Page 1 of Corrupted Guilt

1. Katya

I sit in my room, on the windowsill, my face still throbbing, and imagine myself climbing down the trellis and just walking away, not stopping until I get somewhere I want to be.

My mouth always gets me into trouble.

That wasn’t the first time I talked back to him. Nor the first time he hit me for it.

Hepromisedme.

Helied.

Again.

Why am I surprised? After a lifetime of betrayals, why should one more surprise me?

I thought this time was different.

I thought wrong.

I asked my father two simple questions: 1) why his word meant nothing; and 2) how much did he sell his only living child for?

That’s when he struck me with his open palm.

How could Viktor Kolesova, leader of the Kolesova Bratva, do those things? Some part of me knew the answer. He had mismanaged the territory and the Bratva terribly since Dmitry died. That’s what destroyed him, destroyed the Bratva.

Destroyed me.

Made him the kind of person who makes promises that he doesn’t keep.

Made him the kind of person to go into debt and use his only living child, his forgotten daughter, to pay that debt.

Made him the kind of person that would hit that same child when she pointed out his failures.

One year ago, my father promised I could go away to college, on the condition that I complete one year online first and make perfect grades. I was never much of a student, so the odds were in his favor, but a year of hard work later, and I have perfect grades. I kept up my end of the bargain and he was supposed to keep his promise.

Promises come easy, it’s keeping them that’s the hard part.

I told him I can’t sit around the house anymore without going crazy, that I’m 23, have never had a job, have no skills, and no education beyond my high school diploma, and I hate what I’ve allowed myself to become. I hate everything about myself, and my situation and I need a change. I need a goal. This past year I had both and it was my best year since … probably ever.

This was my way out, my last chance to become something or someone I liked. That’s why I worked so hard.

Now there’s no getting out. I’ll be trapped forever. Worse than being a Bratva daughter is being a Bratva wife.

I don’t even know Petya, my future husband, but I have no doubt my father owes him something – either money or a favor, and I’m the only thing he has left to pay it with.

That realization – that I have no value as a person, as his child, only value as a thing to be sold to the highest bidder, hit me harder than his open palm.

I want to cry; I can feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. But tears won’t help me, so I choke them back, I brush them aside with the back of my hand.

I know what those tears are. They’re a lie. They’re begging to be rescued. They want my prince, my hero, to climbup the side of the house, to my tower bedroom and save me, take me away from here, take care of me, give me everything I want and deserve.

They’re bullshit and so is that dream.

Damsels in distress stay in distress unless they learn to save themselves.

No one is going to save you.

I hear those mocking words in Yuri’s voice. Sure, he’s an asshole, but he’s also usually right about the world and almost everything else, too.

---