by Tia Lewis
Get up, brother! Get up! Tess needs you! I heard my brother’s voice. It had been awhile since I last heard Kevin in my head. I thought for a minute that he had given up on me like so many others had done so I was somewhat relieved that I could still feel his presence.
Zharkov looked down at me and shook his head slowly.
“How do you think that I am where I am, lad?” Zharkov smirked, wiping the blood from his face with the sleeve of the silk bathrobe.
“Liam! Get up! Get up!” Tess cried.
I groaned as I tried to stand back up, but Zharkov jumped forward and slammed his knee into my chest. My ribcage caved inward, and my breaths came hollowly, raggedly, and I fell back down on the floor. Suddenly, he body slammed his full body weight on my chest, his knee pressing down hard on my ribcage. I gasped for air and wheezed as I grabbed his slippery thigh and tried to pull him off of me, but his weight was too powerful.
“No!” Tess screamed.
Zharkov became a bloody silhouette as beads of blood filled my vision.
“In Russia, we train in SAMozashchita Bez Oruzhiya or Sambo for you dumb bloody Americans.” Zharkov grinned. “You’re not the only one who’s trained in years of combat. But it looks like I have a decade or more of training than you.”
“Liam! Liam!” Tess screeched, still chained to the bed.
“You’re no match for me, young lad.” Zharkov snickered, pressing his knee down on my chest so hard that I had to let go of his thigh and focus entirely on dragging in long, desperate breaths. The wheezing sound of my breathing filled the room, which seemed oddly quiet after the intensity of the fight. I was weakened and I couldn’t bear the weight of a three-hundred-pound man crushing my body much longer. I was sure that my rib cage was broken and I couldn’t tell what other injuries that I had sustained since blood was coming out of my mouth, nose and other wounds from my body.
“What makes you think that I am here purely by accident?” Zharkov sneered, pressing his knee down even harder. Now I couldn’t breathe at all. I became light-headed and my eyes tried to close. Blackness began to descend over my vision, and the fucked up part was that I was starting to welcome it.
Fight, brother! Fight! I heard my brother say. All I could hear was the faint screams of Tess, my brother’s voice and shallow breathing in my head. Everything else was a blur.
Please, brother! You have to fight! Kevin repeated.
“I. Can’t.” I wheezed.
I couldn’t fight any longer. My body was completely weakened. The fight was over.
I had lost.
“Liam! No! No! No! Don’t leave me!” Tess begged.
“Shut the fuck up, whore! You’re next!”
In my head, I was telling Tess that I was sorry.
I was sorry for not being the man that she wanted me to be. Sorry for not opening up to her and breaking my promise to protect her. I had failed her and perhaps death was what I deserved.
Zharkov continued. “Where I was born, you had to catch rats or starve,” he said, spitting blood. “You saw corpses in the street, and you said, ‘I knew him, he was my friend,’ and it made you hard, and tough. It is the type of toughness that never leaves a man. This is what you Americans do not understand, with your shopping malls and your bloody reality TV and your—your everything! You think life is a silver platter, made to offer you whatever you desire.”
“Liam, get up! Get up!” Tess cried.
“Say one more thing, and I’ll put something in your mouth to shut you the fuck up!” Zharkov warned.
My eyelids slid closed, and I felt an abyss open in my stomach. I imagined Kevin was sitting in the void, arms outstretched, welcoming me. I receded inside of myself, hardly feeling the pain in my chest and in my body anymore, and began to swim through the black emptiness toward the abyss, toward my little brother’s hands.
Not yet, brother. Not yet! You must fight! Kevin shouted.
But I ignored Kevin and kept swimming. Soon, there would be no pain, no memories, just blackness and Kevin’s voice and smiling face. I could go back, before all of this, before I became The Animal, before I became a contract killer—a hitman. I could live a different life, down there in the deep dark abyss with the brother who was taken from me too soon. I could go, fly away, and I could finally be at peace. All I had to do was reach out my arms, embrace the darkness and soon I would be with my little brother again.
