Claimed By The Pakhan (Book one of the Ruthless series)

St. Petersburg, RussiaTwenty Years Ago

The cold bit through Dmitri’s jacket as he walked home from school, his breath coming out in small clouds. Fourteen years old and he already knew that complaining about the cold did nothing. The coat was thin because that was all they had. The radiator at home was broken because his mother spent the repair money on other things.

He kept his head down as he passed the usual crowd on the corner where the men huddled to drink like sailors and the prostitutes lingered in the street in short skirts and heavy makeup, stamping their feet against the cold and waiting for cars to slow down. This was the Admiralteysky District, this was his home.

Dmitri climbed the stairs to the wretched apartment building, counting each one like he always did. The numbers never changed, but counting them gave him something to focus on besides the smell of cabbage and piss that hung in the stairwell.

He got to the third floor and paused when he heard a woman scream behind one of the doors. Dmitri kept walking, he reached their door and pulled out his key.

The metal was cold against his palm as he unlocked it and stepped inside.

Silence.

His mother was usually either passed out on the couch or yelling at him for existing, but today there was nothing except the drip of the kitchen faucet and the distant sound of traffic from the street below.

“Mama?” he called out. His voice broke the stillness of the apartment.

No answer.

“Mama, ty doma?” Are you home?

Still nothing.

Dmitri walked through the main room. The couch was empty and the blanket she usually wrapped herself in was tossed on the floor. Empty vodka bottles lined the counter in the kitchen, and dirty dishes filled the sink. Nothing unusual there.

Her bedroom door stood open. The bed was unmade, clothes scattered across the floor, but she wasn’t there.

The bathroom door was closed.

Dmitri stopped in front of it. His hand reached for the handle, then hesitated. Something in his gut twisted, warning him. He pressed his ear against the wood and all that greeted him was silence.

“Mama?” he called out softly this time.

Nothing.

He turned the handle and the door swung open.

His eyes widened and for a moment, his brain refused to process what he was seeing. His mother sat against the bathtub, her head tilted at an odd angle like she had fallen asleep. That happened sometimes when she would nod off in strange places, her body going limp wherever the drugs took her.

He took a step forward and his brows furrowed when he saw that her skin had gone grey. Her arm lay stretched across the grimy tile floor, palm facing up. The needle dangled from the crook of her elbow, the rubber tubing still wrapped around her bicep. A small trickle of dried blood ran from the injection site down to her wrist.

Her eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead at nothing. Her pupils were fixed and dilated. Her mouth hung slack, lips tinged with blue. A thin line of drool had dried at the corner of her mouth.

The stench suddenly hit him the same time the realization dawned.

She wasn’t sleeping.

She was dead.

Dmitri stood frozen in the doorway. His schoolbag slipped from his shoulder and hit the floor with a dull thud. His hands began to shake, a tremor starting in his fingers and spreading up his arms. His stomach lurched and for one terrible second, he thought he might be sick right there on the bathroom floor beside her.

He waited for something else to happen inside him. The urge to run to her, shake her, beg her to wake up like he used to do when she overdosed.

But nothing came.

The shaking stopped as quickly as it started and a numb feeling started to fill up the cold, empty space where feelings should have been and underneath that emptiness, buried so deep he could barely acknowledge it was relief.

She was gone. Finally, permanently gone.

No more screaming and bringing home strange men. He would finally stop hoping that she would stay sober and remember that he was her son.

His legs moved on their own. He walked into the bathroom and sat down on the floor across from her body, his back against the opposite wall.

He should have called the police or a neighbor, but he didn’t move.

He just sat there, watching her.

Three hours passed, maybe four. Time moved strangely in that bathroom.

He thought about all the times he had come home to find her like this. Unconscious, barely breathing with needle tracks covering her arms. He used to panic and shake her and beg her to open her eyes, terrified they would take her away and he would be alone.

He remembered the last time she screamed at him. Two weeks ago, he had asked her for money to buy bread and she had thrown an empty bottle at his head.

“You ruined my life,” she had shrieked. “I should have gotten rid of you when I had the chance.”

He remembered being seven years old and waiting for her to come home for three days straight. When she finally stumbled through the door, she didn’t even look at him. Just locked herself in her bedroom with whatever she had bought on the street.

He remembered every broken promise. Every time she chose the drugs over him or when he would wake up in the morning, not knowing if she would still be breathing.

Now he was alone anyway.

When the light had faded completely from the bathroom, Dmitri finally stood, his legs were stiff from sitting on the cold tile. He found a towel and draped it over her face. He couldn’t stand those empty eyes anymore.

Then he walked next door and knocked on Mrs. Kuznetsova’s door.

She opened it with a baby on her hip and two small children clinging to her legs.

“Moya mat’ umerla,” Dmitri said. My mother is dead. His voice sounded flat even to his own ears. “She’s in the bathroom.”

Mrs. Kuznetsova’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked at him for a long moment, and her face softened with pity. “Wait here,” she said quietly.

He didn’t wait, he went back to the apartment and sat on the couch while she made phone calls and people came. They asked him questions till they were satisfied before taking her body away in a body bag.

They told him someone would come talk to him tomorrow about arrangements, he nodded and said nothing.

The funeral, if it could be called that, happened three days later. A pauper’s burial in a cemetery on the edge of the city. Dmitiri stood in the snow as two men lowered a cheap wooden coffin into the frozen ground.

The priest spoke words that meant nothing, preaching about God’s love but Dmitri stopped listening. There was no mercy in leaving a child to raise himself or peace in choosing drugs over your own son. And if God loved anyone, he had never shown it in this neighborhood.

When the men finished filling in the grave, they left without a word. Dmitri stood there alone, snow gathering on his shoulders, staring at the mound of dirt that covered his mother.