31. Katya

The aura of rape hung in the air. He kept touching me, little taps to my elbow, my knee, my shoulder. Not loving, gentle taps that move to caresses.

No.

These were Petya’s twisted idea of that, as if rape and this emotionless foreplay was required before the raping so it wouldn’t be rape or something. It would be rape without desire, just something required. Psychopaths don’t have normal human emotions, so they imitate them, but his imitation of loving touches leading to sex was so terrible that I wondered why he even bothered. Still, it gave me some time to think of a way out.

To put off the inevitable.

He let me cook the dinner I had gone shopping for, but always hovering around me, always present. He wouldn’t let me use a knife to cut the beef into strips. I wanted to hide one for protection but he saw past that. I had my hidden knife around my neck, the small blade hidden inside the Russian cross and I waited for him to let his guard down. I studied his neck, imagining how I’d take the knife and cut him near his jugular, but I couldn’t make myself see it.

How could I do that?

I wasn’t a killer.

I wasn’t even Bratva except for my last name.

It was impossible.

But it wasn’t just me here. I was pregnant and wanted to keep it. I couldn’t risk its help to whatever Petya might do to me. Do to us. It wasn’t just me here, I had to remember that.

He seemed to sense something, my thinking, my studying his neck, something. He flung his fist at me, and I flinched back, he grabbed my necklace, ripping it off my neck.

He laughed and threw it across the room into the sink.

After that, he never let me near another knife or near the sink, doing all the chopping and cutting himself.

His chopping technique was shit, but I knew I couldn’t criticize an ego so fragile, so I smiled at his lumpy, uneven chopped beef.

“So, this one time,” Petya starts talking out of nowhere, “There’s this guy who has to go, he’s in my way, whatever. Different than your brother Dmitry, but I did that too. You didn’t know that did you? It’s true. Him I drugged—spiked his drinks— then crashed into him and made sure he was dead by suffocating him in the driver’s seat then sped away. But anyway, my story: so, I go to this guy’s house, I go at him with a baseball bat, break his spine. He’s a para- or quadro- or whatever -palegic. And I sit him up, turn his head towards the floor, and I start raping his girlfriend in front of him. It goes on a while, she wasn’t that good, and when I’m done using all her holes— twice— I shoot her five, six times. Dead. This guy is crying, tears down his face, he has nothing to live for, literally nothing. His girl is dead, I cucked him, he’ll need a wheelchair to move around and his dick won’t ever work again and he’ll have to piss and shit in a bag forever, but you know what? The craziest thing. He’s begging me, I mean begging me to live, to let him live. For what? I ask him. But he doesn’t have an answer, just keeps begging me. I think about him a lot. Danilo Kis was his name. I’ll never forget that name or him. Crazy fucking world, huh? I liked that guy, too. Danilo Kis. Yuri I fucking hate. Just think about what I’m going to do to him. And you. You should have used that knife instead of just thinking about it. There won’t be a next time but, you know. You live, you learn.”

I didn’t know the point of the story except to terrorize me some more. When the food was ready, the bloody man from Yuri’s bed, Vanya, came downstairs and we started to eat silently. Vanya ate hungrily, his strength coming back to him and I realized most of the blood on him wasn’t his own. The final shiver ran down my spine— I was sure there was nothing more possible to chill me after all this and I ate like an animal, no thoughts, just survival for as long as possible and food was part of that survival instinct.

A knock on the door surprised us all. Yuri wouldn’t knock, would he?

The second man got off his stool at Petya’s glance and answered the door.

I heard Maxim’s voice, and saw Petya straining to hear, all his concentration of the words out there. I decided this was my last chance. So I took it.

I threw my plate at Petya’s face and yelled at Maxim as I ran upstairs to Yuri’s bedroom, locking it behind me and grabbing the rifle near my bed.

I stopped to think and shut the door to the bathroom and dragged a heavy dresser in front of it so they couldn’t force their way in that way. I shut the room lights off and crouched in the corner with the rifle and extra bullets and cartridges and waited, trying to make out movements through sound.

They hadn’t come after me. Why not?

Because Maxim was causing them problems. Big problems like only a Vor of the Kolesova Bratva could. Maxim would die for Yuri, and because he was there to protect me, for me too. I didn’t feel sorry for him, I was thankful, thankful that he was doing his job.

Must have come for the food, I thought. If he got me out of this I would cook for him the rest of his life, that I knew.

Best to think happy thoughts of Maxim rather than how I’m still trapped in this house with them. The main door wasn’t as heavy as the one in the apartment and could be splintered just as Yuri had splintered mine. The dresser in front of the door to the bathroom would delay, not stop them. And the sliding glass doors were completely vulnerable, if the deck light came on, I wouldn’t be hiding in here at all, I’d be lit up from the outside.

Maxim is good.

Maxim is strong.

Maxim is deadly.

Second only to Yuri.

A long time went by with scraping and struggling sounds and I waited tensed up completely.

Waiting.

Rifle in hand, loaded, ready.

Then the deck lights came on, lighting up Maxim’s dead, bloody body, his head taped to the sliding door, his body a heap below it.

I screamed and fired the rifle and the sound of breaking glass and gunshots, and the door splintering were all there was as Petya and Vanya fought their way inside.