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“Yeah?” Nikolai’s voice drawls in my ear, and I nearly collapse in relief.
My middle brother will come here. He’ll know what to do.
“Kolya, they’re fighting again,” I say, all but tripping over the words. “It’s bad. Like really bad. I think he’s hurting her.”
“Fuck!” He doesn’t sound as surprised as I would’ve liked. “Stay away from them. Don’t intervene. I’ll be right there.”
The line goes dead, and I stick my phone back into my pocket with trembling fingers as I head toward the living room. I want to do what Nikolai said and hide out in my room until he arrives, but I can’t. Not when Mama is getting hurt.
Another crash, another feminine cry of pain, more violent cursing. I break into a run, my heartbeat roaring in my ears. “Papa, Mama,” I shout as I round the corner to the living room. “Stop, both of you!”
But I’m the one who stops dead, paralyzed in horror at the scene in front of me. My father is straddling my mom on the floor, and she’s no longer crying out in pain. She’s silent, unconscious, as he slams his massive fist into her face, over and over again.
A face already so bloodied and pulverized it’s barely recognizable as hers.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
I can feel my lips forming the word, but no sound leaves my throat as my gaze frantically bounces around the room, seeking something, anything—there! A knife, right there on the floor, next to my parents.
I don’t question its presence. I just act. Leaping forward, I snatch it in my right hand and grab my father’s elbow with my left, just as his fist is about to slam into Mama’s face again. “Stop!” This time, the word emerges in a shriek. “Papa, stop it! Please, stop!”
He knocks me off my feet with one swipe of his powerful arm and hits her again. I leap up, heedless of pain, and try to stop him again. He slams his fist into my solar plexus, sending me flying, and resumes his pummeling of Mama’s face. My back slams into the arm of the couch and my vision darkens as I wheeze for air, but I bounce up and come at him again, knife gripped tightly in my fist.
I don’t want to hurt Papa, but I have to stop him. I have to get him off Mama, no matter what it takes.
He’s so consumed with rage he doesn’t notice as I grab his arm again and slash down with the knife, aiming at his shoulder. It’s not what Pavel taught me, but this is Papa, not some random stranger in an alley. I want to bring him back to his senses, not kill him.
The knife sinks shallowly into the thick muscle of his shoulder, and it’s only when he turns on me with a roar and I see his eyes that I realize my mistake.
His pupils are blown so wide they cover most of his irises.
He’s not just drunk. He’s on something way stronger.
In an eyeblink, he’s on me, violently grabbing my arm with the knife. Something cracks in my wrist as he wrenches the knife from my grasp, but the cry of pain dies in my throat as he slams his fist into my ribs, making me stumble back, doubled-over and wheezing. It takes a couple of seconds for my vision to clear, and when it does, I charge forward with a scream. “Don’t! Stop!”
He doesn’t.
Straddling Mama’s unconscious body, he slashes at her chest with the knife, again and again. Blood sprays everywhere, all over the white furniture and the gleaming wood floors.
Screaming, I slam into him at a full run and succeed in knocking him off her. We roll on the floor, and I somehow end up on top. I jump off him and leap to my feet, but he’s only a second behind me. With a roar, he comes after me, knife slashing wildly, and I feel fire lick down my forearm as I frantically use it to shield my face.
He’s going to kill me, I realize distantly as he raises the knife again, and then a massive force slams into my stomach and everything goes black.
* * *
A coppery smell,mixed with something foul, fills my nostrils as I wake up to the sound of men grunting and furniture breaking. My vision is foggy as I open my eyes, and I have to blink several times to bring the images into focus. My forearm burns, my ribs and stomach feel like one giant bruise, and my head throbs nauseatingly, but none of that matters once I realize what I’m looking at.
Nikolai and our father, locked in a deadly fight.
Blood covers them both as they roll on the floor, wrestling for control of the knife.
Adrenaline floods my veins, propelling me to my feet. My head swims, my vision darkening again, but I ignore it and lurch forward. “Stop,” I croak, stumbling toward them. “Please, stop.”
I trip over something and fall onto my hands and knees. White-hot pain shoots up from my right wrist, and I rise onto my knees, instinctively cradling it against my chest. There’s blood on me, I notice dazedly, so much blood. It’s dripping from my arm and covering the floor as far as the eye can see. I didn’t realize I had that much blood in me, that anyone had that much blood in them, not even—wait, I was going somewhere.
I jerk my head up and see that Nikolai is now on top of Papa, pinning him down. He also has the knife.
Finally. It’s over.