Please brother! Please! Fight! Kevin begged.
“Aww, look at this, little dove,” Zharkov grinned as looked down at me. “Your little knight in shining armor failed you.”
“Get off him you bloody bastard!” Tess cried.
“Silence!” Zharkov yelled. “I’m enjoying this. The Animal is too weak and too much of a pussy to defeat a little old man like me.”
“I said get off him!”
Just then Tess brought a bottle of vodka down onto the back of Zharkov’s head with all her might. He stumbled forward, releasing my chest. I gasped in breaths, the abyss vanished, and suddenly I was back in the room. I opened my eyes, groaned and repeatedly blinked to try and regain my vision.
“Get up, Liam! Hurry before Zharkov gets back up!”
My vision was becoming clearer, but the intense pounding in my head and excruciating pain in my chest still remained. Tess grabbed me by the arm, and I slowly leaned up, my body protesting with each movement. Blood drenched the back of my shirt and forearms from all the cuts and stabbings from Zharkov’s switchblade. I groaned again and tried to stand, but my legs buckled and I slumped back down to the marble floor.
Tess held the vodka bottle in one hand and my arm with the other. She looked over to see Zharkov laying on the ground, rubbing the back of his head. She smashed the vodka bottle on the floor a few times before it broke and glass and liquid scattered on the floor.
“You sick fuck!” Tess breathed, letting go of my arm and walking over the glass, ignoring the pain as the shards bit into her bare-feet. She walked over to where Zharkov was laying on the floor, a malicious glint in her eyes. She held the broken vodka bottle in her hand, ready to strike Zharkov across the face. Her lips pulled back over her teeth in a grimace.
“Burn in bloody Hell!” she screamed and went to strike him with the bottle.
“No!” I croaked, struggling to a sitting position. “No, Tess!”
“Fuck him!” Tess growled, looking from me to Zharkov. “Fuck him, Liam! He deserves to die!”
“Tess,” I said, my voice weak. I was still dizzy and I was completely at her mercy.
“He needs to die!”
“No! Help me up. I’m not letting you do this. I’m not letting you become just like me.”
“I don’t care, Liam!” she cried, her voice was pure of hatred. “I’ll kill him! Don’t think that I won’t!”
“I know that you will. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Argh!” she snapped and stepped over Zharkov as she walked to me.
“You’re starting to sound... like me.” I forced a smile, doing my best to withstand the pain that I was feeling all over.
Tess leaned down and hooked a hand under my armpit. I grunted as I pulled onto her, gripping her shoulder and rising slowly to my feet. I wobbled to the side and had to grip a bedpost to steady myself. Once I stood up straight, my breathing became slightly easier.
“Give me the bottle, Tess,” I said, holding my bloody good hand out—my other hand dangling limply at my side.
“I’d do it,” she said, biting her lip, and staring dagger-eyed at Zharkov’s squirming body as his hand rubbed the back of his head. “I know, I know,” I said. “But you don’t have to. I’m your bodyguard, remember?”
“I think that you’re more than that, now,” Tess mumbled, handing me the jagged vodka bottle.
“I don’t know, sweet thing. I believe that we’re even.”
I limped to where Zharkov lay sprawled on the ground and looked down at him. “Can’t take a little pounding in the head from a girl you pussy?�
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“Stupid whore!” He groaned in agony while he held his head.
“I’m not the one for fancy speeches,” I said, and carefully crouched down. I was in so much pain and I could feel my open wounds tugging at my skin. I brought the jagged edge of the bottle to Zharkov’s neck, pressing the broken sharp glass against his jugular.
“Don’t you dare!” His eyes widened.
“Any last words?” Part of me had the audacity to be smug.
“Do you think that this is the end, young lad?”
“For you? Yes, it is, motherfucker!”
I sliced the broken bottle across his jugular, and his blood sprayed out like a fountain.
17
I had taken beatings more times than I could count, but few had been as brutal as this.
