Page 11 of Cruel Knots

Pain and anxiety swirl inside me. Are we all going to die tonight?

Damien’s limp body falls beside me with a thud. He barely moves while Callum wipes his knife on Mikhail’s unmoving body.

“Dump these kids somewhere,” Callum instructs in a tone that suggests he’s talking about trash.

Maybe that’s what we are to him. Trash.

Did Lucia think so as well? Was her angelic face just a façade that hid a monster underneath it?

It hurts to think she didn’t care enough about us to at least spare us our lives. She could beg her brother but she isn’t even here.

The men move forward and haul our beaten, broken bodies. They throw us in the back of a van and drive out through the front gates of the school campus without drawing any attention from the drunken teens loitering on the grounds.

No one in the world will know what happened to us. I don’t know where they’re going to dump us but I’m sure it’s not going to be at a hospital.

This is what it means to be an assassin.

Death never comes easy if you’re caught.

And if you die during a mission, you’ll be buried namelessly without anyone acknowledging your existence.

We’d been thrown out into the streets to learn these very lessons.

The van seems to drive for an eternity before stopping.

My brothers don’t move or make a sound. I’m the only one still conscious enough to witness the horror of what is about to happen to us next.

A putrid smell assaults my senses when someone opens the back of the van. I let them haul my injured body and throw me among a pile of rubbish. Two heavy thuds sound next to me, telling me they were done dumping my brothers as well.

I slowly open my eyes.

Mountains of garbage surround us. The stench wafting into my nostrils smells like death and ruin.

A bitter chuckle escapes me. They’ve brought us to a garbage dump.

The screeching of tires against soft filth reaches my ears. The van drives away, leaving us behind to rot among the piles of rubbish surrounding us.

Is this the end of the Volkov brothers?

Lucia and Callum better hope that it is because if we survive, we’d make sure to make them pay a hundred-fold, no... a thousand-fold of the pain they made us suffer tonight.

There’s no higher crime in our dark underworld than betrayal. Hurt as it may, Lucia will have to pay the price someday.

If only we survive through this...I think as darkness closes upon my senses.

4

Lucia

Callum’s men dragged me away while he went away to “handle” Damien and his brothers. No matter how much I protested, they turned a deaf ear to me, remaining like silent boulders of muscle whose sole intention was to follow my brother’s command.

They drove me home and left me here by myself.

An hour crawls by while I wait for Callum to return with Damien, Leon, and Mikhail. Sitting by the window, I gaze toward the gates in the distance, hoping they’ll return soon.

Anxiety grips me by the throat. I still have no information about Dad. Callum refused to give me any details about the accident. He wouldn’t even tell me where Dad was admitted.

He’s punishing me, I realize, remembering the way my brother liked enforcing emotional abuse rather than physical blows.

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