by Penelope Sky
I got to my feet and faced him. “Fender.”
With a clenched jaw, he looked angry that this conversation was continuing when he wished it would die.
“We need to free those girls. Period.” I pitied my brother because of the weight of his grief, the painfulness of his solitude, but it didn’t change what needed to be done. “We can’t do this anymore.”
He stared me down, hostile.
“You need to stop this. Now.”
“Or what?”
My eyes narrowed at the odd response.
“You going to kill me?” He took a step closer to me, rising to my unspoken challenge.
This entire conversation was offensive. I was pissed off that my brother wouldn’t do the right thing because he thought so little of himself already. But I was also pissed off that he had no faith in me. “No. I’m not our father.”
He was still angry, but slightly less.
“But this will happen whether you like it or not. I know there’s still humanity inside you. I know you still have a chance. I just hope you find the strength to join me…instead of resisting me.”
Thirty
Red Snow
When I returned home, Ramon informed me that Raven was in the stables. She spent a lot of her free time there, taking Rose for a ride or brushing her coat or scrubbing her hooves. There was a caretaker on duty to do all those things, but she took it on as a hobby.
When I walked into the stables, I found her standing in Rose’s stall with the door closed. She had a bucket of oats on the shelf, and she fed Rose handfuls. “A lot better than that hat, huh?” She continued to feed her while she rubbed her other hand down the bridge of the horse’s nose. “I’m gonna spoil you like crazy.”
I came close to the door and watched her for a while, looking at her beautiful face while she had no idea I was there. When she felt threatened, she was so savage.
In her defense, most other times, she was gentle and kind, wearing her heart on her sleeve and filling every room she stepped into with light. I loved those things about her, that she fought like a man but loved like a woman.
Rose must’ve smelled me because she lifted her head and looked at me over the stall door. She let out a loud breath, making her nostrils widen.
Raven followed her look until she saw me. “Looks like we aren’t alone.”
I pressed my body against the stall door and rested my arms on the edge. I looked at Rose for a few seconds, seeing her be protective of Raven, even though I was more protective than she would ever be. I turned my gaze to Raven.
“Do you want to feed her?” She held up the bucket of oats.
I shook my head.
“Come on. I want her to like you.”
“She doesn’t like me?” I asked incredulously. “Who’s the one who has been feeding her for months? Who’s the one who got her out of that camp?” I shifted my gaze back to Rose and gave her a look of accusation. “Who’s the one who let her shit in my house?”
Raven laughed loudly at the memory. “Oh my god, I’ll never forget your face when you walked in there.” She looked at Rose and continued to rub her snout, chuckling to herself.
I looked at Raven again, seeing the color in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, the joy in everything around her.
“Rose, he’s right. He’s been good to you.” She turned back to me and beckoned for me to come inside. “You should still feed her. She loves her oats, so she’ll love you.”
I had no interest in feeding a horse or walking into the stable where her shit was in the corners, but I couldn’t resist the woman who made the request. I opened the door and joined her.
Raven held out the bucket. “Get a handful and flatten your fingers.”
Rose released a quiet snort, like she was telling me to hurry up because she was hungry.
I grabbed the oats then opened my hand wide to feed her.
Her teeth dragged across my palm, and her lips slobbered all over my skin. She ate them quickly and lifted her head to look at me, like she was ready for the next handful.
“Rose, you’ve had enough. I’ve already fed you too much as it is.” Raven rubbed her hand down the horse’s backside.
Like Rose could understand, she released a neigh.
Raven said goodbye before she walked out of the stall with me and put the oats away. We both washed our hands before we left and headed to the house together.
At my side, she walked down the pathway in her barn boots, looking cute in her jeans and plaid shirt. “How’d it go?” Her voice didn’t carry her infectious happiness anymore. She was somber, like she already knew what my answer would be.
“I need more time.” I kept my eyes on the lit pathway before us as we made our way back to the house. The conversation was painful for a lot of reasons, but Fender’s resistance was the most painful of all. “I didn’t expect to be successful on my first attempt anyway, but it was still shitty.”
She didn’t try to give me advice or rush me into a resolution. There was no reason to, when she had faith that I would fulfill the task I said I would complete. “Maybe I can talk to Melanie. Maybe I can get her to convince him.”
I shook my head. “Unlikely.”
“He wants to marry her, so he obviously values her opinion.”
“I think Fender has a low opinion of himself, but there’s no incentive to be good. He can’t be redeemed, so what’s the point?”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s redeemed or not. He should still do the right thing…even if he goes to hell anyway.”
I slid my hands into my pockets and looked at the lit-up house. There were lights in the distance around us, but we felt isolated from the world. “He said he wouldn’t stop. Then he asked if I would kill him if he didn’t…”
Raven was quiet for a long time, the pause in her speech profound. “Would you?”