Blood plastered the side of my face where the deep cut bit into my skin, tugging at my lip and under my eye. There was blood everywhere. Blood leaked from the wound in my back and soaked my T-shirt. Blood spewed from the gashes in my forearms, sliding down my arms, wrists, and hands. Zharkov’s switchblade had cut and sliced me everywhere. It felt like a bull had just run into me and I was a defeated bullfighter, desperate to get away from the source of the attack.
I was now lying next to Zharkov on my back, wheezing in and out, the abysmal darkness returning now that it was all said and done. It seemed absurd to me that there was more to do: that I couldn’t finally rest and find some peace.
“Liam!” Tess hissed, walking to where I was slumped on the ground and looking down at me. “We have to go!”
I could feel her place her hand on my chest and see her begin to weep.
“Why are you breathing like that? Did he break your ribs?” I would be moved by the look on her face and the concern in her eyes if I wasn’t in so much pain.
My eyes were closed. With an effort, I opened them and looked at the faint image of Tess, naked, scared, but powerful and defiant. Her bright blue eyes were scanning the room, checking the door every other second. There was fear in her eyes, but underneath the fear was the innate capacity for murder if she was threatened or under duress. I believed that she could have held her own if somebody had crashed through the door right now and tried to take either of us out. Deep down, I knew that she could hold her own.
“The other Russians will be in here soon. I know that they heard the fight! Zharkov is dead, and now someone has to pay for it! What will we do when they get here?” Tess looked shell-shocked; her blank stare indicated that she was confused and overwhelmed. I had never seen her so strung out and desperate.
“We are so bloody fucked!” she screamed, looking around nervously as her tear-filled eyes flickered back and forth between me and the door.
Tess was frantic, and I could not blame her. “I don’t think that you’re in any condition to fight! We have to get out of here, now! Come on, Liam! Please get up!”
“I’m sort of busy dying, Tess,” I grunted. “Maybe after I’m dead I’ll get up, okay?” I made a meager attempt at a joke, but it came up short.
“Now is not the time to be funny,” she let out a faint laugh and wiped her eyes. “You’re not dying. You hear me? You’re not dying!” This came out in a shrill, high-pitched, determined scream. That’s what I had done to her; I realized that all of the trauma and all of the stress had changed her. Her sweet, delicate innocence had been decimated by Zharkov and his depravity, but I had a hand in her transition into darkness too; I had made her hard, ruthless, and turned her into rock-hard gristle… just like me. Yes, Zharkov and Dmitri had played their parts, but it was I who had shown her what it means to fight through the pain and come into her own.
Tess walked across the room to the bed and started ripping up the silk sheets. I tried to sit up to watch her but my chest contracted, and my shoulder let out a flare of pain that which screamed at me: Don’t get up! Stay down! I let out a loud groan as my head slumped back against the marble floor.
“Shit!” I let out a long, ragged breath. I was finding it damn hard to believe that I would ever take another breath. That Russian bastard had really done a number on me, that was for sure. Even thought I had won, right now it didn’t feel much like winning.
“What are you doing?” I gurgled, blood now rising in my mouth. Fuck. I shouldn’t have moved. If I were smart, I would get to a hospital, but I had never been known for my intelligence.
“I’m trying to save you! You’re losing too much blood!” Tess exclaimed, walking to me with her arms wrapped around torn sheets piled high to her chin. She dropped the sheets next to me and then knelt, her bare breasts inches from my face. “If you think that we came this far just so that you could die on me, then you’ve got another thing coming!”
“I love your sass, Tess.” I coughed again. Damn, it was really getting hard to breathe. I thought that I would be alright if it weren't for the wounds that gushed blood every goddamned second. “I think that you should go, Tess.”
She tilted her head at me. “Go? Go where? Without you? I’d rather stay here and die. Now, stop talking.”
I didn’t have a problem with that. Talking was becoming more difficult anyway.
