Over the course of a week, I’ve drunk my way through the liquor cabinet. Presently, I find that I don’t much have a taste for Old Crow whiskey, but it does the job regardless.
Between chain smoking and drinking, I haven’t got much accomplished. The brown file still sits in my drawer, unread, and Viktor calls to check in often, inquiring about my progress. The lies spill from my lips easily when I’m drunk, and if he notices my erratic behavior, he doesn’t say.
Twice this week, I’ve been forced to sit through dinners with Ana. The pakhan has become obsessed with the prospective engagement on the horizon, encouraging every opportunity for us to spend time together. I speak very little during our encounters, asking only questions about her. She is happy to oblige with answers.
Unlike Nakya, she is not guarded. Ana is open and childlike, often choosing to reference celebrity gossip or other frivolous topics. She is girlish and giggly and far too naïve to be with someone like me, but it doesn’t stop her from blushing every time I look her way. The worst part is that she believes she’s in love with me because her father continues to nurture the idea.
My fate is sealed. Viktor will see me marry her, and I need to let go of the things I can’t change. I have been a coward and a liar, and Alexei was right to say I’m undeserving of the stars I bear. I have forsaken my Vory brothers, and it’s time to end this charade.
The house is quiet, and everyone is asleep when I settle into my office. Nakya has returned to the sanctuary of her own room, and I have made it a point not to see her during her waking hours. But every night, I check for her on the camera. I watch her restless sleep from the screen of my phone, and it’s as close to her as I can get.
It’s better this way. And regardless of what this file might hold, my decision has been made. If I’m entitled to my pound of flesh, it will come from Manuel himself. And then Nakya will go back to her life, free to do as she pleases. Free to starve herself or dance herself to death, or to marry Dante if she chooses.
The clock on the wall is the only soundtrack to my manic thoughts as I stare at the thick brown paper. Tick, tick, tick. For a moment, I choose to believe that Mischa was right. If I wanted to, I could let this go without reading the details. What difference does it make now? She is dead, and nothing will bring her back.
But it’s only another lie.
She was my mother.
I drain my glass and smoke a few more cigarettes while pacing the length of my office. It can’t be that bad. Mischa is always overly dramatic, I think. It’s just a few pieces of paper, and I am a grown man. A Vor. And a Vor never backs down from anything.
I sit back down and retrieve the file I have tried to open so many times. It’s just paper. Nothing more.
But upon opening it, I find that I am wrong. It isn’t just paper. There are photographs too. Photographs I thought I would want to see, but I was mistaken. The grainy stills are from a surveillance video. And before I allow my eyes to settle on the main subject, I examine every detail of the room. A basement. A dirty sofa. A bucket. These living conditions aren’t fit for an animal, let alone a woman.
Yet there she is. My mother. Strung out and naked.
I know I shouldn’t, but I look at her face. Vacant eyes and hollow features are all that remain. An empty, sagging sack of skin and bones that a soul has long since abandoned. When I reach out to touch her, I feel her anguish in every cavernous inch of my body. This was the same woman who tucked me in at night and kissed me on the forehead. The mother who sang sweet lullabies and read lively bedtime stories.
These memories are all I have of her, and I loathe myself for being too young to stop this. I want to go back and fix it. I want to go back and murder every man who ever touched her. It’s too late to save her. The only thing I can do for her now is rain down blood and fire on the animals who did this to her.
The report Alexei compiled is more detailed than I could have imagined. Everything is categorized, and the work has already been done for me. Dates, times, and the names of everyone who participated.
But it is the first on the list that leaves a permanent scar on my soul. A confirmation of what I’ve always suspected to be true.
Sergei.
My own father is responsible for this.
His ego has always been the most cowardly thing about him. And as the story goes, when he suspected my mother had betrayed him with one of his own men, he offered her as a gift to Manuel Valentini. But she was not a gift. She was a human sacrifice. A bonus to sweeten a gun deal between Manuel and my father.
He gave her away like she was a piece of garbage. Knowing the fate he delivered her to, he allowed her to be beaten and used by Manuel and his men for years. Yet every night, he would come to my room to watch me cry over her loss, insisting she had abandoned me.
I pour another drink and close my eyes. The images haunt me, and I know they’ll never go away. I have been a fool. Allowing my dick to lead me, ignoring the cause I believed in the most. For months, their hearts have continued to beat. They have continued to breathe the air of this earth, when they should have been rotting in the ground already.
It isn’t even the worst of it. That part is still yet to be read. And Alexei has not spared a single gruesome detail.
My mother left this world fighting. Fighting to escape. She slashed Manuel Valentini’s dick with a shard of broken mirror.
And then he dissolved her in an acid bath.