I wanted to do the right thing and amend all the wrongs, but my brother’s blood on my hands would haunt me forever. “No. I would be no different from our father if I did. And I think telling him that…is what’s going to bring him back to the right side.”
“Are you sure about this?” I stood outside in the driveway in front of the pond. My car was there, my bag of essentials in the trunk.
She was in her gray work pants and black tank top, her hair pulled back and her makeup gone. There was less joy in her gaze because she knew she had to return to a life of misery for a month before she could come back here. “Yes.”
“Because I would understand if you didn’t want to come with me.” I wanted her beside me every night, but what I wanted more than anything was for her to be happy. “It’s a long time to be apart, but I know you’ll be waiting for me.” I knew she would be committed and faithful during those long stretches of time, and we would make up for what we lost every time we were reunited.
The resolution in her eyes didn’t change. She was as determined as before, just a little morose. “I don’t want to be at that camp. But I want to be with you, wherever that is.”
The camp was as I remembered. It was a timeless place, where nothing ever changed except the seasons. The only way we knew how long we’d really been working there was by the subtle changes in our appearance as we aged. The girls only knew how much time passed by the weekly Red Snows. When a girl was executed, that marked the passage of time.
When we entered the clearing, Raven immediately got to work and took up her post. She never told me how the girls felt about her having a relationship with me, leaving the camp monthly, and returning after two weeks. If she had friends, she didn’t tell me. We deliberately kept the girls apart from each other so they wouldn’t be able to organize a coup.
I purposely walked up to Alix and put him on the spot. “Any news to share with me?” I got so close to him that he was forced to take a step back. Of course, I moved in again, just to make him uncomfortable. The beating I gave him was more than enough retribution for what he had done to me on so many occasions, but I would never fo
rget the sound of my woman’s screams, forget the way she woke up in the middle of the night and stared right at the door, like he was coming for her. I’d publicly humiliated him when I made him bloody and made him ask for mercy, but would that ever be enough after what he did to her?
No.
I didn’t care about what he had done to me. I cared about what he had done to her. And sometimes I wondered if I would just snap one day…and kill him.
Alix found his answer. “No. Everything has been running on schedule.”
“How’s your nose?”
He didn’t speak.
I spat right on his face, knowing I hit my mark when he jerked back slightly.
The other guards didn’t react at all and kept their eyes on the girls.
“You’re my bitch now, asshole.” I walked off and headed to my cabin, knowing no amount of humiliation would subdue my anger. He’d provoked me too many times, and then he went after the one thing I actually cared about.
Raven and I fell back into our old routine. I worked late catching up on everything that needed my attention, and when I returned to the cabin, I sat at my desk and worked on my laptop.
Raven sat on the floor, leaning against the bed to watch the TV. She was quiet, rarely talking about her day and rarely asking me anything. I knew she wasn’t upset with me. This place just infected her mood like a virus.
When she was ready for bed, she turned off the TV, brushed her teeth in the bathroom, and then got under the sheets. We no longer shared an oversize bed, but we didn’t mind being pushed together into a single person.
My back was to her, and I continued to work on my laptop.
Her voice was low as she spoke. “How did you get into this business?”
I answered as I typed. “We started as distributors on the street. We would sell a few ounces so we could make rent and buy food. The older we got, the more ambitious we became. We eventually took control of the business we used to work for, and the rest is history.”
“So, after the night when…everything happened…that was what you did to survive.”
“We had no other choice.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
I remembered everything like it was yesterday. “For the first few weeks, we lived on the street. Fender got pneumonia, and we couldn’t afford to see a doctor, so I had to rob some guy…” It was wrong, but I didn’t feel guilty about it. If I hadn’t gotten my brother what he needed, he would’ve died. “We would eat people’s leftover food from the garbage can. We would live outside in the elements, hot and cold. We couldn’t go to the police or do anything else because we knew our father would hunt us down and finish the job. It was a rough two years…until we got into the drug business. We were desperate and ambitious, and the desperation led to the empire we have now. It’s another reason Fender is so obsessed with money because he doesn’t ever want to feel helpless again.” A lot of other terrible things happened to us in that time period, but I chose not to disclose them. Everything I’d already said was heavy enough.
She was quiet, like she had no idea what to say to that.
“I don’t agree with what we do to the girls here, but I’m not ashamed of everything else I’ve done. I don’t feel bad for the people I robbed. I don’t feel bad for being, first, a drug dealer and then a drug kingpin. I don’t feel bad for the lies I told to good people because I needed something from them. When you’re in survival mode, you have to do bad things to live to see the next day. Anyone who judges me can be damned.” At this point, I knew there was nothing I could tell Raven that would make her feel differently about me. We were bound by the journey we both took to be together. We suffered greatly for each other, and that kind of loyalty was unbreakable. So, I told her everything without a filter, just so she could understand me a little better. Understand my brother a little better.
She still didn’t say anything.
The silence stretched for so long that I turned around in my chair to look at her.
