Chapter 7

Nadia took a step back again, her heart stuttering. Anatoly's deep thunderous voice had rattled something deep inside her. It wasn't just the shouting and the yelling. His words were the real screaming. It felt like shattering glass piercing her every skin.

She wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole right now. Her husband didn't just hate her, he was completely disgusted by her. Her limping and her disability made him feel ashamed and humiliated.

“She's a fucking crippled!”

“She fucking disgusts me!”

“I feel humiliated to have a disabled as my Donna.”

“I fucking hate her!”

Every word that came out of his mouth felt like a sharper knife being shoved deep inside her chest. It pained down to her bones. Her throat tightened. Her vision blurred all together. The vision before her eyes now seemed distorted. Everything around her seemed to grow larger, while she seemed to shrink.

Anatoly didn't even pity her. He was completely repulsed by the fact that she didn't have her complete two legs. Nadia tightly held the sides of her wedding gown. She knew if she looked up and met Anatoly's gaze, her last shred of self confidence will completely break and scatter on the ground, like pearls falling off from a broken string.

She only heard his footsteps echo more and more against the asphalt, the sound becoming numb and distant with each step he took, until almost nothing was heard audibly. Then he disappeared inside another empty car up front.

“Brother!...” Nikolai started, but Anatoly had already turned the car around and drove off into the quiet foggy night. His car didn't even stop once, it kept on moving along the road until it was out of plain sight.

Nikolai turned around and saw Nadia staring down at the ground. Her grip on her dress was very tight as she remained like a statue where she stood. Nikolai knew Nadia never liked anyone looking down on her with pity. But this was his brother, and he knew that Anatoly never cared about anyone else's feelings nor sentimentality.

Nikolai turned to the driver who still stood where he was, patiently awaiting for orders.

“Take her home.” He told the driver as he now dropped the half burnt cigarette on the ground and crushed it completely under his shoe. He slowly turned toward Nadia and walked up to her. He kept a safe distance and said to her in a low whisper.

“Go with the driver, Nadia. He'll take you home.”

Home? - Nadia thought to herself. She had no place to call home. Not even her uncle's home belonged to her anymore. And the place she was going to next from the wedding venue wasn't a home either. It was the road that led to her death sentence.

But Nadia was exhausted. She didn't have the strength to do anything. She also said nothing to Nikolai as she slowly walked past him, and entered the car silently before the driver closed the door after her.

.................

The night air roughly blew past his open collar shirt and branded his skin. One of his arm was slung outside his car window, while his other hand controlled the steering. The city ahead, bathed in lights didn't seem that beautiful. Instead it blurred before his eyes. His hold on the steering made him drive around the city aimlessly.

Still on the road, without a destination in mind, Anatoly now grabbed his flask from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He angrily flipped the cap open, booze and raw alcohol left the metal container and had a choking war with his nostrils. He started drinking hastily, like he would drop dead in the next ten seconds if he didn't take even a sip of the burning liquor.

His vision blurred for only a second. He closed his eyes and welcomed the feeling of his throat tearing open as the burning liquid made it's way down his oesophagus.

The burning at his throat was hot and sinister. It was supposed to make him forget the fact that he had married a useless crippled. Each time his mind replayed the night he fucked her and sealed off his humiliation, his hand furiously slammed against the steering wheel like it was his enemy.

He replayed every moment. The sudden light out and complete darkness the very moment he stepped foot into the room. It was so that he wouldn't recognize her instantly and he would think he was with his fianceé.

It all made sense to him. It had explained why he never heard her speak once all of the time when he was blindly fucking her. She didn't even move once and laid stagnant on the bed like a fucking mannequin doll inhabiting no soul. She'd planned it all down to the last detail in order to trap him and leave no fucking way out or escape for him, but to make her his bride. Anatoly gritted his teeth as the thought that a mere crippled girl had deceived him drove him crazy and unstable.

He furiously downed more of the burning liquid down his throat, ripping open his whole body with the burning sensation.

“I will kill her! I will fucking rip her head off her neck!”

He took another swig until the container was empty. His chest burned and his whole body clenched up tightly.

