Brewed in Freedom

Trigger warning: homicide as well as nondescript abuse in the form of physical and sexual.

The kettle began its slow, mournful whistle, a sound that filled the silence of the small kitchen. Ana stood by the counter, her hands gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles whitened. The warped wood felt splintered under her fingertips, a small pain she welcomed—anything to drown out the storm brewing inside her. The kitchen smelled faintly of damp earth and charred wood, remnants of a fire long extinguished in the hearth. On the peeling walls, a lone crucifix hung crookedly, the only untouched piece of her home that still felt like hers. The rest belonged to him now.

Outside, the early light spilled weakly across the mountains, illuminating a landscape scarred by war. The muffled clucking of the lone chicken in the yard broke the stillness, a reminder of the life she had once fought to preserve. Luka sat cross-legged on the floor nearby, his small fingers tracing patterns in the dust that coated the floorboards. His lips moved silently, humming the lullaby Ana used to sing to him when he couldn’t sleep. She glanced at him, her heart twisting at how hollow his cheeks had grown, how solemn his dark eyes had become. Her boy, too young to carry the weight of so much loss.

“Luka,” she said softly, forcing her voice to sound steady. She crouched down beside him, brushing the hair from his eyes. “What are you drawing?”

“A mountain,” he murmured, his voice quiet but clear. He pointed to the jagged peaks he had sketched in the dirt. “Like the ones outside.”

Ana smiled faintly, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. “It’s a fine mountain. Strong, just like you.” She tilted his chin up gently to meet her gaze. “You remember what I said, yes? No matter what happens, you stay in this room. Promise me.”

Luka hesitated, his brows furrowing in confusion. “But why, Mama?”

“Because it’s safer that way,” she said, her tone soft but firm. “For you. Do you promise me?”

He nodded, his small hand slipping into hers. “Yes, Mama, I promise you.”

The kettle’s wail grew louder, slicing through the fragile moment. Ana rose to her feet, moving deliberately to the stove. She poured the boiling water over the tea leaves, steam curling upward to brush against her face. The earthy, bitter aroma filled the room, mingling with the scent of smoke and despair that clung to everything now.

The sound of boots echoed from the hallway, heavy and certain. She didn’t need to turn around to know it was him. Hauptmann Klaus Richter filled the doorway like an uninvited shadow, his polished boots clicking against the floor, his uniform immaculate even in the final days of a crumbling war. “Good morning, Ana,” he said, his tone clipped, as if the words themselves were a command.

Ana forced herself to turn, the teapot steady in her hands. “Good morning, Herr Hauptmann,” she replied, her voice calm and even. It always was. She had learned the cost of letting her mask slip.

As she poured his tea, the vial hidden beneath her apron pressed cold against her skin. Today was the day. The thought flared in her mind, bright and sharp, a spark in the smothering darkness. Today, it ends.

Klaus leaned against the door frame, his broad shoulders taking up more space than it should. He swept his cap off, revealing neatly combed blond hair that gleamed in the pale morning light. “The air’s crisper today,” he said, as if remarking on the weather absolved him of all the ugliness he carried with him. His gaze flicked to the table. “Are you not eating breakfast?”

Ana kept her expression placid as she placed the teacup on the tray. “I’ll eat later,” she said. She wouldn’t risk sharing anything from the pot, not today.

He crossed the room with lazy confidence, his boots scuffing the floor that she scrubbed clean every night. Dropping heavily into the chair at the head of the table—her husband’s chair—he surveyed the room as if it were his kingdom. He never asked permission. Men like Klaus Richter never did.

“Tea again,” he said with a small chuckle. “You’ve become quite the hostess, Ana.”

She offered him a small smile, the kind that gave nothing away. “It’s all I have to offer.”

She hated the timbre of her own voice—soft, submissive, a hollow echo of the woman she’d been before the war. Before Petar. The name sparked a pang in her chest, a familiar ache she carried with her like a scar.

Petar had been strong, proud. He’d stood at the front of their small village of Cetinje when the soldiers came, refusing to bow to the Nazi occupation. “They’ll see reason,” he’d told her that night, his voice firm. “They’re men, not gods.”

But the next morning, she’d watched from the edge of the town square as they dragged him and twenty seven other innocent men into the open and shot each one in the head. The cobblestones, once a familiar and comforting sight, were stained with blood as if the soul of Cetinje itself had been wounded. Klaus had been there, barking orders with his gloved hands. She remembered how he’d looked at her afterward—how his gaze lingered just long enough to make her shiver.

