SEVEN'S POV
I've been delt punishment beatings a fair few times in my life. The first from my uncle Victor for crying at my fathers funeral. I got another when I was about seventeen or eighteen when I rocked up to a job completely plastered. The last one I remember was for beating up a guy who was a dealer of some of our shipments. I had gone to his house to collect our profits and when I got there he was in the middle of a domestic dispute with his girlfriend. The guy didn't do anything to her while I was there but I could see the marks on her. It wasn't hard to piece together the events that had transpired prior to my arrival. Usually I wouldn't get involved in that type of shit but when I noticed the small kids in the corner of the living room who were absolutely terrified of him, well I guess my temper decided it was something I was going to get involved with. I put the guy in hospital for three weeks, enough time for his ex girlfriend to get her and her kids out and away from the scumbag. Still, the beating I received for doing it was about as equally harsh. I didn't get the luxury of hospital care though, no I just sat in my house alone to lick my wounds.
This beating is different however. There's something a little more personal about being made an example of in front of a bunch of people that are meant to be your inferiors. But I guess that was the reason for it, Victor was showing to everyone that no matter who you are, no matter how highly ranked or important you may be, if you cross him there are consequences.
It takes me a moment to realise I'm not alone in the cold shadowed basement. Someone is to the right of me, their tall frame seems enormously elongated with their arms held high above them. I don't register the handcuffs holding the arms up over the pipe till I stare a little longer. I recognise the sandy blonde hair and navy blue suit.
"Curby!" I call over but he doesn't respond. His head hangs with his chin to his chest and I gather he must be passed out. His white dress shirt is cover in blood and dirt and his face looks swollen from what I can see if it.
"Curby, you good?" I call out to him again, desperate to see some kind of movement from him but still nothing. I watch his chest anxiously, waiting for any signs of breath being drawn. Seconds feel like hours but eventually I notice the shallow fall of his chest as he breathes.
"Oh thank Christ." I sigh in relief.
"I'm sorry man. I'm gonna get you out of here. I'll tell him it was all me." I promise out loud hoping he can hear me. The sound of the heavy steel door opening and the loud music from upstairs interrupts us and I wait silently as the sets of footsteps shuffle down the stairs.
Victor comes in first followed by two other men. They all glance over at an unconscious Curby before Victor turns to me, my eyes drop to the desk not far in front of me. Whatever he has planned for me I'll be ready. If it's more beatings then I'll take them like the man he's brought me up to be. Anything to get this over with.
"Check if he's still breathing." Victor instructs one of the men who walks over to Curby, pressing his fingers into his neck to check for a pulse.
"He's good." The guy confirms for Victor.
"Let him go uncle. He didn't do anything wrong. It was me, it was all my idea I made him do it." I speak up.
"Oh I'm well aware of the things you've been up to Seven." Victor grunts and takes a seat behind the desk in front of me.
"Leave us." He orders the men over his shoulder.
"And take him with you." He nods towards Curby. The large men unhook Curby from his hanging position and his body folds forward unconsciously, over one of the men's shoulders as they carry him out.
I watch them leave up the stairs, waiting for Victor to begin his onslaught once they leave.
"I should have known this day would come." Victor begins and I turn my attention to him but stay quiet.
"Perhaps I didn't beat you enough when you were younger. Perhaps your fathers death wasn't enough for you to realise the consequences of ones malpractice." Victor looks me dead in the eyes. His dark eyes gleaming with an unknown truth.
"Uncle I'm sorry if you feel like I was insubordinate but I had to try another way. I couldn't break the old law so I found another, better way to get the job done." My speech is slightly broken with the pain of moving my swollen jaw to speak.
"Insubordinate? You're behaving fucking weak is what it is. Did you think your little merciful resolution with the council member was better? You've done nothing but show our enemies how weak you've become. How vulnerable that conniving bitch has made you." He spits and I'm caught off guard. Conniving bitch? What the fuck— Is he talking about Lily? He knows about Lily?!
The worry must be written over my face as he leans back into his chair.
"Oh yes, I know about you and that little whore." He confirms.
"Don't call her that." I warn him and move forward but the restraints stop me, which amuses Victor.
"You are your father's son, Seven. Ivan too was weak, and blinded by injustices plotting against him." Victor shakes his dead in disappointment.
"What did you tell her?" He leans forward.
"What?"
