by Zaires, Anna
The fat slob goes to a drawer and pulls out a bunch of ties.
I kick a workbench closer. “Sit.”
“I’ll do what you want if you promise not to hurt my kids.”
“Sit,” I say again, harsher.
He flops down onto the bench, his fringe falling over his face.
“Hands behind your back.”
When he complies, I tie his wrists and bind his ankles to the feet of the bench. He’s ex-military. If he gets the chance, he’ll come at me. Not that I can’t take him down, but I have no intention of getting into a fight that will wake his kids. He doesn’t need to know that, though.
He stares up at me from under his hair as I round the bench and stop in front of him. His stomach strains in the wife-beater he’s wearing and his thighs stretch his boxer shorts. He hasn’t been taking care of himself. It seems the cushy job in government made him lax.
“That woman,” I say. “What’s her name?”
His face scrunches. “What?”
“What is her fucking name?”
“It’s been a long time. I hardly remember her face.”
“Don’t fucking bullshit me.” A man doesn’t forget something like that. A name maybe, but not what she looked like lying naked and twisted in a puddle of blood and vomit. Not even a hardened soldier forgets that. “Answer me.”
“158–14–something.”
“I asked for her name.”
“I never looked at their names. It’s better to think of them as numbers.”
I grit my teeth. “Mina. Mina Belan.”
“Fine. So what?”
“You took her statement.”
“I was the superior in charge.”
“What happened?”
“You know what happened.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“What is this?”
“What do you think it is?”
“Revenge?” When I don’t answer, he asks, “Why wait all these years? Why now?”
“I asked you a question.”
“She said the men attacked her in the shower. They beat her and were going to rape her, but a teammate walked in on the scene.”
“A teammate?”
“Gergo Nagy.”
“Ah, so you remember his name.”
He gives me a cutting look. “I’d been on missions with Gergo. Ms. Belan hadn’t been deployed with any of the teams I supervised in the field.”
“Keep talking.”
“The men backed off when Gergo pulled a gun. He called the medics.”
I walk around him, digesting his factual manner. Apathetic. Like a soldier trained to inflict torture. “What happened to this Gergo guy?”
“He resigned not long after she did. He claimed the attack was too much. They were good friends, Gergo and Belan.”
So, Gergo is the only person who helped her, who stood up for her. “Where is he now? What does he do?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t keep in touch with the men who served with me.”
“What injuries did she sustain?”
The tensing of his shoulders is the first sign of emotion he shows. Even more significant is his silence. The incident left a mark on him, after all.
“What were her injuries?” I repeat, taking a wide stance in front of him.
He sighs. “Four broken ribs, broken arm, concussion, and internal hemorrhage.”
“They punched her in the face.” I go deathly cold as I recall the image of her eyes swelled shut, purple and bloody. “Repeatedly.”
“Yes.” The admission is regretful.
“Until her skull fractured.”
“Yes.”
My rage mounts. It’s a cold fury, the most dangerous kind. “They kicked her while she was down.”
“Yes.”
“Until her right kidney split like a bean.”
“Yes.”
“Then they kicked her in the stomach.”
He turns his face away.
“Look at me,” I grit out. When he obliges, I repeat, “They kicked her in the stomach.”
“Yes.”
“Until they damaged an ovary.”
“Yes. I get it. You can stop this game.”
“It may be very hard for her to conceive.”
He hangs his head. “Yes.”
“Yet you have three beautiful children.”
He jerks his gaze back to mine. For the first time, his voice takes on a note of panic. “They’re innocent.”
“So was Mina.” I tilt my head, considering him, considering his part in what should’ve been justice. “Yet you said otherwise. You claimed she fell down the stairs and then tried to pin her injuries on her teammates.”
“I said what was reasonable.”
“Is that so?”
“What do you expect when you throw a young, beautiful woman into a room full of men—healthy, virile soldiers—who don’t see women for most of the year?”
I think of that photo, that Evidence A, and the long, blond tresses caked with blood. I see Mina in my mind’s eye, irreparably broken, the picture ingrained in my brain. I’m unraveling, the edges of my soul tearing, and all I can think about is that bloodstained hair. Why did she cut off such beautiful hair?
“I’d always been against including her in the elite corps,” Tóth continues. “I knew it was going to lead to something like that.”
Ah. Some truth, at last. “Is that why you let those would-be rapists off the hook with a reprimand?” A fucking reprimand, when Mina fought for her life in a hospital bed for months. The coldness escalates, slowly creeping over every part of my body, hardening my heart.
“You can say what you want, but it’s human nature. Of course, they’d go for her. She showered with them. She slept with them. She flaunted her body. And then, when they took her up on the offer, she said no?”
Motherfucker. I want to kill him with my bare hands, but that’ll be too easy. “Are you fucking serious?”
“The decision wasn’t mine to make. It was the court-martial’s ruling.”
Right. Sweeping a scandal under the rug. “The special commission the court appointed leaned heavily on your opinion and recommendation.”
“As I said, a woman had no place in the elite corps. It was a lesson for our future selection process.”