He then let out a dangerously low, humorless laugh and tightened his jaw.

“You want to become a mafia's bride so badly? I'll fucking grant your wishes.” He muttered under his breath, in between a low slur and his rough voice.

His destination now had a direction. In the next fifteen minutes, he smashed his foot against the brakes of the car once he reached his planned destination. He turned his face to his right, and in front of him stood tall a brothel that gleamed with bright and colorful lights, like those kind found at a casino.

He stepped out of the car and marched into the brothel like he owned the place. The Madam in charge, Madame Ekaterina's face grew pale as soon as she spotted Anatoly walk in through the front door. She quickly walked up to him and politely welcomed him.

“Mr Anatoly. What a pleasant surprise to have you here after a long time...”

“Get me two whores.” Anatoly cut her off, getting straight to the business he'd come here for. “And they should be tall, fucking elegant and with two complete and sexy long legs.”

Madam Ekaterina blinked, slightly confused about his emphasis on the word “two complete legs?” All of the girls in her brothel had two complete legs so it confused her.

“Did I fucking speak Spanish?! Or should I speak in Russian?!” Anatoly growled angrily and Ekaterina nodded immediately before rushing to bring out two of her best prostitutes.

In half an hour, Anatoly walked out of the brothel, with two beautiful ladies, one brunette and the other blonde, each walking by his side.

He made them both sit in his car and he slided in the driver seat before he started the engine again. The ride back to his new mansion weighed heavily on his chest. But nothing was going to change simply because he was now supposedly married. And that too to a limping crippled who needed the help of a machine to move. He knew the person waiting at home for him was insignificant.

A cheap cripple fucking forced on his shoulders to carry.

The two women giggled from the backseat of his car, but it all blurred for Anatoly. His focus remained steady as he drove back home. The liquor in him burned slowly down and the cool wind shielded him in some way.

When he pulled up in front of the house, the guards quickly straightened up upon his arrival. Their eyes seized to only look straight, not at the sight of their boss having two ladies tag along with him inside the mansion.

Anatoly kicked the front door open and walked into the almost silent mansion with the two women.

All of the servants stationed in his new home rushed out into the hallway and they all lowered their gazes in front of Anatoly.

“Welcome home, sir.” One of the servants spoke almost inaudibly.

“Shall we serve you something you'd like, sir?” Another servant asked.

“What would you want us to do for you, sir...”

“Where is that fucking crippled?!” Anatoly demanded in a growling tone, not the least bit interested in the bullshit the servants were offering to him.

The servants silently exchanged confused glances at each other while still bowing their heads. They wondered if he meant his newly wedded wife, but none of them dared to confirm their suspicions or they could be beheaded for simply disrespecting the Donna even by mistake.

“Who do you mean, sir?” One of the servants meekly asked.

Anatoly didn't want to address that tracheous crippled as his wife. Letting that precious title attach to that girl was worse than consuming poison on his tongue. She didn't deserve such a title added to her name.

Speaking of her name, he didn't even know her name. He'd heard his brother say her name and even others a few times today at the reception, but he didn't care to register it in his head.

But then it hit him and he knew exactly where that crippled was. Of course, she was in his bedroom, patiently waiting for him to come home because it was their wedding night, thinking she'd won this game of trapping the mafia don.

But she was wrong.

At first, he'd planned to kill her once she was in front of him. Then he could say it was simply an accident at home because her prosthesis suddenly ripped off her limb, or that she took her own life out of shame and despair. Either way, nobody would dare to blame him nor harm him.

But then Anatoly thought to himself, it would be mere child's play for him to kill his little crippled wife. She'd played him and he'd become the fool in her perfectly laid-out trap.

Killing her would mean she would be put out of the misery he'd intended for her to face. She'd still win even after her death. And for Anatoly, an easy death wasn't his favorite kind of killing specialty.

Anatoly turned his face, and fiercely kissed the blonde girl on his right before his eyes darted toward the end of the staircase which connected to the upper floor, knowing what he wanted his dear wife to experience as soon as he walked up on those stairs.

An experience she was never going to forget for the rest of her life.