One
Roxanne
As Dimitri’s eyes bounce between mine, I shake my head, denying the claims I see in his narrowed gaze. There’s no doubt my face is visible in the image that’s so zoomed in, the pixilation that should make me unrecognizable to anyone who doesn’t intimately know me, but I’m not present in the physical sense. My face is being bounced off an industrial-size filing cabinet. The same filing cabinet I saw stacked behind my mother when she FaceTimed me the day after my failed meet-up to reconnect with my father.
She said she was sorry he had made me upset, and that she was determined to mend the rift between us. I told her not to worry. My father was the same cruel man he always was, so I wasn’t interested in rebuilding bridges that had burned years earlier.
Our conversation barely lasted a minute, but if the anger teeming out of Dimitri is anything to go by, my last contact with my mother is more significant to him than it was to me. He’s blistering mad. Our combined dispositions are enhanced beyond reproach.
“That isn’t me,” I hiccup through a sob.
When anger flares through his eyes, making them dark cesspools of annoyance, I realize my error. Denials won’t get me anywhere. I need to prove to Dimitri I’m on his team. That’s the only way I’ll come out of this exchange with my life intact.
“It’s me, but I wasn’t there when they took Fien. You can see it’s a reflection. Even a surveillance novice wouldn’t be able to deny that…” My words trail off when Dimitri releases the first surveillance image from his death-tight grip to reveal a second, more terrifying one. It shows a tiny baby covered with white goop and blood being dangled mid-air by her feet. She’s as still as a board, her only coloring coming from the cruel grip her captor has on her feet. He’s clutching her so tightly, the blood that’s supposed to pump around her feet pools in them instead. Their red hue matches the flames tattooed on the man’s wrist—the same flame tattoo barely noticeable on my father’s blood-smattered arm since he had it recently covered with a much bigger design.
If that isn’t concerning enough, a tiny hand in the very far left of the image has an identifiable feature. It isn’t a birthmark like Fien has on her stomach nor a tattoo. It’s a ring—a ring that feels like it weighs a ton when Dimitri’s eyes lower to take in its uniqueness firsthand. He glares at the custom jewelry piece I inherited from my grandmother, his blazing stare heating it up as effectively as his evidence makes my stomach flip.
I can’t see the face of the man in the image, it’s covered by a balaclava, but both his tattoo and his eyes are familiar to me. As are the hands of the woman reaching out to remove Dimitri’s daughter from his clutch.
As tears flood my eyes, horrified I have any association with people capable of doing such a horrendous act, I blubber out a string of apologies. I’m sickened my parents would do something so inhumane, but I also don’t want to be punished for something that wasn’t my fault. They’re my parents, but their actions don’t lie on my shoulders.
When my apologies reach Dimitri’s ears, he leans into me deeper, stealing both the words from my mouth and the air from my lungs. “They killed my wife. Your parentskilled my wife!” He screams his last three words in my face.
“I know. I am so sorry. I had no idea they were capable of doing such an appalling act. I swear to God, I don’t condone a single thing they’ve done. If I had any inkling they were involved, I would have told you.”
“You’re lying.”
Tears fling off my face when I shake my head. “No. I had no clue. I swear I was in the dark as much as you.” I am shocked I can talk. I’m not just stunned at the evidence he’s presenting, I am also shocked we’re holding this conversation in the room my father was murdered in. The anger emanating from him has vomit racing up my food pipe. It’s seconds from being released. “I’m as angry as you.”
Air traps in my throat when Dimitri interrupts, “Prove it.”
“W-what?” I stare at him, utterly lost. How can I prove I’m as devastated as him? He killed my father. I can’t display my anger as brutally as that. The person deserving of my wrath is dead. There’s no one left for me to take my anger out on.
Oh no.
As the truth smacks into me, the door we walked through only minutes ago pops open, and a woman with reddish-blonde hair and arms scarred with track marks is thrust into the room. When my mother lands on the floor with a thud, first instincts have me wanting to race to her side. The only reason I don’t is because I can’t get the images Dimitri showed me out of my head. Although most of my focus was on Fien and my parents, no amount of shock could stop my eyes from drinking in the blurry person behind them. Dimitri’s wife wasn’t treated with any respect, so why should my mother be given any leeway?
An idealism on who our parents are supposed to be is embedded in us when we’re kids. If you’re lucky, your unfounded hopes might stack up. But for the most part, you’ll be lucky to stumble out of childhood unscathed. Have you ever heard the saying,Just because you can have kids doesn’t mean you should?That resonates well with my parents. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them, but Fien would be. That, in itself, explains Dimitri’s fury.
My heart tries to break out of my chest when Dimitri steps back, unpinning me from the wall. The anger radiating out of him isn’t responsible for my heart’s thuds, it’s the angst he strikes it with when he digs his gun out of the back of his jeans and shoves it into my hand.
I could direct it at him as he did to me days ago, I could save my mother before saving myself, but for the life of me, I can’t. I’m not a parent, but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand what Dimitri is going through. He was barely holding on last week, so I can only imagine how thin the thread is now. The images he showed me were horrific, and the pain in his eyes tells me they were just the beginning of the horrendous things he has seen.
“Please don’t make me do this,” I beg when he slides off the safety on his gun, so it’s ready to maim. I’m shocked at how fast he moves. I am shuddering like I’m in an ice bath. The gun isn’t close to stable—and neither am I. “I can make it up to you. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“You’re already doing everything I ask.” His words snap out of his mouth like venom, both vicious and maiming. They have nothing on the hate in his eyes, though.
“I’ll do more—”
Dimitri whips around so fast, the waft of his quick movements blasts my face with the scent of a pricy aftershave. “More what, Roxanne? More trouble? More hurt?”
“Anything! I’ll do anything you ask.”
Tears roll down my cheeks unchecked when he says, “Kill the woman responsible for my wife’s death. That’sallI want you to do.”
Ignoring the rapid shake of my head advising him I could never do that, he grips the scruff of my mother’s shirt. His brutal strength forces her eyes from the floor. When they collide with mine, I almost become one with the wall. I don’t recognize her in the slightest. She isn’t close to the woman I remember. Her eyes aren’t lit with life. They’re shallow and lifeless, as bleak as my father’s now are.
That doesn’t mean I want to kill her, though.
