Page 81 of Vitaly

“What do you mean by that?” Mila asks, her voice soft.

She waits for my answer like I’ll actually give her one. If she was any other person, I wouldn’t. If I thought she would let me get away with it, I wouldn’t. If I didn’t know, with absolute certainty, that my father was right to choose her for me, I wouldn’t.

As it stands, I sigh and close my eyes, letting the memory wrap its hand around my throat as I open my mouth to speak.

Nine years ago

Sweat dripsfrom the tip of my nose, but it’s blood that I smell. It runs down my back in patterns I don’t understand, patterns for their amusement.

The two Armenian men cackled and howled as they carved into my back with a device that melted my skin, sending smokealong with the stench of burning flesh up to the ceiling as I shouted in agony. I’ve never felt pain like that before. Never knew it existed.

But it’s over for now. The men left a while ago to move onto Alik’s cell next to mine. I could only tell by the sounds of his yells, and then Gavriil’s shrieks after that.

I don’t think they’re doing us one by one because there’s only two of them. Plenty more men showed up at the drop when we snuck in to take the money. It was like they were waiting for us.

I think they’re torturing us one by one so we can listen to each other scream.

Hours seem to pass with me in the little cell, my head hanging while I listen to the screams of my brothers. They take a photo of me at one point, and I don’t even ask why. I know why.

They want a ransom. A big one.

And all at once, I know why there were so many of them at the drop off point the Polish left their money. I know why they laughed at us when we lowered our weapons, surrendering like we could somehow work this out. Laughed atmewhen I believed I could fix this.

Theyknewwe would be there.

I was set up. Given bad intel. Well, givenbait.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to Gavriil as he goes through his third round of screams. He can’t hear me. He probably never will again.

Tears leak from my eyes as I sob like a bitch, my back sizzling from their device. They must’ve written something on me, maybe in their language. A stamp that will forever exist even if Gavriil’s screams could somehow get out of my head.

But then his screams stop.

So do the others.

More hours pass.

“Alik!” I yell, looking to my right as I thrash in the chair. “Alik, are you there?”

No answer.

“Alik!”

Snickering sounds outside my cell before the door slides open. The Armenian man who wielded the torture device has his lips pulled into a Cheshire grin as he tosses a fleshy, round object in my lap.

I look down at it, my eyes first locking onto the dark hair mopped with blood on the pale corpse. The face is turned away from me, but I see the stud Gavriil has his ear pierced with sparking, still in his earlobe.

I scream, jerking my knees to roll his head off me, and it lands on the floor with a splat, rolling so my friend’s dead eyes can stare at me. I throw up in my lap while the man watching from the doorway roars with laughter.

More hours pass. No matter how much I tell myself it’s my blood and destroyed flesh I’m smelling, my mind thinks it’s Gavriil. I start to beg. I insist that my father will pay whatever they want, but the more time that passes, the less convinced I am.

He should’ve been here by now.

They should’vepaidby now.

More time.

More hours.

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