Valon: What Once Was (Volkov Bratva Novella)(3)

“I love you, Valon, my precious boy. No matter what your father says, you were the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Valon didn’t respond. He just watched Galina as she climbed back to her feet, smoothing out the front of her apron. Years had passed, he thought, since the last time he’d returned that sentiment, always finding it too soft for him to acknowledge his emotions, something that Ahmeti always told him was important.

‘Never reveal your hand,’ he would say during one of his short bouts of lucidity, ‘lest someone cuts it off.’

With Galina back in the kitchen, Valon retrieved his book bag, reaching inside for a comic book that he’d been able to buy from a vendor on his way home from school many years ago. Before Ahmeti came back into their lives and used every spare cent to buy booze.

It was American, the words written in foreign letters that his mother had told him was English. She’d translated as best she could, and what she couldn’t, Valon had made up.

Valon was so absorbed with the pictures, imagining a life outside of his own personal Asgardian hell, that he hadn’t heard Ahmeti’s return. At least, not until he heard plates smashing in the kitchen.

Galina had always told him to stay in his room if he ever heard them arguing, always wanting to protect him, but there was something different about this time. He could tell from the steely calmness in his father’s voice as he spoke to her. Though she wouldn’t like it, Valon cracked open his bedroom door, peering through the slight space to the kitchen where he could just make out his father, his back turned in his direction.

He was drunk, that much was clear from the way he swayed, but when he moved, Valon could see his mother on the floor, surrounded by the broken shards of plates, her hands up as though to ward off blows.

Except… this time she feared the small silver pistol that his father had aimed at her, not his fists.

Valon hadn’t seen him with that gun in a while, and just like then, he refused to stand idly by.

Valon swung the door open, preparing to run to his mother’s side to protect her when he saw Ahmeti’s hand tighten around the gun, his arm no longer shaking.

“Look!” He shouted down at her, his voice rising. “Look what you made me do!”

In slow, excruciating seconds, Valon watched helplessly as his father squeezed the trigger, a bullet speeding from the chamber. It hit Galina in the chest and blood instantly spilled from the wound.

With blood rushing in his ears, Valon did not register that he was screaming, his feet bringing him closer to the chaos before him. Ahmeti turned, glaring down at him with hate in his cold black eyes as he once again raised the gun. Valon was ready for it, had anticipated the day that his father would kill him.

He had longed for it, knowing that it would be a mercy to finally be away from him.

But even now, with rage in his heart, Ahmeti would not give even that peace to Valon.

Ahmeti, eyes bloodshot, stared him down as he turned the gun on himself and said, “I’ll see you in hell.”

With the barrel tucked beneath his chin, Ahmeti once again pulled the trigger, sending this new bullet up through the bottom of his jaw. It exploded out the top of his skull, brain matter splattering the walls, some chunks hanging. He crumpled to the ground and didn’t move again.

Valon was too shell-shocked to move, to do anything at all besides stare at his father’s dead body. He watched the blood seep into the carpet and drift over the old hardwood floors. He stood frozen there until he heard the slightest of noises, then his eyes cut to the side, seeing his mother fighting to live.

The spell of death broken, Valon rushed to her side, kneeling in her blood as he tried to cover the wound on her chest as he had seen people do on television. He wanted to push the blood back inside of her, knowing that she needed it to live, but she grabbed hold of his hands, squeezing them with what little strength she had left.

“Be free of this place, Luka,” she whispered, a river of blood spilling past her lips, painting them red. “Be free.”

That was only a name she called him when they were alone, just the two of them. A special name she had always reserved for when she was telling him something important.

“N?n?, I don’t know how to do that.”

Her lips turned up at the corners as she reached up with one hand to cup his cheek. “You will.”

Valon could not know then what he was witnessing, though the haunting scene was already plaguing his young mind. Galina’s hand fell away as her eyes lost their shine, her lips parting on a single gasp as she stopped moving entirely. He did not want to believe that she was dead, even as he continued to kneel by her side, his knees aching with the effort as he shook her gently.

He called her name repeatedly, tears falling down his cheeks as he continued to try to rouse her.

No, he did not want her to be dead because, in her last moments, he had never gotten to tell her that he loved her.





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2




Hours passed, maybe an entire day, as Valon sat beside his mother, his arms wrapped around his knees as he stared out at nothing. He refused to look at the frozen, haunted look on her face. Despite the gunshots heard, in his neighborhood, it took the police a while to respond, if anyone had bothered to call. Valon knew, though he was fighting an internal war, that he would have to be gone by that time.