Page 45 of Bratva Butcher

Autumn had the right idea. She was sleeping, gathering her strength, but there was something keeping me awake.

No—someone.

Yekaterina.

She was there, looking as regal as she always did. However, this time, something had changed. I knew she couldn’t possibly be there. She was dead. I’d come to terms with that a long time ago. But never in the ten years since I’d been sporadically hallucinating her had she ever said a word. She’d just stood there. Sometimes she’d smile. Sometimes she’d just stare. I quickly figured out there was almost a pattern to when she’d appear.

She tended to show up at moments when I needed her the most. Like a guardian angel. Those moments when I was in dark, volatile places, barely clinging onto my humanity. Or moments when I desperately needed her advice. Her guidance. Her support.

The first time had been at her funeral. She’d appeared out of thin air, hovering above her coffin. There was this ghostly, ethereal glow surrounding her. She was hauntingly beautiful, with this sad, almost remorseful look on her face.

At the time, that rational side of my brain—the part to tell me she couldn’t possibly be real—wasn’t working. I was far too overcome with grief and pain. All I saw was her, right there, within my reach. I leapt onto the coffin and pried it open with my bare hands,certainshe was alive. In there. That she needed me to save her.

Chaos had ensued. There had been screaming, crying. My sons had tried to restrain me, but I’d refused to stop. In the end, I had to be sedated.

The next time was when Illayana was fourteen. She’d just gotten her first period, something Yekaterina and I had discussed before. We’d decided when the time came,shewould handle it, just as I had handled the sex talks with the boys when they became of age.

I’d tried to fill Yekaterina’s place, but Illayana refused to talk to me. She locked herself in the bathroom, and wouldn’t come out for anything or anyone. Desperation had filled me. I’d struggled to find the right words to support and comfort her.

Suddenly, Yekaterina appeared, looking exactly the same as she had the first time. I’d always questioned whether or not I hadtrulyseen her that day. So, when she appeared again, I knew it hadn’t been a dream like my brain had been trying to rationalise.

Whether it was real or not, I’d seen her.

She didn’t speak, no matter how much I tried to get her to. She just stood in my office, her presence providing comfort regardless of the fact that she wasn’t saying a word.

That was when it clicked in my head.Thatwas all Illayana needed. For me to be there, like Yekaterina would have been.

So, I sat outside that bathroom door for over seven hours, waiting for her to come out. When she eventually did, her eyes were red and glassy. She’d told me she missed her mother, and then hugged me.

Over the years, I’d seen Yekaterina a total of twelve times, and this was the first time she’d ever spoken a word.

“I like her.”

She was referring to Autumn. Those three words had shocked me so much that, for the first time in my life, I’d been completely speechless. Not only was I hallucinating my dead wife, but nowshe was talking to me? A figment of my imagination was talking to me.

It’s finally happened. I’ve finally gone insane,I thought.

“You haven’t gone insane,” she'd replied.

That had been—what I guessed—several hours ago, and she was still there. Yekaterina was still there.

“You’ve got to speak to me eventually.”Her ghostly image hovered a few feet away from me, her pale and translucent skin a clear indicator she wasn’t alive, just in case I needed the reminder.

Her hair was as dark as night, running freely down her back, and she was wearing what she always wore when I hallucinated her: the last outfit I had seen her in alive. A black dress with lace running all the way down the sleeves. Around her neck was the necklace I’d gotten her for our ten-year anniversary—the one I’d given to Illayana when she left for New York.

Yekaterina was absolutely beautiful, and every part of me ached to hold her.

“You’re not real. You’re not real.” I didn’t bother whispering. I didn’t give a fuck if the other prisoners overheard me and thought I was crazy for talking to myself.

Iwascrazy.

“Of course I’m not real,”she laughed playfully.

I closed my eyes, savouring the sound. I never thought I’d hear it again.

“That last blow to the head from your cellmate over there did it in.”

I touched my forehead. I winced at the contact, pain lancing through me. Autumn had managed to get me in the side of the head with one of her kicks during our last training session. I’d tried the best I could to patch it up with what was available to me, which was just toilet paper.

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