Page 26 of Kadra: The Unfeeling

I can hurt him. No one else is allowed to. Ever.

Reaching for the medical kit Croix left on top of the bedside table, I take out everything I need to clean his wounds and begin to work on it. I remove all the bandages, clean the wounds, and then put fresh new bandages in them so they don’t get infected. How many times have I done this before? Too many to count. I’ve tended to my wounds since I can remember and my sisters’ too. No one has ever taken care of me. I have always been the strong one. The one who never breaks. I’m tired. I’m so tired.

When painful memories of the past threaten to come to the forefront of my mind I push them back and focus on the man sleeping soundly in my bed.

Thunder breaks and I swear I can feel the bed shake with the force of it.

It’s a quarter after midnight and there’s no sound in the house except that of the rain falling hard outside and the resounding booms of thunder. “It’s just like you to make the sky angry with your presence every time you’re around, Russian,” I whisper while staring at his handsome face. From this close, I can see the tiny tattoo stars under his eyes. “You added more…” Pride courses through me when I remember the meaning of those stars. His kills. He added more tattoos and I wonder if all of the art inked on his skin has meaning. Do they tell his story? When I was younger I used to wonder if the rest of his body was inked like his face and neck and now I can see that it is. The dragon scales are new. He didn’t have them back then but he does now on either side of his neck. His chest is covered in ink except for the blank space on top of his heart. Huh.

The sound of the wind and rain hitting the window snaps me out of whatever spell his ink had me under and I finish tending to him, throw the used bandages into the trash bin next to the bed and that’s when I notice black gloves lying on the floor. My eyes instantly go to Vitali’s hands and I freeze.

His gloves.

He never took them off. At least not when I was in his presence.

Just like the rest of his body, his hands are tatted up every inch of them except his palms. There he has scars. Clean cuts that look too precise as if someone hurt him on purpose. Suddenly the air leaves my lungs and I find it difficult to find my next breath.

The past takes me under and I’m unable to fight it this time. Not with the visible scars on his hands that remind me so much of my shame.

“Mafia heirs don’t cry, little girl. Toughen the fuck-up.” The boogeyman laughs maniacally as he walks my way with his favorite knife in hand after he threw me against the wall seconds ago for ignoring his command. Al doesn’t like it when I fight back. He doesn’t like that I breathe. I get punished either way. But now things have changed. Now he has the excuse to hurt me under the excuse they all tell themselves to hide their cruelty and hatred towards my sisters and me.

My father wants to punish us for being a disappointment in his eyes.

When I turned seven my father gave the order to all his men to train me to become all they needed me to be. Harsh. Heartless and powerful. Train me to be the Parisi heir. Not by choice. Father had no male heir. Only girls. Something he loves to remind us of with his cruel words and painful fists.

Now that mother cannot carry more children he had no choice but to accept his reality and he saw something in me that he didn’t see in my sisters and that is why I am here. The reason why I have a split lip, bruised ribs, and blood trickling down my nose.

I cough blood when Al hits my abdomen with the tip of his leather brown boots. Pain explodes through me, my vision becomes blurry and the room starts to spin and in the middle of all the pain and chaos, I’m able to see one thing.

Him.

The eyes of the man in black.

Mikhail.

“Raise hell, kotyonok.”

“Raise hell, kotyonok.”

“Raise hell, kotyonok.”

“Raise hell, kotyonok.”

Then my body becomes numb when the adrenaline rushes in and suddenly I’m no longer hovering in pain down on the floor but on my knees.

“Get the fuck up!” Al shouts. “Your father is right. You and the other two are worthless.” He snarls.

I wait for him to get angrier and come closer and when he does all I see is red. Red. And all I hear is a heavily accented monotone voice telling me to raise hell, so I do.

Screaming at the top of my lungs, I reach forward and grab Al’s favorite knife, the same one he used to give me a scar and shove it deep into his eye socket making him howl in agony. I stand just at the same time that he falls back and covers his face screaming and hauling insults my way. I stand taller even when every single bone in my body aches. I stand tall and look towards the camera on the wall that records everything that happens down here in my father’s playground. No doubt he’s witnessing all that occurs. Ignoring a screaming Al, I take out the knife with Al’s eye attached to it and then I discard the eye down to the floor next to my tormentor with great satisfaction.

“Beautiful.” My father’s evil voice comes through the room’s speakers. “Doesn’t it feel good? All that power coursing through you, Kadra?”

Ignoring my father’s praises, which sometimes sound more like taunts, I also tune out Al’s obnoxious screams of pain and focus on the silver of the knife that now is stained with blood. I wiped it clean using my dress. My mother’s favorite dress.

An eye for an eye, right? I think to myself while staring straight at the camera.

The long and ugly scar that he got after my attack was a reminder not only for him but to me as well that I fought back and raised hell even if the devil wouldn’t let me forget it. Even if the punishment that followed was scrutinizing.

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