Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“What’s the message?”
“He wants her at the Christmas party.”
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. “Why the Christmas party?”
Mischa shrugs. “I don’t know the reason.”
Viktor is still testing me. It could be the only reason. He wants to ensure my loyalty to Ana, and I dread what this party might entail.
I pull up to a drive-thru, and Mischa orders between drags of his cigarette, and then we park while he eats. He said he had something for me, and I want to get on with it, but I also need him sober for the impending conversation.
The car is quiet, so I turn on the radio and smoke another cigarette. Mischa polishes off two burgers and a large fry before leaning back in the seat and patting his belly. “Much better.”
“I don’t have all day, Mischa.”
“I know,” he says. “But don’t get pissed. It isn’t really about your mother.”
“Then what the fuck is it?”
“As it turns out, Manuel and one of his guards have the same taste in women. Or more specifically, one woman. They’ve both been banging the same chick. My new friend Eduardo is highly motivated to keep his job and his dick.”
“So we have an in?”
“We have an in.” Mischa nods. “But the guy is a nobody, really. He wasn’t able to get me much, just some old surveillance videos from the basement. Which, for the record, your mother wasn’t on any of them.”
“So what is on them?” I ask.
He tosses me his phone, and I unlock the screen. An endless number of files are ready to view, and I’m not even certain where to begin.
The first video I open contains a haunting image of Nakya’s mother in bed late at night. I fast forward through hours of nothingness until Manuel comes stumbling into the room, obviously drunk. There isn’t audio but isn’t necessary. The image is enough, and one I won’t soon forget. He beats her and fucks her unconscious body, leaving her in a puddle of filth when he climbs into bed.
The next video is of a similar nature, only this one takes place in the kitchen. He burns her hand on the stove and shoves her face into a sink full of dishwater. When she comes up gasping for breath, a sickening need motivates me to freeze the frame on her face. Without her veil, she looks so much like Nakya. And it occurs to me that this is what will become of her if I send her back to Manuel. An empty shell with dead, soulless eyes.
“When was this taken?”
“Five years before her death,” Mischa answers.
Manuel’s wife died long before she ever made it to the grave. She was a victim too, and if he could do this to his own wife, there’s no telling what became of his mistresses.
A heaviness settles into my chest as I scroll through the images. There are hundreds of video stills. Thousands of hours of his abuse.
“Eduardo tells me that he revisits the videos often when he is drunk,” Mischa says.
He saved them because he is sick. He saved them because he is a vile waste of energy who doesn’t deserve to live another day on this earth.
I’m tempted to end him now and be done with it. But those thoughts come to an abrupt halt when another still catches my attention. One that isn’t Manuel’s wife, but his daughter. Acid boils my gut before I even open it. I shouldn’t. It has no business being a part of my decision. What happened in Nakya’s past can’t be changed, but my finger hovers over the play button, regardless. If I watch this video, it will change things. It will change me. Mischa knows it, and I can’t understand his motives for doing this.
“Why are you showing me these?”
“You wanted to know Manuel’s character.”
“I knew from the moment I met him that Manuel Valentini wasn’t worth the breath it took to speak his name.” I scoff. “So don’t bullshit me.”
“I got curious about the girl.” He shrugs. “She seems fucked up.”
“She isn’t,” I snarl.
It’s a lie, and it doesn’t take a team of psychiatrists to determine that much. But I don’t want him speaking about her that way. I don’t want anyone speaking about her that way. It’s my secret to keep. She is my broken doll to repair, and mine alone.
“Just watch it,” Mischa urges.
I click play, and my stomach lurches at the grainy images on the screen. My suspicions were right, and this is the confirmation. Manuel wasn’t just violent with his wife. He was violent with Nakya too. She spills a glass of water on the carpet, and without a second thought, he backhands her so viciously she falls limply into the coffee table.
I know I should stop. This can’t matter to me because it won’t change her circumstances. But nothing is as intimate as experiencing her pain, and I can’t bring myself to look away from the horrors she endured. I need to understand them. I need to know her darkest shame.