Page 66 of Bratva Sacrifice

Until I can forget the worst of my anger. Until the knowledge that she is mine once more suffocates the choking fear that I will never have her again. Until my hands stop shaking and my mind is settled and my heart ceases to pump fury through my veins instead of only blood. Until I can trust myself in her presence.

Perhaps, far into the future, when my anger has cooled, there will come a day where I can forgive her. But even should such a day come, I will never forget. Even then, I will never be so foolish as to trust in her again.

∞∞∞

By the second day of Katya’s imprisonment, I am no better. If anything, I am worse. I wake with a ball of rage in my chest, furious now that she is so close and still untouchable to me. Furious that there is no respite even in sleep from this wrath that consumes me.

I hear her even in my dreams. Calling to me in that voice rife with desperation. Alyosha, please!

I know this is impossible. The pit is too far away, buried beneath the house, soundproofed. But still I hear her voice in my head, and it claws at the open wound she has made of my heart.

Too often I find myself walking the dark hallway to the basement, moments away from punching the code into the keypad that guards the door. Too often I find myself tempted to check the security cameras, to watch her in her captivity like a voyeur. Every hour it becomes more difficult to resist.

Eventually I have to acknowledge the truth of it. I am weak. Too fucking weak when it comes to her. Too fucking weak to resist the temptation of her. Too fucking weak to control myself.

So I drown myself in a bottle of vodka until I cannot hear her in my mind, calling out to me. Until I cannot hear my own thoughts. Until the liquor has drowned the anger, and I am stripped free of the burden of consciousness, beckoned down into a mindless, thoughtless oblivion.

It’s still dark when Anatoli slaps me awake, but the time is closer to dawn than midnight. A firm strike to my cheek to rouse me from my vodka-soaked stupor.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he snaps in Russian.

Nothing more alcohol will not cure. I stretch out my hand for the bottle, abandoned on a nearby table. “You were meant to return days ago,” I slur. Anatoli shoves the bottle out of reach of my fingers, ignoring the glare I slant at him. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Handling business you neglect,” he says sharply. “While you amuse yourself here, things in Moscow go to shit. The government wants a larger cut to turn a blind eye. The enforcers grow cocky and careless. Half a shipment of cocaine goes missing and I have to beat information out of those responsible, make a few examples.” He scoffs as he throws himself into a chair. “Sixteen fucking hours I am on a plane, and I return to this.”

“Give me the fucking vodka and go fuck yourself,” I tell him, casting one arm over my bleary eyes as he flicks on a light.

“You’re piss-drunk already,” he says. “This house feels like a fucking funeral home.” And then, speculatively, he asks, “Where is Catalina?”

I laugh. It is humorless, grating. “In the pit,” I tell him.

Anatoli’s sudden silence scores me. At last he says, “You’re joking.” He says this like he expects me to confirm it is so; that of course I would not do this thing to her.

“She fucking ran!” The roar rattles my ribcage, pulses in my head. The renewed burst of fury is enough seize my muscles tight, to propel myself from where I lay on the couch far enough forward to seize the bottle of vodka Anatoli took from me. “I trusted her,” I say as I wrench at the cap. “I trusted her, and she ran.”

Anatoli lurches forward and rips the bottle out of my hands before I can open it again. “You don’t do this,” he says. “Not to her. You ruin her this way. You ruin yourself.”

“Why the fuck do you care? You don’t like her.”

“I don’t have to fucking like her!” he snarls. “It should be enough that you do!”

“She betrayed me!” I struggle to shove my elbows beneath me, levering myself upright. “She ran away from the fucking bookstore a week ago. For a week she was missing, hiding from me! I have her back only because she called her worthless fucking father for help.”

“Idiot!” Anatoli bites off, and his palm slaps my face again, sharply. “Her father tells you this? And you are stupid enough to believe him? The man whose son you killed? Whose family you have by the balls with blackmail?” He sneers, “Do I have to guess what he wants in exchange for her?”

For the first time, I feel something beneath the anger that scorches my fucking soul. A stirring of shame. Of guilt.

“Drown yourself, then, if you really don’t give a shit.” Anatoli tosses the bottle of vodka back at me.

“Of course I fucking give a shit.” The words scrape the inside of my throat. “For her own safety, I put her there. I don’t trust myself like this! You think I want to hurt her?” She makes me feel too fucking much of everything.

“I think you don’t think,” Anatoli says. He makes a rough sound in his throat, a wild gesticulation of his hands in his frustration. “She might be bad for business, but you are less than worthless without her.”

The bottle of vodka is in my hands. Oblivion beckons as Katya’s voice again resounds in my head. Alyosha, please!

My stomach churns. “Anatoli.” My voice is rough, grating, thick. “I need you to look into this.”

“Idiot,” he says again, reproachfully, as he turns to leave. “I was already going to do this.”