“A lesson in discrimination, you mean.”
“Look, I can’t take back my decision. Do what you have to. It’s not going to change anything.”
I lean closer to him. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
He blanches a little. “What do you want from me? Money? Is that why Belan sent you?”
“No.” The smile I force hurts my face. “As I’ve already told you, Belan didn’t send me, and I don’t want your filthy, measly money.”
“What then?”
“Justice.” I put my nose an inch from his. “An eye for an eye.”
“If you’re going to beat me up, get to it.”
I shake my head.
“Kill me?” He laughs. “Go for it. I’m not afraid of dying.”
“Of course not.” I smile snidely. “You’ve been trained all your life to die. No, dying will be too easy.”
He stares at me, his slack mouth parting a fraction.
“You turned a blind eye,” I say. “You kept quiet when you should’ve spoken up. I’ll let you choose. Eyes or tongue?”
His foul breath washes over my face as he cries, “What?”
“Do you want to live the rest of your life blind or mute? Oh, the part you don’t get to choose is your dick.” I didn’t show Mina those pictures, the ones where her assailant had his dick stuffed in his mouth. She looked upset enough that he’d been beaten up.
Tóth shakes his head. Drops of sweat fall around his face.
“What?” I grin. “Didn’t the men who warned you tell you about that part? I guess they’re too ashamed of what they’ve been degraded to.”
He utters a barely coherent, “No.”
“No, please. Just kill me.”
I will, but he doesn’t need to know that yet. I tsk-tsk chidingly. “And leave your family in the lurch? Some father you are.”
“What kind of man will I be if…?” he slobbers.
I grab his hair. “Tongue or eyes? Choose, or I take both your sight and speech.”
“God. Fuck.”
“Nope. No help coming from that way. I suppose this is what Mina must’ve felt like when she begged for help.”
“I-I… No. Fuck. Kill me. Please. I’ll give you money.”
I go for the shears on the wall. “Fine. We’ll play it your way. I’ll start with your eyes.”
“Tongue,” he cries. “Tongue. Fuck. Jesus.”
“As you wish.”
The fucker doesn’t have an ounce of Mina’s courage or strength. He pisses himself when I grip his tongue and pull.
It’s a pity he passes out before I chop off his dick.
27
Mina
Being locked up is slowly driving me insane. I’m not used to being out of action. I thrive on danger and adrenaline, not being cooped up in Yan’s place with nothing to do but cook. Sure, there’s plenty of danger and adrenaline in my current situation, enough to entice the darkness in me, but I’m a passive participant, unwilling—except for when Yan takes me to bed. But harping on what I can’t change will only make it worse, so I ignore the listlessness eating at me and go to bed straight after dinner.
Yan follows shortly after, his arms folding securely around me, anchoring me to him in more than just a physical way. He intrigues me, this dangerous killer. I’m drawn to him as much as I want to escape this maddening imprisonment. It’s conflicting. Confusing. It makes me even more restless.
“What’s wrong?” he whispers in my ear.
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t say a word during dinner.”
“Is conversation another requirement? In addition to being your sex toy?”
“Mina.” There’s a warning in his voice, and it’s not subtle.
I shut my mouth before I say something that’ll only make an already-impossible situation worse. His hand skims over my stomach under the cotton T-shirt I’m wearing, coming to rest on my hip. He’s hard already. I know what he wants, but I’m not sure I can shake this strange, listless mood.
“I’m tired,” I whisper.
He stills in our spooning position. I wait for him to contest or challenge me, but he only drapes his arm around my waist again and pulls me tighter against him. When he shifts into a comfortable position, like he does before sleeping, I have an inexplicable urge to cry. He didn’t try to force or seduce me. He simply accepted that I’m tired, and I’m uncharacteristically torn, both pathetically thankful for his consideration and irrationally sad that I might’ve hurt his feelings.
I drag in a short, shaky breath. “It’s not you.”
“Go to sleep,” he says in a clipped tone, but the coldness cracks, a hint of warmth seeping through.
Closing my eyes, I block out the disturbing thoughts running on repeat through my mind, and it doesn’t take long to fall asleep. I really am tired. But the reprieve of rest doesn’t last long before I’m back in the car, snow and trees zipping past as the headlights illuminate the asphalt road.
We round the bend, and my stomach clenches. I’m Mina, the adult, sitting in the back. I look on like an observer when the car skids to a stop. It’s Mina, the adult, who gets out with my parents, the adult who’s supposed to protect them, but the gun in my hand is shiny and blue. Plastic.
“No!”
A shot goes off. My mother falls, her blond hair covering her face.
Pop!
My father sinks to his knees.
“No!”
I jump on the men, stabbing them in their white, flabby, syringe-bruised arms just enough to immobilize them. Just enough to tie them up and make them look at me, but they don’t know Mina the adult. They only know the little girl. And they’ve long forgotten my parents. They’ll die without confessing their sin, because they can’t confess a sin they can’t even remember.
“Mina!”
The voice of my kidnapper is the voice of my savior in the dream. He jerks me from the claws of the nightmare and pulls me back to reality.
