Page 15 of Bleeding Love

I licked my lips, trying to shake off the horror that had sunk deep inside my bones.

He probably beat her again and they couldn’t stop him. She was lying somewhere, licking her wounds. She…

“Where is my mother?” I repeated, my voice sounding raspy and tortured.

“Back…garden,” Livia said between hiccups. She mumbled something after that, but I was already running toward the kitchen, pushing past the cooking table and through the open back door.

I looked around, searching for her, but all I could see were the vegetable beds, the herbs she grew by the house, and the big shed where we kept our instruments. I rushed down the two stairs when my foot landed in a puddle. Frowning, I looked down, wondering where the water had come from when it hadn’t rained for over a week. That’s when I noticed the droplets that had landed on my pants.

Red. They stained the light brown fabric red.

I sucked in a sharp breath, following the gleaming mud trail until I saw her.

She was kneeling in one of the flowerbeds by the house. If it wasn’t for their broken stalks and scattered petals, I could have believed she was weeding them. Except that she wasn’t moving and her clothes were torn.

“Mother?” I whispered, my throat closing with horror.

She didn’t respond. Didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch.

“Mother?” I said again, more desperately this time. When she didn’t reply, I caught her shoulder and shook her. Her body tilted to the side, and she dropped to the ground like a stone. “Mother!” I screamed, falling to my knees beside her. I turned her around and gasped as I stared at her battered body. I searched for a wound, something where the blood could have come from, but found nothing on her. Not until my hand slipped to her hair and my fingers turned wet.

I pressed them against her neck, trying to force them to stop shaking long enough for me to find her pulse. I waited and waited, straining to hear it over the sound of my own heartbeat, but there was nothing. She was gone.

How long had they left her there? Who had done it? Did they go back to drinking after killing her? I was going to destroy them!

“She brought this on herself,” a voice spoke from behind me just as I was getting to my feet.

She was gone. She was dead. The only person who had loved me and looked at me with affection. The only person who protected me and smiled through the pain, the desperation, the horrors.

I turned around to find my father leaning on the doorframe, his face still red from the ale. His eyes were foggy, but he didn’t sway even as he stepped forward. The puddle of blood sloshed while he passed through it without even looking down.

“You killed her,” I snarled. He was almost a head taller than me and with shoulders twice as wide. He was the biggest, strongest person I had ever met in my life, but at that moment, I didn’t care. “You fucking murderer! She was your wife!”

“Watch your mouth, worm,” my father snapped, his lip curling into a vicious snarl. “She was old and willful and meddled where she should not! Why should I let her live? There are three inside that could replace her. If she had just kept her mouth shut…”

I swung without thinking. I wasn’t sure if it was the ale or his surprise that made his reactions slower, but he failed to dodge. My knuckles tore as they met his jaw, but even though I hit him with all my strength, he just staggered a couple of steps. When he looked up, his eyes were burning with so much untamed violence that I felt the urge to flee.

He charged before I could make my move, but I dodged swiftly enough so his inertia sent him straight into a wall. He growled as he turned, the veins on his neck bulging with rage. I palmed my knife just when he charged again. His fist caught me this time, but even as the air left my lungs, I managed to sink my blade deep into his right arm. He roared and stepped back, knocking the knife from my trembling fingers.

He was pressing his free hand over the wound, seething with pain, when I heard the steps. My brothers stormed out of the house and froze at the sight of us facing each other. A fear like I never knew before squeezed my chest.

I was going to die here. My father alone could finish me even with that wound, and if my brothers interfered…I doubted it would be in my favor.

Just as I was resigning to the fate I had always envisioned for myself, my mother’s voice echoed in my head, ‘Do not give up on life before you have experienced it fully, and when you find someone who makes your heart sing, never let them go. Love is the blood of life, Roman. Without it, you won’t live. You’d merely exist and there is nothing more tragic than that.’

I sucked in a sharp breath, my teary eyes stopping on her body that still lay slumped among the flowers.

Do not give up on life.

Do not give up.

Live.

“I will cut you to pieces and feed you to the dogs!” My father snarled, taking a step toward me.

I broke into a sprint around the house. I heard my father shouting for my brothers to stop me, but they were too slow. In a few seconds, I was already by the front when the door flew open and my eldest brother took a step out. Horror gripped my chest—he was the fastest among us and even if he was still drunk, he could probably catch me. And if he did…

He took another step when two pairs of hands grabbed him and yanked him back. He lost his balance and tripped, falling through the door and dragging the two people with him. I glanced over my shoulder to find out Eela and Livia trying to keep him down.

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