t you dare ever pretend to harbor affection for me you wrinkled old slug.”
His brows narrow. “You are my grandson and you will obey—”
“I’ve done nothing but obey you!” I shout.
Tears are starting to slide down my cheeks, my voice catching in my throat.
“I’ve done everything you ask but one and yet you have forced that upon me too!
So don’t you dare stand there and pretend you see me as yours!
Don’t you dare stand there and tell me I mean a damn thing to you other than being something for you to use! ”
My hand around the gun is starting to shake and I fight to keep it steady.
“How much have you profited off of me?! How much was my innocence worth to you?! Thousands?! More?! Tell me, Grandfather, was it worth your fucking life?!”
He has just one second to recognize the danger he’s truly in before I pull the goddamn trigger and watch as my grandfather’s brains stain the mahogany walls.
His body hits the floor a second before my knees, and then I’m curling in on myself- sobbing, shaking, screaming- pressing the burning barrel of the gun to the hollow beneath my chin.
My finger wraps around the trigger as the study door bursts open.