Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Bronwyn put a wet hand on my cheek, and I closed my eyes again and sank into the softness. It would have been so easy to just nestle there, retreating back to safety. But there was more, and she needed to hear all of it to understand. I just wasn’t sure I could make myself tell her.
“At first, we got visitors. Our mother came each month, to catch us up on news and tell us to be strong. But then the warden found out and….” My hands curled into fists. “He strip-searched her. And then...he raped her. In front of the other guards. After that, we told everyone not to visit, and we were completely on our own.” I inhaled, but the air came in shakily. I hadn’t realized how hard this would be, but I had to get through it.
“About a year into our eight-year sentence, our mother got cancer. The warden wouldn’t let us visit. Not when she was in the hospital, not when she was in a hospice...” My voice went tight. That had been one of the worst parts. I remember sitting on my scratchy wool blanket, tears rolling down my cheeks, knowing she was in agony, alone, and not being able to reach her...it felt like it happened yesterday. I inhaled the sweet, damp air of the bathroom, trying to remind myself I was here, with her. But the pain was so bad now, it was hard to breathe. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to go on. “The warden wouldn’t even let us go to the funeral.” My voice was ragged. “We’d lost both our parents, and we didn’t get to say goodbye to either of them. That nearly destroyed us.”
Bronwyn threw her arms around me and pulled me against the bath, her wet arms and breasts soaking my shirt, her breathing ragged in my ear. “This is what you have nightmares about,” she whispered.
I nodded. Then I closed my eyes and just held her close, and the warmth of her and the scent of her made the pain retreat a little. I took three long breaths, then pulled gently back so I could look her in the eye.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You don’t have to tell me any more.”
But I shook my head. “Yes I do.” She needed to hear the best part. Which was also the worst part. I stared at her and let the sight of her give me the strength to continue.
“You see...they’d made a mistake, with the three of us.” My voice turned bitter and savage. “They thought that they could break us, grind us down. But there was something inside us. When they had me outside, naked, and the wind was so cold it felt like it was tearing the flesh right off me, the only way I could survive was to stop feeling. To get through the pain and humiliation, we became like ice. The beatings they gave us...they forced us to build our bodies and become stronger. And the way they isolated the three of us made us stick together, until we were so close nothing could break us apart. The warden thought he was breaking us, Bronwyn. But he was creating monsters.” I felt the grim satisfaction I’d felt back then: knowing that we were changing, that we’d have our revenge someday. And I felt the sickness, too, at what we were becoming.
I rested my forearms on the edge of the tub, wetness soaking through my shirt. “We’d seen for ourselves that the official system—government, police, courts—was corrupt. So we decided to build our own system. We were surrounded by criminals: everyone there had been in a gang. We learned everything we could: how to steal, how to smuggle, how to kill.” I rolled up my shirt sleeve and showed her a tattoo on my right bicep, rough and blurry. “We got our first tattoos in that place, done with soot and a needle made from the straightened-out spring from a pen. For three years, we grew, we hardened...and we planned.”
“There was a small metalworking shop, and we made a key to our cells. When it was dark, we slipped out and crept to the warden’s office, where I strangled the bastard with a phone cable. Then we ran into the night: no money, no food, nothing but the clothes on our backs. It took us months just to get back to Moscow, stealing so we could eat. From there, we bought passage on a cargo ship going to the US. But not before I’d visited Olenev, the man who killed our father, and cut his throat.” I paused for a second to let that sink in. I needed her to know the worst of it, the worst of me: I’d said no secrets. “We went to New York, worked our way up through the street gangs and after a few years, we went to work for a Bratva boss called Luka Malakov. There was a guy there about the same age as me, who’d done some time in the army: Alexei. He taught me how to be a hitman and we became friends. We all worked together, gradually gaining status and respect. And eventually, after years, my brothers and I moved to Chicago to start up on our own. Mikhail joined us soon after: he has...his own story.”