Many years ago

Father Pavel Rudenko looked at his sister who was weeping wretchedly. The brothers had gone to meet their newly widowed sister.

As a man of the cloth, the Monk had accompanied Dmitri Rudenko.

“Take my son, take this monster, my brother,” she had begged with hands clasped before her, as she wept,

“I cannot handle him anymore…”

Her husband had been an abusive man; the boy was following in his footsteps, a cold-hearted brute who was terrorising his mother and sister.

The Monk had stood silently and looked at his nephew, the son of his only sister, a half-sister, but still, his blood. Dmitri Rudenko had walked...