Ch. 7 A Moment To Remember
1565 Words
Ivy wakes up to icy cold water splashing violently against her face. “Arg!” She sputters, sitting up in her bed in dripping shock.
Her hearts racing, her eyes rapidly move across her room. Czar is standing in front of her, dressed in comfortable clothes, holding a bucket. And the look on his face, makes her stomach lurch in fear.
He’s angry and crazed.
She faintly registers that Tart and O are standing in the darkened corners of her bedroom silently, there’s heads lowered solemnly.
“Get up!” Czar snaps. Ivy jumps and instantly obeys as she scampers from her bed.
She’s soaking wet, her body shivering from the icy water. Ivy starts to finally register what’s going on and confusion comes at full force. What’s going on?
“Mornin Ivy.” Czar suddenly says causally, and just as a usually pulls out a handgun and points it at her. Her eyes widen and her heart quickens.
“G-g-good m-morning,” she chatters.
“It seems icy water was just the exact thing needed to get you to be compliant, for once,” Czar sneers.
“I don’t under-“ she starts to stay, before he interrupts her.
“You will soon, Ivy,” he leans his face close to hers, and then she smells it.
Liquor.
Strong liquor.
He’s black out drunk right now.
“Tart, O, you know to do,” he commands to them without taking his crazed eyes off of Ivys scared ones.
He even looks pleased to see that expression is her eyes.
The sick bastard.
O and Tart follow his command, but neither look at Ivy. Ivy panics, “look Czar, I’m so sorry I’ve been difficult on our “dates”, I promise I will start doing better!” She pleas to Czar.
Czar roars in chuckles. “Too late now. Little Ivy-vine,” she flinches the familiar nickname.
He couldn’t have known that’s also her uncles nickname for her, right?
Ivy notices the mirroring guilt on Tarts and O’s faces as Tart grabs her arm sternly. She finally notices Tarts holding a clothe bag as O stands in behind Ivy.
“Let’s go,” Czar waves. And suddenly a clothe bag is over Ivy’s head, and Tart starts to basically drag her.
After a while of a few turns, Tart says, “stairs.” And the step down the steps.
Ivy trepidation grows as they go down the stairs. Would he actually kill her in his drunkenness? Ivy doesn’t want to find out.
Eventually, they stop. And Ivy feels the bag lift off her head.
Czars standing in front of her in the shadows. It’s completely dark behind him, and the only light is a faint light coming from higher up the stair well.
“What’s going on?” Ivy asks worriedly.
“You seem to have forgotten I’m your boss, and I’m going to to remind you of your place.”
The drunken night before comes to her mind. Oh f**k.
She did really snap at him. And while, if he was anyone else, she would’ve let it rip, she knows this man is bad news. It’s been pure luck that’s shes been able to get away so far with her petty comments.
“I’m-“ Ivy starts to apologize.
“Not a word!” Czars commands, shutting her off quickly.
“You’ve been rather lucky that I’ve letting you off on your pestering back talk. In fact, it amuses me me most of the time. But you’ve seem to have forgotten I’m your boss, and a crime boss at that. So I’m going to remind you of my place and your place. Do you understand what I’m talking about now,” he grins evilly, Ivy nods her head hurriedly.
“Good. But before that, a little demonstration.”
Ivy furrows her brows and then O flips a switch. A bright light turns on illuminating a gray stone basement and along the wall are cells. Ivys eyes focus on the middle of the basement where a bloody, beaten woman is tied to a chair.
Oh god, Ivy almost vomits. The woman... she’s been horribly hurt. She has two black eyes, but one is completely swollen s**t. She has slices all over her body, bruising covering most of her skin, and she looks barely alive. Blood is dripping from her nose, and a little from her lips.
Ivy swallows dryly.
Czar steps behind Ivy, leaning his head down to her ear.
“This, is your permanent reminder.” Czar whispers.
As Ivy continues to stare, she notices with sadness the woman is missing her fingernails. And her pinkies have been bent into a “z”-like position.
“Let’s get a closer hm?” Czar chirps, walking closer to the woman.
O grabs Ivy by the shoulders and pushes her closer to Czar and the woman. Tart stands by the stairway entrance.
“Hello, Miss L, I’ve brought you company,” Czar greets the woman with a false smile.