She sat up in bed, that pained look on her face, as if she were picturing those dark nights, the street fights, the tears Fender and I both shed when we were scared. “I don’t judge you…at all. I think it’s inhumane to judge someone for what they do to survive. The people who do have no idea what it’s like to be hungry, to be scared.”
I knew she’d lost her mother when she was a teenager, and then she had to take care of her younger sister when she probably didn’t know how to take care of herself. So, she understood my story. Maybe she had never experienced it as intensely as I did, but she understood.
She patted the mattress beside her, telling me to join her in bed.
I still had a lot of shit to do, but work meant nothing to me when I had something more valuable just a few feet away. I shut the laptop then stripped out my clothes so I could join her. I slid into the sheets beside her and pulled her close, our faces almost touching.
She rubbed my chest with callused fingertips, looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and pity. But there was also something else there…admiration. “You’re right.”
My eyes shifted back and forth as I looked into hers, questioning the words she’d just spoken.
“We are the same person.”
I stepped out of the communal cabin and noticed the torches. They were lit up around the perimeter of the clearing, less bright because it was still light out. In the summer, the light wasn’t really gone until at least eight in the evening. But the symbolism of the torches was enough to instill fear in every woman sitting at one of the tables.
I never took part in the ceremony. I was either in my cabin or elsewhere. I was in charge of this camp when Fender was away, so I rarely busied myself with tasks that involved the prisoners. The only reason I had been Raven’s guard in the first place was because we had lost a guard recently and we were shorthanded.
It was crazy how life worked out sometimes.
I stopped on the porch and looked at the torches. Alix wore the garb of the executioner, a mask covering the bottom part of his face while his hood was pushed down. He lit the final torch near the noose then began to stride down the aisles between the tables, looking for the victim they had already chosen.
It was cruel.
Alix kept moving and walked right past Raven. Whether I was around or not, he was smart and didn’t look at her. He was afraid of me—always.
He should be.
He moved down a different aisle and stopped behind a woman who was probably approaching fifty years of age. I recognized her face because she was one of the first women to have come here, and when Raven liberated the camp, she was one of the few who didn’t make it out. She started to tremble and shake, like she knew Alix was right behind her. Her eyes immediately moistened with tears.
Alix grabbed her by the back of the shirt and yanked her off the bench.
The sobs came next. “Please! Please don’t do this to me!”
Alix dragged her across the ground to where the wooden pole stood, the ground still stained with the last victim’s blood.
The woman didn’t rise to her feet and, instead, dug her fingertips into the ground, clinging to life for just a few seconds longer.
I couldn’t watch this.
I walked down the steps and turned my back to the clearing, heading to my cabin so I could close the door and shut out the sound of her screams.
“No! Please!”
I stopped walking.
My cabin was in front of me, just twenty feet away.
Why was I walking away?
“I work! I work hard every day!”
Why was I allowing this to happen?
Why was I trying to convince Fender to do things differently when I could just do things differently myself?
I turned around and walked back to the clearing.
The noose was tight around her neck, and she stood on the small box that would be kicked from under her at any moment.
When I moved past the line of torches, I saw Raven a
t the table, her head down, her eyes closed.
Alix pulled out his knife and prepared to kick the box from underneath her feet.
I walked past the tables and pulled out my own knife. “Stop.”
Alix turned to me, his eyes narrowed.
“Cut her down.”
A gust of wind blew through the clearing, making the lit torches flicker and almost go out. The energy was totally different now, even tenser than it had been a few seconds before I’d halted the slaughter.
Alix wasn’t tentative with me like he’d been before. Now he was angry, unsure what act I was trying to pull.
When he didn’t do what I said, I told him again. “Cut her down, or I’ll cut your throat.” I didn’t care if I was outnumbered twelve to one. I wouldn’t let this shit happen anymore, and I would kill anybody who got in my way.
Alix still didn’t obey. “What are you doing?”
“The Red Snow is over.” I pulled out my knife and aimed it at the wooden pole where the rope was tied. I threw the knife, and it cut the rope, freeing her from the noose. The blade embedded in the wood behind the platform.
The woman fell to the ground, praising God and digging her fingers into the soil as she cherished her good fortune.
Alix turned to the other guards to see their reactions even though their faces were hidden under their hoods. “What the fuck, Magnus?”
“We aren’t doing this shit anymore.” I stepped on the box and pulled my knife out of the wooden frame. I returned to the ground and turned my back to Alix as I walked away. I’d kick his ass all over again. “You got it?” I projected my voice so the other guys could hear without a hint of confusion. “The Red Snow is permanently prohibited. Anyone who tries will be hung themselves.”
Alix’s voice came from behind me. “Fender gave no such orders.”
I turned around and faced him. I threw my hood back because I didn’t care about hiding my face anymore. It was the first time I wasn’t ashamed of who I was. “He’s not the one giving the orders anymore. I am.”