"What did you tell her?! About the firm and our dealings?" Victor demands with a hard slap to the desk.
"Nothing. I didn't tell her shit. I told her about the gang but nothing of business." I answer.
"So nothing she didn't already know?" Victor pushes and I shake my head.
"She didn't know about us, about the gang. I wasn't going to tell her but she came down here one night while I was interrogating someone so I told her." I confess and Victor looks at me for a long second before a small chuckle breaks out onto his face. It's extremely unsettling.
"Oh Seven you really are blind aren't you. Of course she knew about us. She's a plant." Victor chuckles at me and I stare back at him confused.
A plant?
He's not seriously suggesting Lilianna is a spy? That's fucking ridiculous, he really has no idea.
"What do you mean a plant? You think Lily is a spy?" I want to laugh back at him but my face is too damn sore for such movement.
"I know she is." Victor opens a desk draw to the side of him, pulling out a paper file with a few stacks of paper inside of it.
"What the fuck? For who?" I demand. This is ridiculous, absolutely insane. Lilianna is not a spy. He's fucking deluded.
"Sergey." Victor pulls out a few sheets of paper and shuffles a few till he finds the one he wants, turning it over and placing it to the edge of the desk for me to see.
It's an image and I recognise the building right away. It's the bottle store where Lilianna works. The photo is zoomed in and if someone were to be looking at it without knowing the subjects they could be anyone. But for me I can see her, her silhouette is as clear as day as she walks through the store, three other bodies following her. I frown, confused by the photograph before Victor slides me over another. Again it's another still image from the store but this time the three figures are leaving the store and are much more recognisable. No fucking way.
Junior. And his two side kicks. Lilianna is visible looking through the window as they leave. Holy fuck. How the fuck does she know him? The memory of finding Lily sat at the casino bar with Sergey flashes in my mind. Did she already know him? Was she lying to me this whole time? What the fuck. What the actual fuck. At dinner when she made me talk about Junior's death, did she already know?
Bile begins to rise in my throat but I swallow it down. This can't be true. There has to be a logical explanation for these images.
"So you were the one following her around? The black sedan was you?" I ask Victor and lean back in my chair so he takes the photographs back over to him.
"Not personally me, no. But yes I did have her followed." Victor confirms. Jesus Christ, all this time it had been Victor?
"Why?" I don't acknowledge his claims of Lily being a spy for Sergey. I just don't accept it.
"Because from the moment I saw her I knew who she was." Victor answers and I'm even more confused.
"She's not a spy Victor. I don't ... I don't know why she was with Junior but she's not a spy." I insist and he shakes his head at me.
"You really don't know who you've been sleeping with do you Seven." Victor's head cocks to the side in a goading manner. I stay silent and stare at him, waiting for his explanation.
"You see unlike you and Ivan, Seven, I don't let people get close to me. I don't let them blind me with falsities that I can't even recognise a friend from foe." Victor begins.
"I knew who she was from the moment I saw her. I was, I'll admit quite shocked to see her. I almost thought she was some kind of apparition, like a sick joke almost but when I realised she was not in fact her mother - I mean my god the likeness is undeniable - but when I registered she was not in fact Evangelina back from the grave to haunt me I realised a mistake of my past." Victor speaks but I don't understand a thing he is saying. Did he know Lily's mother? I'm confused as fuck but stay quiet in the hopes I'm able to figure out what the fuck he's telling me.
"You see when I went to avenge your fathers death that night, fourteen years ago, I forgot my number one rule. Always shoot twice." I have heard Victor say this many times growing up.
"Her parents had been an easy disposal with the motivation of their betrayal against your father still fresh for all of us. But I hadn't planned for their small blonde child crying in the corner. She was so small back then so I suppose my target was a little limited than usual but I had been sure my bullet had struck the little girl in the chest. I watched her go down, I watched her bleed. But then there she was, fourteen years later standing behind my bar talking to my nephew." Victor talks as though he were right back in those memories from fourteen years ago while I choke on my breath.
There's no way. This can't be happening. I don't want to believe it. Lily's parents where the ones who betrayed my father? Our fathers were best friends? And Victor was the one to kill her parents? He tried to kill Lily? He shot her when she was only six? I've seen her naked multiple times and never notice any old bullet wounds ... oh my god. Her scar! She has a scar on her side that correlates with Victor's story. What the fuck. What the fuck is going on.
