Luka stared at me in silence, but eventually he nodded and said, “You’re right. He’s yours. Make the fucker reap what he sowed.”
The guards moved out of my way as I strode forward. Jakhua stood against the wall and watched me. He never took his piss-small dark eyes from me. I stood before him, fire filling my veins.
I breathed. Just worked on breathing as the man that slaughtered my family stood before me. And I was free. No drugs depriving me of my memories, making me forget who I was.
Just me and him.
Me and the man who was about to die.
Walking to the table where Jakhua kept his weapons, the very weapons he’d used on me as a child to bring me under control, I looked at them all lined up in neat rows.
I knew what I was looking for. The weapons he’d made me train with as a child in a cage. Made me kill others in a cage to prove my strength.
My hands twitched as my eyes fell on a flash of black metal. My heart pumped as I reached for a set of black sais. Sharp and deadly black sais.
I moved before Jakhua. His eyes widened as I twirled the sais in my hands. The room was silent as the guards and Luka all watched me.
Walking to Jakhua, I lifted my right sai and placed the thin blade at his stomach. I pushed forward, all the time looking into his eyes … eyes that bulged as the hard steel slowly pierced his gut.
Lifting my other hand, I dropped the sai to the ground. I wrapped my fingers around his throat. I squeezed hard and made sure he looked right into my eyes as he struggled for breath.
His arms tried to hit at my back, but I didn’t even feel them. Jakhua’s face reddened as I slowly and painfully stole his life.
Then with the sai still plunged inside his stomach, I twisted and slowly dragged it up. The blade sliced through flesh. It tore through organs and scraped against bone in agonized slowness.
And all the time I stared into his eyes. The last face he would ever see would be that of a Kostava, the only surviving heir of the family he hated most.
Blood tried to surge up his throat. I squeezed my hand tighter, Jakhua choking as my hand tightened. Still my sai continued to cut. Then just as the life left his body, I ripped the sai from his torso, released my hand from around his neck, and watched as his body slumped down the wall, blood pouring from his wounds.
Stepping back, I looked at the guards all holding their rifles in readiness. With Jakhua’s dying eyes looking at me, I ordered, “Fire!”
The Bratva’s guards followed my command, raining bullets straight into Jakhua’s flesh, the force of the bullets at such close proximity ripping his body to shreds.I watched as his eyes glazed with imminent death. When the firing stopped, a weight fell from my chest. He was dead. Jakhua was dead.
Silence filled the room. Hearing a noise from behind, I whipped around just in time to see the man in the white coat drop to the ground. Luka stepped back from the man, wiping his knuckle-dusters on his pants. He’d slit the white coat’s throat.
My eyes fell on Luka, then on the man in the white coat, then finally back to Jakhua. I glanced down at my hands; they were shaking. I stared at my bloodied hands, and images of my family raced through my mind. My chest grew tight. I felt like all of my blood had drained from my body.
My knees hit the ground. A pressure built in my stomach, traveling up my throat. Shaking with too much emotion, too many memories blocking my mind, I tipped my head back and screamed.
I screamed and screamed until the pressure left me. One single realization took its place as I sat, weakened, on the ground.
I was free.
I was finally free and completely free.
Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I turned. Luka Tolstoi was behind me. He met my eyes and said, “We need to leave.”
“Where do I go?” I asked, my voice rough and raw.
“To Talia,” Luka replied. Any tension, any anger I had remaining, left my body at the simple mention of her name.
I nodded and got to my feet. “Yes,” I said, “take me to Talia.”
* * *
“Let’s go,” Luka said as we pulled up to a house.
I stared at the large house and took a deep breath. It was the Tolstoi house. I looked to Luka. “I will not be welcome.”
Luka sighed and opened the van’s door. I followed him onto the dark street. I stood, looked at the house and my heart clenched. Talia was in that house. My Talia was in that house.
And I needed her. I wanted to see her again so much that all my muscles ached at the thought.
Luka laid a hand on my shoulder. I wore a sweatshirt and pants. But my skin was covered in Jakhua’s blood. My hair was not smooth.