[Dawn.]
“I’ll give you my life savings. You can have it all. It’ll repay Andre’ debt, and you can just leave us. I’ve got it in my room.” I lie.
The two exchange looks again, a smile even. Then the first one turns to me. “Sure.” I realize then that I’m being naive. They have no intention of leaving us.
He comes and picks me up, helps me down the hallway before I shrug him off. We go to my room and I dig around under the bed. I shove the shoe box with my savings aside and instead reach for my knife.
But before I can grasp it, he yanks me out by my feet, and I watch it drift out of reach as he drags me away. I scream and buck, smashing my head on the bed frame. He pulls me up by my hair.
“Don’t be stupid!” He seethes.
I try to break his hands from my hair, but he’s too strong.
“Don’t make me give your mother another child to mourn.”
I stop. Defeated.
Seeing that I’m broken, he stands me up, pushes me out into the kitchen, and points for me to return to my mother’s room. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, though I notice the knives. Maybe I can make it there…
“Don’t think about stabbing me. I have been stabbed many times, and it just pisses me off. Do not make me kill you,” he says, with so much sincerity that the truth of it freaks me out.
He has to push me along, and we move back to my mother. He says something to his friend in Russian, and he laughs.
I continue on to my mother and bend to hug her. She grasps onto me, and I feel like such a disappointment to her. Shame is washing all over my flesh and staining me with dread.
I turn back to the two men, now standing in the doorway, but they don’t say anything.
“Even if you had money, it wouldn’t have been enough. You’re just as stupid as your brother.” The two laugh and exchange another few quips in Russian. “So with all that sorted out, let us leave.”
“Make us,” I say, taking my last stand and going against every fiber of my body to whimper and flinch.
“Honey…” my mom whispers.
“Okay,” says the leader of the two. The men draw their guns. “Follow us, or I’ll make you like your mother. You could share a chair then.”
I grasp onto my mother’s chair to not fall over. A whimper is pulled from her, and the two men smile. They’re enjoying this.
And their joy is only heightened when she starts convulsing.
“Mom!”
She’s shaking and jerking around in her chair.
“What is she doing?” asks the bratva.
“She’s having a fucking seizure.” I try to pull at her bonds and free her, but the men grab me.
“No!”
We struggle and fight, and I manage to kick one in the crotch and free myself of the other. I return to my mother and strain at her bonds. She pauses quickly enough to wink at me.
She’s faking it…
Something hard hits me in the back of the head, and I fall to the side.
“Stop idiot girl!” The man drags me up. “We’re going.”
“But my mom!” I blurt. “She could seize for too long. She needs to be on her side.”
“And what if she isn’t on her side.”
I look about, trying to think of anything that will save her. “It-it’ll kill her. She could fall on her back and choke on her tongue!”
“Oh…” the men look at each other then say something in Russian.
They shrug nonchalantly. “Saves us a seat.”
The second man tips my mother onto her back, and I scream. She starts convulsing more and pretending to choke on her spittle. I scream hysterically and hope that her bravery will somehow gain us something.
My mother starts pretending to gag on her tongue.
They drag me away, and I scream again.
“If you try to run, I’ll gun you down ,” he whispers as we get to the door. “And if I have to do that, then I’ll come back and stop your mother from dying so that I can use her instead.”
This quietens me.
We stop at the door, his arm squeezing the blood from flowing in my arm and I wince. I nod that I understand. “Good. I hope you spent the last moments of your mother’s life appreciating the stupidity she gifted two kids.”
He opens the door and pushes me forward. We walk down the street and the sun is boiling me alive. Sweat is pouring from my body despite ice running through my veins. I can’t run. I can’t run. I have to let them take me so that my mother can pretend to die.
We soon approach a blacked-out van, the door slides open and another man is sitting there. He gestures for me to join him with a gun, and I do.
My heart is hammering in my throat, and all I can think about over and over again is not how stupid I’ve been, not even what else I could’ve done, it’s that I’m not going to be attending my scan.
As my hands are bound and I’m made to sit on the ground, my head is covered with a sack, and soon the world is just darkness and noise.
Still, all I think is that I’m not going to be going to my scan.
What will the doctor think?
What will Aldo think when he arrives at the home?