Vixen & The Viper - Baby It's On The Cold Outside [a specterverse xmas novella]

Chapter Two : Solitude

Venom Romanov

December 22nd, 4:44pm
Location Unknown, Yabinka National Park. Strysakstan.
Somewhere southwest of the city of Al Aqsan.

-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-

I lift the broad axe high overhead before swinging downward with brute force to split the substantial oak log that would burn on the hearth of my hunting cabin for the next six hours.. It is laborious, back breaking work, but I never objected to getting my hands dirty.. Actually, I kind of enjoy the heat it generates within the heavy duty lining of my khaki thermals and the ache of it in my muscles.. It is the simplest, most earnest form of survival and that is so much more rewarding than any of the riches or spoils of the privileged and high pressure life I was born into..

I walked away from it all to become the miserable recluse I am today..

Money.. Women.. Sex.. Power.. Status..
I had everything a man could possibly desire, but that existence was hollow.. Devoid of any meaning..

I had everything.. Everything except for my freedom..

My insidious uncle, Oleg Romanov, ruled the Moscow Mafia with all the tenderness of an iron fist, and he had used me, his only living relative, to do it..
Since before I can even remember I had been conditioned for violence and stripped of any emotion that might get in the way of doing what I am hardwired to do..

Kill..

I was no more than thirteen when Oleg would indoctrinate me, the orphaned offspring of a slain Pakhan and his mistress..
My uncle would train me in combat, fill me with hatred and burn off my fingerprints one by one, just so he could use me to enact and enforce his law, under penalty of death.. I may be his nephew by blood, but I was never anything more than a weapon in his eyes..

The blood letting.. The reckoning.. The merciless killing.. Well, it had become enough to make me want to slit my own throat, just to cut off the collar Oleg had chained around my neck..
The guilt alone is a heavy cross to bear, but the knowledge that I would have to wake up each day and carry out the orders of a tyrannical madman became a burden on my soul too suffocating to survive..

I had to escape..
I had to get out..

I owe my every regret to my kin and it is because of him that I can not go home..
I can never return to Russia and so I will never belong.. The first decision I ever made for myself was to leave Moscow and The Mafia behind.. Choosing instead to hide in the last place anybody would ever think to look for me..
In a place where nobody would willingly elect to live.. In the middle of nowhere, deep in the wilderness of a god-forsaken country plagued by hardship and a savage guerilla war..