Four Broken Pieces ✓

Forty Eight

No sound echoed through the small room we stood in. There was no thud of a bullet and no cry of pain. It was just a horrible silence that sent a trace of fear up my spine. Slowly, I opened my eyes praying it was over. It most definitely wasn't. Alexei still stood with the gun in his hand while Ivan's father lay on the ground. He was still very much alive. A sardonic smile appeared on his cruel face as he stood up and brushed himself off. Alexei slowly lowered the point of his gun to his side once more once he realized he'd done no damage. There had only been one bullet.

We should have known that Ivan's father wouldn't take unnecessary chances. He'd been playing this game far longer than we had.

"I thought you were the intelligent one but then again, I should have known better. You refused to escape with Ivan and the other one and when I offered you revenge, you didn't take that either. Then you had the nerve to actually shoot me. Do you think I'm a fool to provide you with a fully loaded gun." I couldn't care less whether the gun had one bullet or sixteen. My mind was still reeling from the first part of his statement. Alexei had refused to escape when he could have. He could have been out of here, safe, free but he didn't go. I wanted to scream at him for not leaving. A whole life awaited him.

But he'd always been so self sacrificial. I should have known it would destroy him as much as it made up who he was. Why couldn't he have put himself first just this one? He didn't want to kill Ivan's father for his own revenge. Those thought had ebbed away long ago. He'd forgiven and forgotten. He'd said as much in those woods near Violet's log cabin.

However, to prevent Ivan's father from laying a hand on his son, Mikhail or even me ever again, he'd forsake his own life. He took it all on his head. Ivan and Mikhail's need for revenge, Ivan's problems with taking over the gang, the pain Ivan's father had caused Mikhail, Ivan and even me. He'd end it all even if he lost his life in process. Did he not think for a second what his death would do to any of us? It would kill me, far more slowly and painfully than the wound in my side. Why couldn't he have gone with Ivan when he was supposed to? Why couldn't he see that he meant the world to three people and he owed it to them to put his life first?

"I don't run away from my problems." Alexei's voice was ice cold as he replied to Ivan's father. For a second I feared losing him to that coldness he'd wrapped himself in. The scars that covered his skin showed the extent they'd driven him to after they'd presumably caught him when Ivan had tried to help him escape. He still hadn't broken. How could someone break a person so full of light?

It must have killed Ivan to leave him in here. Ivan who was overprotective to a fault, had left the one person he'd thought he'd let down all those years ago.  What had he been thinking? Just like that, I knew he'd come back. There was no way he'd leave Alexei to fend for himself. The real battle would go down then. But for now, I couldn't lose Alexei to the cold exterior he'd wrapped himself in. I stepped forward and took his hand in mine. An instant sense of relief went through me but it was clouded by poisonous thoughts. I was touching his hand with the very one that had held the lighter, a murderer's hand.

I quickly tore it away. If he was surprised, he didn't let it show.

"Bring the rest of them in." I couldn't say I was completely surprised when the rest of Ivan's father's gang poured into the small room that suddenly seemed 10 times smaller. The real battle had come sooner than I'd anticipated and this time my anxiety overruled any of my thoughts as I took Alexei's hand in my own. He held it tight, solid and steady.

At gunpoint, they dragged in Ivan and Mikhail. Ivan's face contorted with rage and disbelief as he took in the wound on my skin and the scars on Alexei's skin. That anger could've burned the room to cinders. Ivan's father took the brunt of that hatred and even he, the man who played sadistic games, stepped back in slight shock at the extent of rage in those green eyes. Ivan began to struggle in the hold of the two men that had him. He knew the gun wouldn't go of at the back of his head.