"I am part of a cause worth dying for," were the words Dominika Volkova heard in Isabella Riberio's voice. "Family is a cause worth killing for," came from the deep, but soft voice of her dead father.
Dimitri Volkova had always wanted a son. So life, in all of it's viewed cruel ironies, gave him twin girls, Sonya and Petra. A few years later, he and his wife tried again, but a third, last girl put an end to that dream. He picked the name Dominika for her.
Despite the disappointments, Miri, Dimitri's wife and mother to his children, tried to be the best spouse to her husband that she could be. She set about her tasks of cooking, cleaning, raising the children and all the activities one would expect from a good country Russian wife.
Contrary to popular belief, vodka doesn't just come from potatoes. On a modest sized farm outside of Moscow, Dimitri had scratched out part of a living growing and selling wheat to a local vodka producer. At least, the was the appearance presented of what he did for a livelihood.
From her first memories and going forward for many years, Dominika remembered life on the farm as the happy times. Her parents never lost their tempers at each other or the children. The kind and nurturing household would be envied by many, if people even knew this family existed. Dimitri went to great lengths to protect them from any public scrutiny or even causal curiosity.
Dimitri himself, was a hard man to hide in a crowd. Towering over six and a half feet tall and with a muscular physique that appeared to come from wrestling Russian bears in winter time, this would be enough to get certain people not to want to pick a fight with him. With a bushy black mustache, deep and dark brown eyes, finished off with jet black hair, always combed straight back, you could get the idea he was Russian Man personified.
Miri was completely the opposite. Barely over five feet and thin like a broomstick, she appeared frail and highly vulnerable to a stiff wind, let along what life had and would throw at her. However, she bore three children to a man almost three times her size and could run the domestic activities on the farm and still have enough strength left over for....other things, when the sun went down and the children were asleep.
Both Sonya and Petra started to follow in their mother's footsteps, learning how to become good country women, by looking after the house and home. But, once they both entered grade school, their involvement around the house lessened, since it was viewed as old fashioned by their peers.
Dominika took a different path. Instead of helping out inside the house, she spent most of her early childhood outside. More specifically, the barn where the farm equipment was parked when not in use. At first, she would watch her father work on the tractors, combines and grain trucks. Later, she would cut her teeth on oil changes and lubes. By the time she started grade school, she could rebuild a small gas engine, with help of course.
"Deadman switch, wireless trigger and I am laying on it," Isabella said, snapping Dominika back to reality. In the here and now, she was sitting on her couch, in the living room of the apartment, looking down at her lap, watching a multi-screen-in-one live feed on her tablet. In each hand, twin Grach pistols were at the ready, a round chambered and the safeties off.
She drifted back in time to when she first saw the weapons she was holding now. Long after her mother was diagnosed with cancer and losing her fight less than a month later. Her sisters had gone off to university, to become nurses and she was just finishing high school. After her graduation ceremony, she was invited to a house party with some of her classmates.
It was there she met a college freshman, who wowed and dazzled her with attention. Of course, alcohol came into play. Dominika had never drank before, therefore, her tolerance level for the effects it would have were quite low. She was a very cheap and easy drunk, something her new friend took advantage of. He lead her upstairs to an empty bedroom, closed the door and used his own body to pin her to the bed. Her clothes were violently torn away and he forced himself into her. She was helpless to fight back.
The next morning, she awoke in the same bed, in pain she had never felt before and couldn't move because of it. She cried out and a classmate, whose parent's owned the the house, woke with a start and rushed over, opening the door. The scene was something out of a horror movie.
A short time later, Dimitri arrived, hurried by the phone call he had received. He entered the room and embraced his wounded daughter. His eyes inspected her body, what he could see of it, the bruises were already forming. He kept his anger in check, asking questions in a gentle, comforting tone. His child surrendered all that she knew, which wasn't much. Later, he interviewed the classmate who found her, supplying him with the information he was seeking. Then, he took Dominika home.
That night, she awoke in her own bed, because of a scream from the barn. A man's scream. Slowly, painfully, she made her way from her bedroom, down the stairs and out to the building in question. Upon opening a side door, she was shocked with what she saw. Handing from a rafter was two lengths of chain, with hooks on the ends, sticking through the shoulders of the boy from the night before, feet dangling a few feet from the ground. His eyes widened in horror when he saw her.
Dimitri told his daughter to go back to bed, in his ever even and comforting tone. She asked her father what he was planning to do to the boy, now hanging in the barn. He answered with words she never heard her father utter before, make him suffer then kill him. A switch was flicked inside Dominika's head.
It took three days for that boy to die, but Dominika learned more about the human anatomy than her sisters ever would. She studied under her father, just how much pain a person can endure, before passing out. Her father was....professional about it, never speaking to the young man as he performed his actions. The only voice that could be heard from that barn was the lone college freshman pleading for his life, then begging for death. Two pistols, fired simultaneously, ended the misery. She had been the angel of mercy, firing guns for the first time.
Dominika returned to modern times, looking down at the tablet on her lap, nothing to set any alarms off was going on. She glanced at the pistol in her left hand and engraved on top of the slide was the word Mercy, in Russian. The right hand held Redemption. She sat between them, wielding power that could change or end lives, much like her father did.
After the remains of the college boy was disposed of, Dimitri confided to his daughter the full scope of his past. in a single night. Starting off being a young and stupid young man in Afghanistan, then a slightly older, yet no wiser man in Chechnya and various other places over the years. She asked him if he had killed people. His reply was, "Yes....many," with a single tear falling.
Many years later, she would return home after a trip to see a little bit of Europe. Upon her arrival, strange men, dressed in black, had taken over and secured the farm. For the second time in her life, Uncle Marat would be there, the first time was when her mother past and the funeral. He informed her a heart attack had take her father. She embraced him and cried, he supported her and grieved. A promise was made to keep the farm running by trusted people, if she wished to leave and see the world. Dominika believed the sincerity of the offer and accepted.
Reality snapped back into being when Isabella's voice crackled over her earpiece, "Sparrow, Skybound." Dominka replied, "Copy....Eagle."
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