“We don’t have all night, Ophelia.” I snapped my eyes to him, a small smirk dancing on his face. Did he want me to fail? The sadistic bastard probably did. There was no love in those eyes, only a darkness I never saw before. What a good actor he was.
Something numbed inside of me, my fear subsiding, and a newfound resolve taking over my body.
“I’ll do it,” I said to him. “But if I do this, I want to know everything.”
“Of course.”
I walked toward him, snatched the dagger from his hand, and turned toward the man.
“You’re saying he’s izmenik. A traitor?” I trained my eyes on the man’s brown hair. He couldn’t have been much older than me, a couple of years maybe.
“That’s correct.”
I stepped in front of him, bending down so that we were face-to-face. His right eye was swollen shut, and I could see that he wasn’t going to live much longer with the wounds that had already been inflicted. I grabbed his hair, tipping his head up as I stood. He mumbled incoherently, but I didn’t have time to listen to his pleas.
He was a dead man, with or without me. So what difference did it make what killed him in the end? It was either him or me, and if I thought my father was already cruel, I couldn’t even imagine the horrors he would set on me if I didn’t do this.
“Everything, Papa.” I didn’t turn around as I repeated his promise to me, but I needed another confirmation.
“Everything, moy malen’kiy.”
His little one.
Maybe he would get better if I did this. Maybe I would finally have a father instead of a dictator inside this house. He hadn’t called me his little one since I was five years old.
I gripped the handle tighter, breathing through my mouth, and preparing myself for my next step.
“I am sorry,” I whispered to the man when his one eye snapped open to look at me. There was no fight there, no will to live. He knew, just like I did. This was the end.
I watched a movie once where the serial killer kept slitting people’s throats. It looked so easy.
Bringing the blade closer, he suddenly muttered, “Thank you”. My hand shook, but I didn’t stop. The sound of skin slicing, the meat breaking beneath the blade, almost made me vomit. As the blood rushed through the cut, I pressed harder, hearing the crunching sound of his larynx breaking, and he started choking on his own blood.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the red rivulets of blood on my hands, at his head hanging loosely, before my father approached me, hugging me as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Ya znal, chto ty moya doch’.”
He knew I was his daughter. Of course, I was.
I was a monster.
Cynthia Larson was staring at me from across the football field. She either had a death wish, or was too stupid to realize I was five minutes from ripping her eyes out of their sockets. She’s been doing that a lot lately, staring. Well actually, since I broke up with Ronan, she thought it would be a good idea to open the hunting season on me. Their petty thoughts and insignificant lives were of no interest to me. She always had something against me, and with all the other shit I had going on around me, Cynthia’s bullying was the last thing I needed.
But she was pissing me off. Since my initiation night, one month ago, it was as if something snapped inside of me and the parts I never knew existed came to the surface, taking over my mind. My tolerance levels were almost nonexistent. The sinister thoughts were almost constant these days.
I just didn’t know anymore where the good ones ended and the bad ones began. During dinner yesterday, I caught myself imagining my father bleeding out from wounds I caused. I imagined his body mauled and destroyed beyond recognition, and I was the culprit. I was gripping the handle of the knife so tight, I could still feel the steel digging into my hand. Was this darkness always inside of me?
I caught Ava’s worried eyes on me, and I managed to fake a smile, trying to erase the murderous glare I was no doubt sending in Cynthia’s direction.
“What the fuck is wrong with you lately?” I should’ve known she wouldn’t let it go. Ava knew me too well, and after I tried avoiding her for the first two weeks, she knew something was up.
I just wasn’t ready to talk about it. What would I say, anyway?
Oh, darling, I’ve been initiated into something called Syndicate, run by my father. Saturdays are stabbing days, you know, to slice somebody up. Also, did you know that if you cut someone’s jugular, it takes them less than ten minutes to completely bleed out? A piece of art, really. Oh, and your family is in on that business. I am basically part of the Russian mafia now, so no, I can’t go shopping for a prom dress because there’s another person to kill.
Yeah, I couldn’t exactly tell her that. I wasn’t even sure if she would ever be privy to that information, and the less she knew, the better it was. If my pretending to be a distant bitch meant she gets to live in ignorance, free of the chains they put on me, so be it.
“What do you mean?” My voice pitched, trying to sound cheerful, trying to show her that everything was okay. The scowl on her face told me I was failing.
Majorly.
“Don’t act coy with me, Ophelia. I know something is wrong. You’ve been avoiding me lately. You’re not going out, you don’t speak to me, you’ve become withdrawn… what the fuck is going on?”
Her tone increased with every word spoken, and I felt like the shittiest person ever to walk on this Earth.
“Is it,” she lowered her voice, “Kieran?”
I flinched at the mention of his name, and her eyes widened thinking she got it.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“No—”
“You don’t have to see him tonight. We can go and do something else.”
But I actually wanted to see him. I wanted to talk to him about the things that were haunting me day and night. I needed to hear how he functioned with all of this; how did he cope with this shitshow? I had to talk to somebody, otherwise I would go mad.
The fact that I was in love with him, or whatever this ridiculous feeling was, didn’t even pass my mind. I just had to know I would be normal again. Well, as normal as I could be.
There was nothing normal in being a seventeen-year-old in training to become a killing machine. Father was happy with my progress, and my cold demeanor and indifference I showed with every guy he brought to me.
Truth was, I was screaming inwardly, begging to be released, hoping this was all a nightmare I would wake up from. This darkness clawing at my chest, begging to be released was a heavy burden. Maybe I was always a monster—a dormant one, but a monster, nonetheless.
“No, no, I want to welcome them home. I haven’t seen any of your brothers for almost a year and I miss their stupid faces.”
“Are you sure? They would—”
“Yep.” I smiled at her. I could only imagine how deranged I actually looked—like a walking bipolar disorder. One minute I was lost in my thoughts, imagining somebody’s death, the next I was smiling like a lunatic.
How do people do this?
How do they shut down all their emotions and manage to kill without remorse? How is it possible that I never saw any difference in the way Kieran and Cillian were behaving, or my brother for that matter?