Page 21 of The Bratva Sinner

"Your blood." He shifts in the bed. "Your father went looking for anything to save him. He found it in our family history. Something old. Something that meant nothing to us but everything to the right man."

I stare at him. "What does that mean?"

He looks at me with eyes that hold no warmth. "It means you were never just a debt payment, girl. You were a prize."

"I was ten years old."

He stares at me like I should already understand.

“Your mother ran. She took you and never looked back. It was the only way to save you. I'm the one who bled. Your father’s blood wasn’t enough. So, Arlind took it out on the family he could find.”

He shows me his hands. The top half of his pinkie on the left hand is missing. The ring finger on the right is gone. With his middle finger, he points to his eyes. “Blind. One kidney. And now, you’re here. I bled for you, and you’re back. You shouldn’t have come back.”

This can’t be real.

“I was kidnapped and brought back,” I tell him.

“You don’t look kidnapped. You look alive. Healthy.”

“I escaped.”

He snorts. “No one escapes Arlind.”

Maksim’s warning plays through my head. “But Bekir killed my mother.”

He sneers. “Bekir failed Arlind. He let your father steal from him. Bekir promised Arlind he’d have you. Your mother cost him everything. She had to die.”

“But you’re alive,” I say.

He coughs again. “Do I look alive? I’m dying. I’ve been dying every day since your mother escaped. He killed me. Not immediately. No, he made sure I suffered. Get out. Leave and never come back. Your fate will not be so different than my own.”

He stares at me. Not as a woman or as his niece.

I’m his killer.

I don't say goodbye.

I walk back down the stairs and out into the heat. I stand on the sidewalk and breathe through my nose. This is too much. I don’t understand. Why? How could a father do that to his child?

My mother is dead because she tried to protect me. She signed her death warrant when she left Miami. All those years I was angry with her for not doing better. I hated her for failing me. Blamed her because we were poor. Yelled at her for making us live in a trailer that leaked. Got furious with her when the electricity was cut off every other month. Hated her for the drinking.

We argued the night before she died. She spent our money on booze, and I wanted to buy a new saddle. A fucking saddle. It all feels so pointless now.

She was drinking to numb the pain and hide the fear.

Why didn’t she tell me?

Because she was protecting me. Shielding me from the pain of knowing that my father traded my life for his.

I nearly drop to my knees as the anguish rolls through me. I press my hand to my chest as if that will stop the physical pain. I want to scream. Rage at the injustice.

But I don’t. I have to run. Mom sacrificed her life so I could live. I can’t be here.

I start walking. I need to get out of the city. Maybe I can find someone to get me across the border. I’ll go to Mexico.

I hear them before I see them. The chills that run over my body are wrong for the heat. I start to run without looking to see if I’m being chased.

I've always been fast. But my body is still fighting back from three days of whatever they put in my water.