The woman let’s out a low groan.
He looks back to Ivy, “watch, and if you look away or close your eyes, O here will make your eyes look like hers.”
Suddenly, he digs two of fingers in the woman’s only remaining-seeing eye. The woman let’s out of a muffled, pained scream, her arms squirming against the binds.
Ivy wants to look away badly. She feels sick.
He continues pushing until a small squirt sounds in the room. Hoarse screaming. Ivy nearly vomits.
Czar pulls his hand back with a small shake, wiping his hand on his pants.
He looks at Ivy, and approaches her. Suddenly, he pulls a gun from the waistband of his pants. Ivy freezes in gear.
“Kill the woman,” he commands seriously to Ivy, shoving the gun at her chest. She feels O press a gun against her back, directly along her spinal cord.
Ivys eyes widen in shock. “I-“
“Kill her now. This is your punishment.”
Ivy looks down at the gun at her chest. She looks back to the woman.
“Eurg!” The woman groans and Ivy feels tears pool in her eyes.
“I can’t!” Ivy cries.
“You kill her or I’ll kill you and your precious uncle.” She looks at him in shock, but his expression in deadly serious.
She swallows dryly again.
She can’t kill this woman, but her uncle...
Uncle Hugh... Aunt Cin...
She has no choice.
She has to take a life.
Ivy takes the gun, ignoring the trails of tears streaming down her cheeks. Czar smiles a pleasant, cruel smile.
“Good Ivy.”
Ivy shakily raises the gun at the woman, who groans again, likely from the extreme pain of her wounds. Her stomach is curdling; she asked for this, didn’t she?
She told Rico she was prepared. He tried to warn her, but she thought she already knew. Ivy was determined to see this through no matter what she had to do.
But she can’t pull the trigger.
Her hands are shaking.
Czar quickly grows impatient at her hesitation. “Do it now!”
His yell makes her jump, and her finger slips against the trigger.
BANG!
Ivys eyes widen, her jaw drops in shock and the gun falls to the floor with a loud clatter.
A warm liquid splashes against Ivys face. She touches the bit that landed on her cheek; blood.
The woman, now with gushing bullet wound in her neck, is deathly silent. Blood is dribbling into large pools from her lips.
Ivy falls to her knees. She hears sobbing, and after a moment she realizes it’s coming from herself.
“What a beautiful shot!” Czar compliments in glee, bouncing towards the dead woman to examine Ivys “work.”
Oh god, Ivy throws up the contents of her stomach.
“Ugh, get her up,” Czar snaps to O, who grabs Ivy by her shoulder and forces her to stand. She stumbles to her feet, barely wiping the vomit from her lips.
Czar steps closer to Ivy and grabs her chin, forcing the hysterical woman to make eye contact with him. Ivy let’s him, but only because she’s too in shock and too emotional to do anything.
“Now that you’ve had a little demonstration, let me just remind you of your place and mine.
“My place is as Mafia Boss of the Valkaryi Mafia, the top leading crime organization. And if you want to test that, be my guests. And your place,” he snarls, “is as my underling to do anything I ask. Do you get the picture now?”
“Yes sir,” Ivy answers lowly, her mind starting to calm down.
“Good, now GET OUT!”
Ivy doesn’t hesitate. She scampers from around O and hurries up the stairway pass Tart. She barely registers the apologizing look Tart gives her as she barrels to her room.
She’s tired.
And sick.
And all Ivy wants to do is forget that image of the violently beaten, and now violently killed woman.
Oh god she took that woman’s life.
Ivys tears start hard again, nausea rising in her stomach. She runs faster to her room, accidentally hitting Tum on the way. They both stumble.
“Ivy?” Tum yawns, dressed in his pajamas. “What are you doing up so early?”
When Ivy fully stands, Tum sees the blood and tears on his friends face, and his eyes widen comically.
“Ivy! Are you all right?! It that your blood?” He asks in a hurried, frantic tone.
The reminder of the blood rips a painful sob from Ivys chest. “Please I’m fine T, just leave me alone,” she whimpers.
Tum starts to open to his mouth, to pester his friend more who clearly isn’t okay, but before he can Ivy races around him. Slamming herself into her room.
Tum frowns, anger growing in his eyes. Someone hurt her, and he is going to get to the bottom of it.
- Writer