Tess took two of the smaller red strips and wrapped them around my arms. She held me tenderly, and I knew that if I were a softer man, I would’ve wept. Before Tess, no woman had held me affectionately. Maybe it said a lot about me that I was only able to appreciate tenderness when I was a few whispers from death, but I wasn’t about to get all self-reflective about it. She tied one of the sheets around my right forearm, tying it tightly around the wound. Then she took my left arm and did the same.
“This is just like the days when I volunteered at the Red Cross in England. Remember when I told you that I worked briefly in the emergency response division?
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I should’ve taken nursing instead of psychology at Oxford,” she muttered.
“I thought that you wanted to be a librarian.”
Tess smiled. “I do. But I wish that I would have either volunteered more at the Red Cross or taken nursing classes because when it comes to patching you up, and trying to stop all this bleeding… I honestly have to admit that I am lost. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“You’re doing fine, sweet thing,” I told her. “I feel better already.”
She pouted doubtfully, and then lifted my head and began wrapping my face in makeshift bandages. “You’re going to look like a mummy. A sexy one at that.”
She braced my neck—like a mother lifting her baby’s neck to put a pillow underneath—and continued to wrap my face in bandages, obscuring my vision and tying it tight, squeezing down on the cut on my face, pressing down into the wound.
I wondered if that was how ordinary men felt when their woman touched them like that. Maybe they felt that they needed some tenderness, some affection, some loving. Maybe they felt since they’d never had any love or kindness that they needed it from their women. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had never been needy like that. I had never had love or kindness from anyone but my little brother, and after that—nobody gave a shit. But damn, I needed someone to give a shit about me now.
“You need to stand up,” she said. “I can’t get to your back like that, and you’re too heavy.”
“I can’t,” I wheezed.
“Yes, you can. You have no choice.”
“Give me a second,” I grunted, but I didn’t move. Zharkov’s odor had filled the room now, mixing with Tess’ perfume, sweat, and other abhorrent aromas. I laid still for a few moments and breathed them in… thinking. I thought about Kevin and our father. I thought about Tess and her parents. I wondered if Tess and I would be as close as we were if it weren’t for how fucked up that we were. I wondered if we would have this instant unexplainable connection if we weren’t both crazier than the Mad Hatter who was determined to interact with Alice even though deep down he probably knew better. But maybe it was like that, I thought as the darkness twisted like a torna
do, sucking me in. Maybe it was like that. Maybe it was the fucked up people who made the quickest, most powerful connections. Maybe it was only a hitman and a scared, angry victim who could go from strangers to—to this in less than a week. Maybe…
“Liam!” Tess snapped. “Get up! Now! I thought that you were supposed to be a badass!”
“I never said that,” I groaned. “People just say that shit about me.”
“Well, I’m saying it, so get up!” Spit flew from her mouth with the last two words, the force of them more determined than anything that she’d ever said to me before. “Get up! Right, the fuck now!”
“Give me a hand.” I calmly requested her assistance, and I hoped that she would comply.
I lifted my arm up slowly, shocked by how heavy it felt, and Tess gripped my hand. Pain shot up my arm like knives, slicing through my skin, probing my wounds.
“Pull,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“I’m trying! You’re heavy!” she breathed.
“Help me, Tess. You’re stronger than you think.”
I tightened my grip around Tess’ hand, and she heaved, pulling on my arm with all her strength. I bit down and contracted my stomach like I was doing sit-ups, lifting my head, pulling on her hand so hard that it was a shock when she didn’t collapse to the ground next to me. But I was right: she was stronger than she thought. She threw her body into it, leaning back and bracing her feet shoulder-width apart, and I rose into a sitting position.
Tess let go, stumbled backward a few steps, and then gripped the bedpost to steady herself.
“Finally,” she gasped. “Now, stay like that.”
She took her hand from the bedpost and jumped across to me, her tits bouncing, and her perfect body tight, still making me want to fuck regardless of how horribly that I was injured. I felt my cock harden slightly, despite the blood that I had lost, and that animalistic lust threatened to overcome me, the powerful sensation swimming in my head. It was sick that it happened now, with a dead man in the room with us, but I was a man, wasn’t I?