“Wake up.”
I open my eyes, knowing I screamed. I always scream at this part. “I’m sorry.” My T-shirt is soaked in sweat.
He switches on the lamp on the nightstand and shifts up, resting his back against the headboard. “Come here.”
I scoot up to the crook of his arm, needing the warmth, the comfort.
He kisses the top of my head. “Same dream?”
I nod.
“They’re dead, those men,” he says. “They paid for what they did.”
I drag a finger over the dusting of dark hair on his forearm. “Did they pay if they couldn’t even remember?”
“They couldn’t?”
“They were high when I shot them. Maybe they were high on the night they…”
“Say it,” he urges gently when I trail off.
I know why he’s doing this. This sort of thing festers when you seal it up under skin and bone and flesh, when you bury it in your heart.
Yan is still looking at me, waiting, so I take a breath and say with a rush of air, “On the night they killed my parents.” My chest deflates from the effort.
He caresses the side of my face with his knuckles. “Tell me.”
I want to, but not because I sealed it up. I didn’t; I just went numb. Cold, like the snow and ice that night. I haven’t had the nightmare for many years, but since Yan took me, it’s returned with a vengeance. And I suspect the reason is that Yan is slowly defrosting my heart, making me feel again. Making me vulnerable.
“How did you get away?” he asks softly.
A shiver ripples through me. “I ran. I ran so fast. I hid out in the woods, and waited. I thought my parents would come get me when the bad men were gone, but it took so long and I was so, so cold.”
He rubs my arm as if trying to dispel the cold of that night.
I continue, because it does feel better telling him. “Eventually, I went looking for them. At first, I didn’t understand. Then I felt the wetness, the blood. I saw my father’s eyes, glassy like marbles, before I saw the hole in his head.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just… started walking.” I make myself small against his side, hiding in the safety he offers. “I didn’t feel the pain, just the cold. I still don’t feel it fully. At times, it’s almost as if it happened to someone else, as if the girl in my dream is a stranger.”
“Detachment,” he muses, dragging his chin through my hair. “It’s often a coping mechanism in severe trauma cases.”
I stare at where my hand is gripping my knee, my knuckles white. “They tried to fix me for a very long time.”
“They?”
“Psychiatrists. Therapists. Guidance counselors. They said I was dysfunctional. Not normal. Difficulty making friends and forming new attachments. Lack of empathy and unhealthy fascination with danger. I went to therapy every week for years, unsuccessfully. They finally gave up when I started high school.”
Yan’s body tenses against me. “They had no right to judge you. Nobody’s all sweetness and light, rainbows and puppies. Not deep down, where it matters. We all carry a darkness within ourselves. Some just have the luxury of never knowing it. In any case, normal is a vague and tricky concept. What is normal other than a broad generalization based on the standards and values of the majority of people in the world? Just because you’re different doesn’t mean you’re not normal.”
My chest glows with warmth, something new for me. No one has ever defended me like this. “I knew I was different from the moment I stood over my parents’ bodies. Instinctively, I knew I wasn’t going to be like other children. They never understood me, and I never got them.
It was simply easier to be alone.”
He covers my hand with his. “Friends are overrated, anyway.”
Something soft settles inside me. He’s not judging me, and it’s liberating. It feels a lot like peace. “It did make me an ideal sniper candidate. So there’s that, I suppose.”
“I bet.” He pulls me tighter. “A perfect little killer. Is that what you always had in mind for a career?”
“At first, I wanted to take out the bad guys. Then I realized good and bad are very gray concepts, and that the bad guys could be your own comrades, the very men who took an oath to have your back.”
“And that’s when you became a freelancer.”
“Yes.” I look up at him with an ironic smile. “Though I’m still selective with the jobs I take.” When his face darkens, no doubt at the recollection that I allegedly framed him as a terrorist, I quickly change the subject. “How about you? Was it hard the first time?”
“Easier than it should’ve been.” His gaze turns unreadable. “You said it felt fantastic. Me, I felt nothing. I felt the flesh part when I drove the knife into that filthy bastard’s side. I felt the warmth as his blood ran over my fingers. But that’s as far as it went. Nothing else. No need to spill my guts afterward. No remorse. Just another box on a list to tick off.”
Interesting. And he was only sixteen. Does that mean he’s even more dysfunctional than I am?
My shrinks would’ve had a field day with him.
“Why don’t you have a professional name?” I ask.
He laughs softly. “I don’t need one. That’s for fancy assassins like you.”
I punch him on the arm.
“Ow,” he says, although I know he hardly felt that. When I don’t rise to the bait, he drops a kiss on my temple and asks, “Why Mink?”
I inhale deeply. “Just before the hijacking, I asked my mother for a cookie. She said I had to wait for dinner.” It was such a mommy thing for her, healthy food first. “I wanted that cookie so badly, but I didn’t nag because I was still a good girl back then, right up to the point when I started walking alone down that road.” Pushing aside the memory, I continue. “The cookie brand was Mink. Chocolate-chip mint was the flavor. It went off the market a few years ago. Did you know it?”