Page 42 of Volatile Waters

Crash started breathing hard for a different reason when he saw my father and two handlers waiting for us. He stopped walking and tried to backtrack. Sam almost yelped when Crash backed her up, accidentally, into my chest.

“Yury?” Crash called out, sounding lost and most definitely scared.

“I am sorry, kid.”

His shoulders rose and fell with his exasperated lungs. “You’re killing me?”

I stared at the back of his head, energy draining from me by the second. Then I nodded to Kirill and Adrian to grab Crash’s arms. His knee-jerk reaction had him struggling. “Wait! If I’m dead, what happens to Sam? No! Yury! If you kill me, what happens to Sam?” Believing he was about to be murdered, something he knew firsthand we were capable of, he still attempted to protect his pet, not himself. “Sam! Come here!” yelled Crash, as I pulled her leash out of a panicked, sweaty from the workout, hand. Crash didn’t have a chance to defend her.

She simply stared at Crash as if in shock he was to be murdered.

Kirill and Adrian hauled Crash forward. I forced Sam to stay with me.

Crash pleaded, “Don’t kill me in front of her! Don’t let her see this!!!”

Once Crash was out of arm’s length, I proceeded toward my father, who snarled at Sam’s coverage. “My son is weak once again.”

Crash stilled as he watched me, understanding crossing his expression. “No.” His sight was locked onto the slave being handed over to my father. “Wait.” As a handler took hold of her arm, he unraveled. “Wait!” Crash yelled, finally comprehending that he was not the one leaving my home. “Where are you taking her?”

Internally, I begged my heart to ice over and ease me of the betrayal that was eating me alive.

“Yury! You promised!”

My father smiled. “I see I am not the only liar under this roof.”

Please ice over. Ice over, dammit! I replied, “Isn’t life one big lie, anyway?”

He shrugged. “Maybe so. Either way, we have a sale to complete.”

“Nooooo!” screamed Crash. “She’s mine!” He told my father, “Kill me! Take my life for her freedom! Please, goddammit!”

Father exhaled his disappointment, asking me, “He is never going to train, is he?”

Not able to look into the desperate eyes behind me, I glanced to the floor. “It is time for him to return home.”

“Home?” squeaked a confused Sam.

Father cupped her chin. “You, my dear, are a beauty, and your home is now in Germany.”

With unexpected strength, Crash broke free of Kirill and Adrian’s grip and charged forward. Father’s minions caught him before he could reach us and proceeded to beat him down to the ground. It was violent. It was gruesome. It was how things were done. Yet, Crash kept reaching out for Sam. “Yury! Don’t do this!”

Sam shook violently, watching Crash epically lose this fight. She barely reacted when I removed her collar and leash. Tears fell from her eyes as shock took hold of the young girl. “C-Crash? I-I don’t get to… Where… Who will I… C-Crash?”

Kirill and Adrian stepped in and called off Father’s dogs. Beaten to the point of delusion, Crash fought for focus. Blood seeped from his left, busted eyebrow, that would become a well-defined scar, as he stared up from the floor. Weaker than I had ever seen him, Crash reached up. “Sam.”

“C-Crash? W-What’s gonna happen to me?”

As ice wrapped its wonderful crystals around my tampered heart, I thought ill thoughts of Sam and what I portrayed as selfish, when she only worried for her future.

Crash tried to sit up, to get to his feet and help the sold slave, but his body refused and fell back down. His tears mixed with his blood as he cried, “Yury! Please, don’t let this happen.”

I was as helpless as he. So, the ice completely took over. It was a merciful relief.

My father and his mutts escorted a shell-shocked Sam from my home, as Crash, in absolute agony, wailed from the floor. It was a horrific sight to witness. It was a horrendous sound to hear. Had I not iced over already, the bloodcurdling pleas would’ve been my undoing.

But I had a corrupted life to lead.

And, there are no happy endings in human trafficking.