Page 77 of Kings of Violence

Sierra

I can feelthe blood caking in my hair. Every time I move, little bits of it flake off and land on my face or shirt or hands.

When I close my eyes, I see Neil and Mona and little Diana.

I want to throw up. I want to scream and cry.

I want to forget, but there’s no forgetting the sight of their bodies on the floor, forever frozen in death with blood surrounding them in pools that are so, so very red.

I don’t even notice when the car stops. I would have stayed there forever, but somebody wraps an arm around my shoulders and draws me out of the car.

It must be Yuri. I can smell the leather of his jacket.

“She’s in shock,” Yuri says, but his voice sounds muffled, like I’m underwater.

Shock.

Yes, that sounds about right.

“Let’s get her inside. Into the shower,” Nikolai says, and his voice sounds distant too.

A shower sounds nice. A shower sounds like a relief, something that’ll get the blood off of me.

The brain matter.

Whatever else fell into my hair when Nikolai pulled the trigger and ended the life of a man who would consign me to a similar fate to the one I have now.

What iswrongwith men?

Tears start to leak down my cheeks, and Yuri says something in Russian. A curse word, I think, but I don’t really care. He grabs me and lifts me up, and while I want to tell him that I don’t need to be carried and babied, the truth is that I do.

No one ever really comforted me after my brother Neil died.

Pa and Sean had been laser-focused on revenge. Kyran had been distant. And Ma…

Everything had been about the loss of her oldest, not the mental well-being of her youngest.

Yuri carries me through the building, and I bury my face in his shoulders. I don’t know where he’s taking me, but he stops suddenly in the middle of the hall.

I hear Konstantin’s deep voice saying something in Russian, and Yuri and Nikolai answering. I think that even if they were speaking in English, I wouldn’t have been able to process what they were saying.

They start walking again, through a few doors until we’re in a very large and luxurious bathroom.

“Sierra, look at me,” Konstantin says. “You’re back home now. There are no guns in the room.”

No guns.

Right.

It’s always about guns, always about weapons.

God, I was fucking stupid to want anything to do with my family’s line of work. My stomach isn’t strong enough for this.

Mymindisn’t strong enough for this.

I blink sluggishly at him, and I dimly register what I think is concern in his expression. I’d laugh if I had the wherewithal to.

“Shower,” Yuri says. He sets me down on the ottoman in the center of the room. “Sierra, can you undress? Do you need help?”

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