Page 118 of Kings of Cruelty

“Konstantin!” he shouts, and fucking finally, he doesn’t sound calm and collected.

“My ‘slut mother’ deserved better than you!” I yell, kicking him again. “You think you can toy with people like that? You think everybody will put up with you because you say so?” I keep kicking him, the adrenaline making my anger even more potent.

I hear his bones crunch underneath my boot.

My damp clothes cling to my body, and a burst of lightning illuminates the world outside the shed.

I should just shoot him. I should end it here and now.

But this man is responsible for a lifetime of suffering. It’s unfair that he should end quickly and easily.

He needs to suffer too.

I stop, my breaths coming in heavy. “You are a weak, miserable old man,” I tell him. “You do not deserve a quick death.”

I grab his broken body and drag him farther into the shed, where the power tools are. He moans pitifully.

“Stop,” he begs. “I will… You can have…”

“I want nothing,” I hiss at him. “You are many, many years too late to make reparations.” I lift him onto the work bench and turn to my tool shelf.

The power saw had worked wonderfully on Sierra’s ex-boyfriend, but I don’t want to damage the sawblade like that again. I reach instead for the heavy hammer.

“I will break every bone in your body,” I tell him. “You will feel the agony you have subjected me to, year after year.”

“I never… I never…” my father wheezes. “Please!”

I laugh at him. “You never hit me? That is a lie. Every time you withheld your affection, it was a cut to my soul. Every time you ignored me, you shattered my will.” I tighten my grip on the hammer and slam it down on my father’s ribs.

He howls in agony. I lift the hammer and bring it down again, this time on his hand. Again, on another part of his body. I hear bone crunch and skin split as white bone bursts forth.

A noise from behind me startles me, and I hold the hammer up as I spin around to face the door leading into the workshop.

I expect to see one of my father’s men, or maybe even one of our reinforcements, but Nikolai is leading Sierra and Yura into the shed.

Sierra sucks in a breath as her eyes go to my father’s broken body on the bench. Like Nikolai and Yura, she’s completely soaked from head to toe, and her shirt clings to her body—clingsto the swell of her stomach, too, a blatant reminder of what my father would’ve denied me.

“Kotya,” Nikolai begins, then stops and shakes his head before going on even as my father groans. “Need help?”

“No,” I say, and I slam the hammer into my father’s skull.

He lets out one last gurgling cry of pain. The spasms stop.

My father is dead.

Sierra carefully approaches, and while her eyes flick to my father’s corpse again, she seems strangely unbothered by the violence. “It’s done,” she says quietly, standing a few feet away from me. “Everything’s cleared out. This…” She grimaces. “This was the last of it.”

“Yes.” I grip the edge of the workbench, which is slick with blood. I can taste the copper on my lips.

There is nothing recognizable about the mangled sack of flesh in front of me.

But it was my father.

I blink, and suddenly tears spill out of my eyes. I reach up to stifle a sob, but it’s too late. The sound that escapes my lips is like a creature dying, pitiful and pained.

Sierra is on me in a second, her arms wrapping around my chest. There must be blood, so much blood, but she ignores it. “It’s okay,” she whispers to me. “It’s okay to hurt.”

“I hated him,” I say, unable to stifle the sob. “I should not mourn!”

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