Page 7 of Deadly Knight (The Bratva’s Elite #2)
I always believed the world functioned in colours and shades of every level. Muted and bold, dark and light.
I’ve now learned it doesn’t.
It’s black and white. Good and evil.
People, and the actions we take, all fall into one category. Evil acts are done by evil people. There’s no light to be found within the darkness. No bold colours amongst the grim shades.
I hear voices. The mumbles of my parents and the doctor, though I can’t make out their individual words. It’s like they’re far away.
Like I’m far away.
Gone and back in a warehouse, strapped to a mattress, forced to?—
“Next time, take my money.”
I think I flinch. It’s hard to tell, because I’m so numb. So…absent. Gone. Floating.
Warmth strokes over the backs of my fingers. Mama. The talking’s quieted, and I believe it’s only my parents in the room now. My eyes are heavy, but I want to open them.
What do they know? What do they think? How much have they been told?
Do they see me differently now? Sullied.
Because I am.
If they think I’m fine, cured, whole, they’re wrong. How can I open my eyes and face them, face the world, when I can’t even face myself? Face my thoughts, my memories.
My nightmares are encased within black and white. Evil and good. Except—no, not good. None of those men could be considered good.
They stole from me.
Shattered me.
“Katya.”
Mama, I’m coming.
“Did he return?”
He? Dimitri? My heart rate thrums a bit quicker trying to recall the last time I saw him—when he lunged from the chair he was tied to and gathered me in his arms. Everything afterwards is a blur. I don’t recall leaving the warehouse, but I assume we did, because why else would my parents be here?
Unless I’m dead. The men returned and finished the job. Or maybe I’ve simply given up on living.
“This morning. I asked him to wait until we’re home before visiting. I…I can’t right now.” That’s Papa’s response.
“I agree,” Mama whispers, her fingers stroking mine again. “She should decide.”
Decide what? To face the guy I love or send him away? The thought of either option guts me. Face him after everything, knowing his own family was behind it, even if Dimitri himself wasn’t at fault. Or send him away, leaving me empty and hollow without his strength.
Before today, I was an idiot. Every time I told myself it didn’t matter when he was late picking me up because he was learning how to fight, or when he dealt drugs from the back of his trunk after school…
when a part of me was bothered. I looked the other way each time because I cared for him more.
Last night, I tried to do the same. I followed him because I was drunk and stupid and so fucking happy and in love and wanted to be with him, no matter the capacity.
Standing beside him during another exchange felt so minor compared to everything else.
I shouldn’t have gone after him. Should have stayed by the bonfire like he asked me to.
Would they have left us alone, or would they have kidnapped Dimitri regardless?
Then what would have happened to him? Was his father’s plan to cause pain in general or only to me?
Without those answers, I also can’t picture Dimitri there alone.
It might be self-sacrificing, but the idea of him experiencing whatever they would have done to him is almost worse than what I went through.
I wouldn’t want that for him, and I know he’d say the same about how it actually panned out—he’d take a beating over me being raped.
Water drips from the corners of my eyes at the same time they flutter open, looking into the fluorescent lights above.
I use the brightness to erase the black and white and return to a coloured world.
A world in which Mama and Papa both sob, and Mama falls onto my lap, pulling me as close as my IV connections allow for.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, finding it amusing to be consoling them.
Like Mama agrees, her head whips up, the crease between her brows deepening as she stares at me like I’m a stranger. She shakes her head once and cups my cheek, her next statement silent between her own cries.
On my other side, Papa grabs my hand. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to.
Neither of them are stating it, but we’re all thinking it—how broken I’ve become. About how wrong my graduation went. About the emptiness existing inside me.
“I’m sorry.”
Both stare. Both shake their heads. Both cry.
“What do you know?”
It’s Papa who answers with a squeeze of my hand. “Everything. None of it was your fault, so don’t say that.”
It was, because I followed Dimitri when I shouldn’t have.
I can’t find the words to explain when exhaustion creeps up again. The image of my family dulls as my body urges me to listen to it and drown out the colour again, to return to the blackness.
“I’m tired.”
Mama stands to reposition my pillow. “Then sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up.”
Before I pass out, their latest conversation flits through my head.
I love Dimitri, but I can’t let him see me like this.
Not until I process what exactly this is.
He’ll want me to say something, and I wouldn’t know where to begin.
He’s already seen me at my worst—in a way I didn’t know possible—inside the warehouse, and I can’t let him see me like this.
Confused, dazed. I want to see him when I feel normal again, like the events from earlier didn’t happen.
When he can look at me and see the girl he’s been dating, not the one who was violated.
“Only you guys. Please. No one else.”
They share a look. Mama’s eye twitches, but it’s Papa who nods firmly and squeezes my hand again. “Only us. We promise.”
I want to ask how he’s doing; to see what they know.
I might be the one in a hospital bed, but he broke as well in that warehouse.
I witnessed it for myself, and wonder if he realizes it.
Something snapped— changed —within him. The moment Bald One entered me, he became a shadow of what his father’s been trying to make him into.
A killer.
And no matter what he says or how he acts, the Dimitri who’ll walk through the door is not the guy I’ve been dating.
Just like I’m no longer the girl he fell in love with.
Sleep consumes me before I can ask, and I allow the vision of Dimitri’s love sweep me away.