Falling Beneath Intention

CHAPTER ONE (part two)

The cake had been devoured within the first minutes, and after I made sure to help my mama clean up the living room, I finally had some time to spend alone, in the privacy I so much loved and craved every time I was around people, no matter what their relationship with me was.
I bursted into the room I had at my bunica's house and threw myself on the crinkling bed as if I was weightless, which I very much wasn't, and exactly for that reason, I heard a soft thump, and without the need to check, I could already picture the broken wooden axis in my mind, but I didn't have the strength nor will to stand up and check.
Fifteen
The number still sounded foreign in my mind, on my tongue, and I just knew it would've taken me at least a few weeks before I'd get used to saying fifteen whenever someone would ask for my age.
The only sound in the room, apart from my loud thoughts, was the ticking noise of the old clock my bunica still didn't give up on throwing away.
Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.
God, I loved the number four, or maybe it was my self-diagnosed OCD that found pleasure in whatever came with that even number.
It was like a little ritual every time; four scrubs on the left, four scrubs on the right, and four taps on the desk that involved pinky, ring, middle, and index finger, all of them having to touch evenly, or I'd have to force myself to start again until all of them touched the surface the way my mind counted as acceptable to let that stinging, controlling feeling stay at ease.
It was a matter of time though before my peace got disturbed once again, but this time by a louder thump, and it wasn't a wooden axis anymore.
I quickly rose to my feet, my brows furrowing slightly, before I stopped right in front of the door and listened carefully.
Three foreign voices.

Downstairs.

A gunshot...another gunshot, screams of terror.
My heart felt like it had stopped beating for a second, as if to keep quiet to let me listen more throughly to whatever was going on.
I wanted to move, to bolt downstairs and check, but my legs felt frozen in time; all of my body actually did.
My mama's voice begging for help was what woke me up from the state of trance I apparently was locked in.
I needed to do something, to act, to be useful, but for some reason, my gut kept telling me to get the fuck out of that house and don't look back.
As soon as I tried to—finally—make a move though, the old wooden door of my room got yanked open, and I felt my heart actually stop at that moment, I could've sworn it.
"Boss, zdes' rebenok. Eto ne bylo chast'yu plana." The tall, bulky figure grumbled in a language I recognized to be Russian.
I wanted to thank bunica for having taught me a thing or two about that language, but for some reason, I had a feeling that if I got down those crinkling wooden stairs, I wouldn't have found her waiting.
I wanted to cry, but not even tears would form in my eyes.
"Khoroshiy." The deep voice made her shudder and take a step back. He was talking into some sort of auricular, she could see it by the way he kept touching his earlobe every time he spoke.
"Ty govorish' po-russki?"
I gulped, absolutely petrified. What he asked wasn't foreign to me: Do you speak Russian?, but I didn't want to say 'yes'; I didn't even want to acknowledge the situation, so I just kept quiet, watching the man huff and walk in.
"My ne prichinim tebe vreda... poka, no ty poydesh' s nami."
This time I actually didn't understand what he had asked, but it was better that way; all I could focus on at that moment was that my family had probably just been exterminated.
I was never good at dealing with emotions; that moment wasn't any different.
I wanted to cry; I needed to, but I couldn't; my limbs wouldn't even move; it was as if the time had frozen in my mind, but my eyes could still see how the situation was evolving.
That was when I noticed the man's inked hand, six letters catching my attention, six letters that had just made my stomach churn and the ground beneath my feet collapse.
Братва.
Bratva.
In a matter of minutes, I was sitting on the black leather seat in the pitch black Range Rover.
The man who had found me had also dragged me in there, as moving wasn't in my legs' schedule that day, at least not at that moment.
Everything felt numb, unfocused, and confused; the only thing I was able to focus on was the sound of the air conditioner working constantly to keep the insides of the vehicle warm.
My mind kept working overtime, so many questions forming in my mind, but I felt as if none of them would've gotten any answer within those minutes, hours, days probably.
"Girl are you alright back there?" The deep, gruff voice, I learned to recognize in the last few minutes, shook the atmosphere of the tense and quiet car.
His words sounded foreign to me. I've always prided myself on being a natural with Russian, but apparently I should've taken my bunica's lessons more seriously instead of thinking I knew everything I needed to know about the language already.
Well, in conclusion, his words fell to deaf ears as all I was able to do was look at him through the little rearview mirror that hung in the front of the car.
"Clearly not," I heard him huff and turn towards the other man sitting in the passenger seat as if to ask for help or for any hint that I wasn't, indeed, deaf.
The only thing I could tell was that they hadn't expected for me to be there; they probably had a plan, and a teenager—me—had just been a side effect that none of them was ready, nor knew, how to handle.
"Russian?" The passenger-seat man tried his luck with me this time, and due to the simplicity of the single spoken word, I got that he was probably asking me if I knew Russian.
This time I replied, my head giving him a slight shook before I got back to my previous focus; the so-very-interesting black carpets at the feet of the seats.
The Russian murmured something—probably a curse from the way it had been said, but I wasn't paying enough attention to understand or else I was sure I would've gotten it.
Russian swear words were my solid knowledge that came with bunica's lessons.
"English?"
I frowned nearly immediately when I heard the thick Russian accent pronounce the english word with such casualty. Thank God English was taken seriously in Italian schools, meaning I've been learning it as a secondary language ever since first grade, or prima elementare.
"Yes." My voice seemed to finally have decided to grace me and let me utter that meek, strangled sound.
I sounded utterly ridiculous, but at least it was something.

Something ridiculous, but something.
At that moment I managed to hear two relieved sighs, and I couldn't quite understand if they were sighs of relief because I wasn't deaf, or because I understood English, or both.
"We won't hurt you"

Yet you did hurt my family.
I wanted to smart-mouth back now that I knew they spoke English, but If I had to be honest with myself, I was terrified of what they could do to me. I didn't have to witness whatever they had done to my family because they held me blindfolded from my room to the car, but I could imagine, as much as I tried not to.
Not only that, but I wanted to remember them happy, and singing Happy Birthday for me.
Probably I was already grieving and didn't know it, or maybe I wasn't, maybe my mind was still trying to metabolize whatever the fuck had I just been through.
My mind has never been good with handling emotions, and the thought of having to grieve my whole family made me scared of my own thoughts, of my own self—I knew I was unpredictable, and not having control of my emotions was something that freaked me out.
"Where are you bringing me?" The murmur came out of my mouth before I could even fathom the idea of gathering some courage to speak up to the two wardrobe-built men.
"Classified"

Classified my ass.
If they thought they could get me to sit like a fool in the back of their expansive car, after they had just exterminated my entire family from the face of the earth, they were sorely mistaken.

Quiet? Yes, absolutely.
Dumb? Fuck no.
"How old are you?" The Russian accent was so strong that I felt tempted to tell him to simply shut up because I would've appreciated his silence more than whatever that accent was.
I couldn't help myself; slowly coming back to my senses, being able to control my own body and feelings, I wasn't able to just sit there, act like a scaredy-cat—which i kind of was, but that wouldn't have been cool enough to be pointed out. I smirked, slightly, but I did.
"Classified"