Rough Exile

The man was mewling, trying his best to crawl away but not going far. His noises and movements sounded wet.

“I think he’s drunk,” I said.

“I should care?”

Normally, I would have said no, but I couldn’t let Bron kill a man in front of me and not try to stop him.

“Why not call the police instead?”

“Why call police to fix a problem we can fix ourselves?”

“Does she want him dead?” Bron asked, like he was going on a coffee run and wanted to know my order.

Did he think I’d lost the ability to speak?

“No, she doesn’t,” I snapped.

He grunted.

Was that the sound of a zipper?

Bron pissed on the man as Ilya held me where I was. He didn’t make me watch, but I did anyway.

“You guys rough me up all the time—so what if he did the same thing?”

“You agreed to rough handling from us. He will think again before trying this with another woman.”

I grimaced. “If he can ever walk again.” I shuddered in sympathy. There was no way the angle of his right leg was natural.

Ilya found my shoes and helped me balance while I put them on. He picked me up, not listening when I told him I could walk. I should have left my shoes off and held on to them because now I was trying not to let them fall off.

“Why did you leave us?” he demanded.

“I didn’t want to watch you pound the shit out of each other.”

“So you left and put yourself in danger. You’ve been a woman long enough that you should know not to wander alone in a park at night.”

He had a point, but I bristled anyway.

“I—my nerves were all jangled from the club. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It isn’t right that women have to think about danger before walking alone in a park, but I still expect you to be more careful with yourself.”

He grumbled for a while in Russian, and I caught several swear words. When Bron fell into step behind us, he said something to Ilya in Russian, too. I had the urge to tell them they were being rude by not letting me in on the conversation, but maybe I didn’t want to know. After so many weeks with them, I should probably understand more, but I didn’t have a great ear for languages.

“Aren’t you going to call an ambulance for that guy?”

“If he dies, he dies,” Ilya said stonily.

“The two of you can’t be judge, jury, and executioner!”

“Who will stop us?”

“I don’t know…maybe the law?”

Behind us, Bron spat emphatically. “The law can come for me if they like.”

Wow. Maybe the law really didn’t apply to rich people. They didn’t seem at all concerned.