Page 5 of Ricochet
I was going to faint, or puke, or maybe even both. What was going on here? This was madness, all of it. My father was a madman.
I took a deep breath and asked him, “What is the initiation, Papa?”
He looked at me, then at the man who looked almost dead, and smiled. “You get to kill thisizmenik. If you succeed where your siblings didn’t,” he held the knife out to me, “everything you have ever wanted to have will be yours.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You can ask Maya. I’m sure she will be more than happy to provide you with details.”
I was seventeen years old, for fuck’s sake. People my age were fighting with their parents about curfew, their grades—mine were asking me to kill somebody. I wasn’t a murderer. I hated violence, but the look in his eyes was serious. He would make my life a living hell, I was sure of that. I gnawed at my bottom lip, contemplating my options—refuse him or do what was asked of me? Could I really do this?
How was it possible that I never saw this level of darkness in him? Had I missed all the signs? Was I that naïve? I had a feeling that my whole life was one gigantic lie. I looked at the dagger in his hand, its blade shining in the light. Glancing at my mother, I noticed her swaying, almost dancing to nonexistent music, and I knew she wasn’t going to help me. I always knew she had a drinking problem, but this… This was so much worse than what I expected.
“We don’t have all night, Ophelia.” I snapped my eyes to him, a small smirk dancing on his face. Did he want me to fail? The sadistic bastard probably did. There was no love in those eyes, only a darkness I never saw before. What a good actor he was.
Something numbed inside of me, my fear subsiding, and a newfound resolve taking over my body.
“I’ll do it,” I said to him. “But if I do this, I want to know everything.”
“Of course.”
I walked toward him, snatched the dagger from his hand, and turned toward the man.
“You’re saying he’sizmenik. A traitor?” I trained my eyes on the man’s brown hair. He couldn’t have been much older than me, a couple of years maybe.
“That’s correct.”
I stepped in front of him, bending down so that we were face-to-face. His right eye was swollen shut, and I could see that he wasn’t going to live much longer with the wounds that had already been inflicted. I grabbed his hair, tipping his head up as I stood. He mumbled incoherently, but I didn’t have time to listen to his pleas.
He was a dead man, with or without me. So what difference did it make what killed him in the end? It was either him or me, and if I thought my father was already cruel, I couldn’t even imagine the horrors he would set on me if I didn’t do this.
“Everything, Papa.” I didn’t turn around as I repeated his promise to me, but I needed another confirmation.
“Everything,moy malen’kiy.”
His little one.
Maybe he would get better if I did this. Maybe I would finally have a father instead of a dictator inside this house. He hadn’t called me his little one since I was five years old.
I gripped the handle tighter, breathing through my mouth, and preparing myself for my next step.
“I am sorry,” I whispered to the man when his one eye snapped open to look at me. There was no fight there, no will to live. He knew, just like I did. This was the end.
I watched a movie once where the serial killer kept slitting people’s throats. It looked so easy.
Bringing the blade closer, he suddenly muttered, “Thank you”. My hand shook, but I didn’t stop. The sound of skin slicing, the meat breaking beneath the blade, almost made me vomit. As the blood rushed through the cut, I pressed harder, hearing the crunching sound of his larynx breaking, and he started choking on his own blood.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the red rivulets of blood on my hands, at his head hanging loosely, before my father approached me, hugging me as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Ya znal, chto ty moya doch’.”
He knew I was his daughter. Of course, I was.
I was a monster.
Cynthia Larson was staringat me from across the football field. She either had a death wish, or was too stupid to realize I was five minutes from ripping her eyes out of their sockets. She’s been doing that a lot lately, staring. Well actually, since I broke up with Ronan, she thought it would be a good idea to open the hunting season on me. Their petty thoughts and insignificant lives were of no interest to me. She always had something against me, and with all the other shit I had going on around me, Cynthia’s bullying was the last thing I needed.
But she was pissing me off. Since my initiation night, one month ago, it was as if something snapped inside of me and the parts I never knew existed came to the surface, taking over my mind. My tolerance levels were almost nonexistent. The sinister thoughts were almost constant these days.
