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I try to run. I try to scream.
It’s too late. The door to the house bursts open, and in they come. Ilya with the bodyguards who betrayed my father. They don’t want him to be leader either. They’re the greedy kind like Ilya who want more wealth the dirty way.
Papa gets up to protest, and Ilya shoots him in his chest.
He falls to his knees. Ma screams.
The blood pours from his chest, and there’s so much screaming, so much pain. Hers and mine. It’s like an ocean of voices crying out.
Then horror fills me when Ilya pulls out a long knife and cuts Papa’s head off. The men cheer as Ilya lifts Papa’s head off the ground and holds it up, roaring like a savage. Two men grab my mother, and someone grabs me. I don’t know who it is.
They take me and her to the courtyard.
Ilya carries a bucket and throws liquid all over her. The second the smell hits me, I know what it is.Gasoline.
I struggle to help her, screaming and crying. Bawling from my soul.
Then I see the fire. Fire that blazes when it touches her skin. She looks to me first, and she speaks, but I never hear her.
I don’t know what she wanted to say to me because she’s engulfed by flames, and I scream and scream and scream.
Someone is shaking me and calling my name. Calling the name I chose when I left Russia.Ava.
The horror fades before me when Vincent’s face comes into my view.
He can help me.
I bolt upright into his arms.
“Save her!” I cry, and he holds me.
“Ava… baby,” he breathes, holding me.
I look around the room and realize it’s not just him in here. Marguerite’s here too.
She looks worried.
I pull back, and a trickle of blood drips onto my wrist. My nose. It’s bleeding. Vincent gets up and grabs a tissue from the box on the nightstand. He dabs at my nose and glances back at Marguerite.
“I’ll get some warm water,” she says and leaves us.
Vincent wipes at my nose, and when Marguerite returns with the warm water and a rag, he cleans my face.
“Marguerite… can you give us a few minutes, please?” Vincent asks her.
“Of course.” She leaves us, and he studies me.
I’m giving my secrets away. Putting them on display.
I glance out the window and see it’s morning, but I don’t know what day it is.
I’m still in his room and am wearing a night shirt I don’t remember changing into.
“Ava … please tell me what’s going on with you?” Vincent says.
“I had a really bad dream.” I’m shaking again.
“You’ve been asleep since the night before last. Unsettled sleep where you wake in bouts of screams, crying for your mother and father. Speaking Russian. You speak Russian?”
