Page 72 of Brutal Unionn
The damp dirt beneath my feet begins to shift, clutching at my toes like a dozen greedy fingers. It’s cool—almost icy—and unforgiving, pressing up against my skin with the weight of something ancient. Each step becomes heavier, like I’m dragging time itself with me. The ground pulls me downward, slow and relentless, as though the earth has decided it wants me—body and soul—buried in its silence.
The daisies around me sway in the breeze, but something about their movement feels wrong. Too synchronized. Too controlled. They lean in as though watching, whispering secrets to one another in rustling petals. The air is thick, unnatural. And as I press forward, my muscles begin to tighten—not from fear, but from age. My spine curls, my breath shortens, and my body grows weary under the invisible weight of years I haven’t yet lived.
“Mommy,” I pant, my tongue thick with the sharp, strange blend of earth and honeysuckle. It tastes like rot beneath perfume—like something once beautiful that’s been left too long in the sun. “I need you.”
She shifts, and for a heartbeat, a single heartbeat, she’s real. Flushed pink in the sunlight, her posture relaxed and familiar, like she’s just gotten lost in the pages ofMrs. Dallowayagain. Like the world has melted away for her, and she didn’t hear me because Virginia Woolf was louder.
“Mommy, please—” I whimper, dropping to my knees. Pain shoots through my leg as I grip it with both hands, dragging myself forward with every ounce of strength I have left.
But when I lift my eyes again, everything has changed.
Her skin is soaked in crimson. Her body limp. And her head—her beautiful head—tilts, then rolls into the flower bed like a dropped doll.
Iscream, my throat ripping open with the sound. I fall, crawling, clawing through blood-streaked petals and dirt. My nails break on the ground as I reach for her, as if I could sew her back together with nothing but want.
“No!” I screech, the word cracking in my chest. “Mom!”
My mouth fills with soil—gritty, bitter, final—and the world tilts. My forehead hits the earth, and then?—
Silence.
I am cold again.
Seated in the worn chair before my mother’s vanity, my knees tucked tight against my chest, I stare into a mirror that reflects someone I barely recognize. My skin is blotchy, tear-streaked, and flushed from some emotion I can’t quite name—grief, maybe. Rage. Fear. The knuckles of my fists, resting against my thighs, are slick with tears I don’t remember shedding. My breath fogs the lower edge of the glass, and I find myself searching my own face for answers, for something solid in the middle of this storm.
Behind me, my father’s voice cuts through the silence, low and measured. “Nadi.”
I don’t turn. I can’t. I keep my eyes fixed on the version of me in the mirror—the one who looks so young, so small, so breakable. My cheeks are streaked with chalky lines. The tip of my nose is red and raw. But it’s my eyes that catch me off guard. They’re impossibly bright, bluer than I’ve ever seen them, almost glowing beneath the vanity light. They’re the only part of me that still looks alive.
“You are as beautiful as your mother,” he says, and his hand settles on my shoulder. There’s no tenderness in the gesture,only possession. His fingers tighten, grounding me in a way that feels more like restraint than reassurance.
I stay still. Silent. Letting him speak.
“Hopefully you’ll be smarter than she was,” he murmurs, his tone soft but loaded. “You won’t use that beauty to manipulate a man you claim to love.”
His hand moves again—slides up to my chin, curling his fingers under it and forcing my face away from the mirror. I don’t resist. My gaze lifts, not to him, but to his reflection just behind mine. It’s the eyes I can’t avoid—bottomless, black as pitch, pulling me in with their impossible gravity. Every time I look into them, I feel like I’m tumbling into a void I’ll never crawl out of.
He’s the last parent I have left. The only man who’s ever made warmth feel like something sharp.
“You know the price of loyalty, right?” he asks, not because he expects a response, but because he wants to hear the words echoed back.
I nod slowly, the motion mechanical, like I’m a doll whose strings are tugged too tight.
“You fail,” he says, and his thumb presses hard enough into my jaw to leave a bruise, “and you pay with your life.”
The darkness rushes up to meet me then, swallowing everything—the vanity, the mirror, even his voice—until I’m falling with no bottom in sight.
My body jerks as I wake, lungs aching as I drag in air too fast to feel real. Sweat clings to my skin, cold and suffocating, and my sheets are tangled around me like restraints. My chest rises and falls in shallow bursts, and I barely manage to push myselfupright. My heartbeat rattles in my ears, and for a few panicked seconds, I have to convince myself that my father has been missing for the last three years.
Sho is not my father. He will not demand my life in exchange for disobedience. He will not weigh my worth in blood or punish me for stepping out of line with the same hand that once held mine. I have to believe he is something softer, something more forgiving—even if I have given him no reason to be.
Because my father was never a man who forgave.
He killed my mother for an affair that brought Nikolai into the world. That single act of violence unraveled our family and handed the Bratva to a son who was never truly his. Nikolai took what was never meant to be his not through birthright, but by default—because Aleksandr, the rightful heir, was discarded. And because I, his daughter, was deemed too emotional. Too chaotic. Too much like her.
My father expected, perhaps even wanted, us all to know the truth. That Nikolai didn’t belong. That my mother had sinned. So he showed us in the cruelest way possible—by cutting her apart and sending us the pieces, one by one.
The first pieces he sent to me were her eyes.
