𝚮𝐢𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐫 | 18+

40 || HAUNTING MEMORIES

𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕒 – 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕖𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕙𝕠𝕠𝕕
CHAPTER FORTY | HAUNTING MEMORIES
𓆩❤︎𓆪𓆩❤︎𓆪𓆩❤︎𓆪

x child abuse and shooting warning x

Sophia was dragged out of her training room by her hair, her screams and cries blending into the ringing gunshots of the intruder. Her father had already suspected the attack. He'd sent the staff home, warned them – he'd warned them all. He'd even told the young girl despite her not quite understanding his words. All she understood was something bad was going to happen, something that could change the entire trajectory of the Bratva, something so dramatic it would cause a paradigmatic shift. She'd seen it all on his chessboard.

"W-What's going on?" She couldn't see him but she could hear him as the shooting persisted as did the screams of fear, her brother hid under the dinner table. She could sense the looming danger that consumed the Kuznetsov ancestral manor as the threatening gunshots ricocheted off the walls as the hunt after her daddy persisted.

"Come out, come out, Artyom. Come the fuck out!"

Sophia shook in fear whereas her father rolled his eyes at the sound of the intruder before glaring at her with those cold eyes that looked so much like hers. "Remember what I told you yesterday?"

She nodded, her heart beating so loudly she thought she was going to die. "To hide in the closet and be quiet if I hear a gun firing."

Artyom crouched down to his little girl's level, wiping her tears and kissing her bruised cheek as though he wasn't the one who'd given the little girl the bruise to begin with. "So why are you still standing in front of me, stupid girl?"

Her little fists tightened at her sides. "I'm not stupid." She scored higher on tests than the fourteen-year-old Dara. And she was nearly a decade younger than him. All her teachers called her a prodigy and said they'd never seen a girl as brilliant as her, yet her father disagreed. She was never enough for him. "You told me to finish my training yesterday too."

A loud reverberating noise echoed in her ear, her cheek burning with the proof of his abuse as he slapped the brat right out of her, making her feel smaller than she already was. She wanted to cry but didn't, knowing how it made him angry. All she'd ever wanted to hear was that he was proud of her.

"What did I tell you about that dirty mouth of yours?"

She bit her lower lip to withhold her cries. She didn't want him to wash her mouth with soap again. She hated it when he did that. "To be quiet."

"Go to the fucking closet and be fucking quiet. Don't say a word, don't move, don't do anything. Got it?"

She nodded. "I got it."

"What's your name?"

"My name is Sophia Morales." Tonight, she wasn't a Kuznetsov. Not when the gun was still firing.

"Whose daughter are you?"

"Vera Morales' daughter."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. It happened so fast."