My mind races with all this information and I feel like I'm going to be sick.
"No." I shake my head.
"No, you're wrong. She not ..." I don't want to believe it. I don't want to at all but apart of me does. Deep down I think Victor may actually be telling the truth.
"She is though. And she had you for a fool. I don't know what her plan was with Sergey but she was using you Seven. She's wanting revenge for her parents." Victor says and places out another photo. This one is much older and I recognise my father right away. Ivan. He's much younger though, and the man he has his arm slung around I recognise as Jacob Costello. His best friend who betrayed him and ... Lily's father. She has her fathers eye shape but it's not till Victor slides over another photo that I understand the unmistakable likeness between Lilianna and her mother. Jacob and the beautiful blonde woman who smiles at his side is undeniably Lily's mother. She's dressed in a police uniform, her hair slicked back into a bun and her uniform not a crease out of place. Did her mother know that Jacob was the right hand man of a large gang when this was taken? How could they? How could Jacob turn on my father for this women? My nostrils flare at the two people responsible for my fathers murder and swallow down the sick threatening to reach up my throat from the guilt of sleeping with my fathers murders daughter.
"Do you still not believe me Seven?" Victor questions me and I shake my head. I do believe him. I just don't want to.
"Good. Now you can help me decide what we're going to do with her when she gets here." Victor collects the photos and puts them away into his folder.
"What? She's coming here?" I panic.
"Yes. I have Grimmy going to her apartment to bring her here." Victor doesn't meet my eyes as he focuses on organising the papers in front of him.
"No." I shake my head. I know I shouldn't but I can't help the way I feel about Lily. I still feel protective of her. I still care for her. I still ... I still ...
"What?" Victor looks up at me as I begin to move in an attempt to rid myself of the restraints.
"Don't hurt her. Please, uncle." I beg shuffling in my chair. I hate how utterly helpless I feel right now.
"Why not?" He asks half confused and half amused by my begging.
"Because ... just because. Please Victor she won't do anything. She hasn't done anything and even if she did what could she do? She's harmless please just don't hurt her." I don't care how fucking pathetic I sound in front of him. I'm desperate. As much as she's lied to me, as much as I shouldn't protect her I still feel as though I need to.
Victor takes me by surprise when he starts laughing again. I know he is laughing at me, at how pathetic I have become. I probably would too if I weren't me, and if it weren't for Lilianna.
"Oh for fucks sake, don't tell me you're in love with the bitch?" Victor mocks me and my eyes drop to the floor. There's no point in denying it, he already knows everything and why else would I still try to protect her.
"Christ, you are, aren't you?" Victor leans back in his chair no longer finding it funny. It's true, of course I am in love with her. I don't answer Victor and instead meet his hard gaze. I know my answer is written on my face, it is spoken with my silence and is confirmed by the moisture building in my eyes that I blink away.
I am in love with Lilianna. But it seems I didn't even know who I was falling for all along.
Victor goes back into the file and flips through more photographs before pulling a single one out. He looks at it himself, studying it and then eventually lays the photograph out for me to view. I don't understand it at first even though the picture is quite clear. It's a couple, a blonde guy kissing a matching blonde woman. It takes me a longer second to register that the woman is Lily and my heart sinks. She's kissing some guy outside her flat, they're both dressed up as if they've been out on a date and the image is immediately branded to my retinas. Even when I blink I can see it. Oddly enough Victor showing me Lily kissing someone else hurts more than the beating he put me through. And fuck if this doesn't hurt. I look away from the image but it's still all I can see. How could I have been so fucking stupid. I knew she was too good for me but I had thought ... I don't know why I had some ridiculous notion that Lilianna had come into my life to make me a better person. When in fact she had come into my life to derail it. I was so fucking stupid to turn my back on everything I had known. Everything my uncle had warned me about, about letting people get close. And I just let her, I gave in so quickly to her lies and her kisses. I believed in all of it, in everything she told me, I believed she was falling for me too even if it didn't make any sense. Victor was right, I was blinded by her and didn't even realise it. While I was falling in love with her she was out kissing other guys and planning my downfall.
"She doesn't care about you Seven. She was using you to get revenge for her parents. She doesn't love you. No one will." Victor says and takes back the torturous photograph so I no longer have to look at it.
And I can't fight it anymore, I lean over to the side as I'm violently sick while every memory with Lilianna flashes through my mind.
———————————————————————