That same night, he’d claimed her home as his own. “You’ll find it’s better to cooperate,” he’d said, his tone almost conversational as he rifled through her cupboards. “For you and your boy.”

Ana had known what he meant. It was the reason she bit her tongue every time his hand brushed her arm, every time he pushed open the door to her bedroom as though it belonged to him. The bruises he left faded quickly, but the memories did not.

She didn’t cry anymore. There was no time for tears, not with Luka to protect. Klaus had never laid a hand on her son—yet. But he’d sneered at the boy’s drawings, called him weak for hiding behind her skirts, and once threatened to send him to the camps if Ana didn’t “behave.”

“Boys need discipline,” Klaus had said, his cold blue eyes narrowing at Luka’s delicate figure. “If you can’t teach him, I will.”

That night, Ana had sat awake, her mind racing. She’d heard rumors of what happened to children taken by the Nazis, the horrors whispered by the women who passed through their village. Luka’s life was a string she had to hold onto, no matter how tightly it cut into her fingers.

Now, she risked a glance at her son. He sat quietly in the corner, his head bent over his paper, sketching something in careful strokes. At nine years old, he had Petar’s sharp features and dark curls, but none of his father’s confidence. The war had stolen that from him, leaving behind a boy who flinched at the sound of boots on the floorboards.

Klaus lifted the cup to his lips, inhaling deeply. “It smells better today. Did you change something?”

“Perhaps,” she said lightly. “I used a different blend.”

Her heart raced as he took a sip, his expression unreadable. She clasped her hands tighter in her lap, her nails digging into her palms to anchor her.

“Not bad,” he said after a moment, setting the cup down with a soft clink. He smiled at her, a thin, cruel curve of his lips that sent a shiver down her spine. “See, Ana? I knew you would come to appreciate your role here.”

Her teeth ached from clenching, but she nodded, her mask firmly in place. “I do what is necessary.”

She thought again of Petar, his blood staining the snow as Luka screamed from her arms. She thought of the nights she’d spent patching up Klaus’s uniforms, her hands trembling with rage. And she thought of the long, suffocating years ahead if she let him leave this house alive, after all this time enduring his demands, his cruelty—nights where she had been forced to use her body to keep him content, to keep him from turning his violence on Luka. She couldn’t survive it any longer. She could never live with herself if she didn’t take revenge for everything he had taken from her and her family. The war might be over, but the fight for her soul, her future happens now.

No. This was necessary. She could not fail Luka as she had failed Petar.

Klaus leaned back in the chair, his hands resting on the table as he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. Ana couldn’t look at him anymore—his very presence in her home, in her life, was stifling.

Luka, oblivious to the fate that loomed just behind him, continued to draw, his pencil moving in delicate strokes across the paper. Ana could hear the soft scuff of his childish movements against the rough surface, a sound she would treasure forever.

She stood slowly, her breath shallow, her legs unsteady as the poison slowly took effect. It was faint at first—the tremor in his fingers, the pallor of his face. Klaus’s blue eyes flickered, confusion flashing across them. He set the cup down, his gaze shifting to Ana, and she could feel it—the moment of realization.

“What is this?” His voice cracked, the smooth facade slipping for the first time since he’d entered her home a year ago.

Ana watched, her heartbeat louder than her thoughts. The silence in the room stretched, broken only by the sound of Klaus’s labored breathing as the poison began to do its work. His face contorted in pain, his body shuddering as the toxin spread through his system.

“It’s over,” she said softly, her voice steady despite the storm within her.

Klaus tried to rise, his hand reaching out for support, but his legs buckled beneath him. He fell to the ground, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Ana didn’t move. Her heart didn’t race; her mind didn’t panic. It had been building to this moment, the slow, deliberate build-up of anger, of fear, of hatred. She had waited for this moment—waited to see the monster who had ruined her life and the life of her son fall to his knees.

“You took everything from me,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving him. “And now… now I take my life back.”

Klaus’s mouth worked in futile attempts to form words, but no sound came. His eyes rolled back, and his body stiffened.

For a long moment, the room was still.

Luka looked up, his pencil poised in midair, his eyes wide with confusion. “Mama?” he asked softly, unsure of what he was seeing.

Ana’s gaze softened, and she turned to her son, feeling the weight of the moment heavy on her chest. “It’s over, Luka,” she said, her voice breaking as she finally allowed herself to breathe. “It’s finished.”

Luka, still unsure, shuffled toward her, his small hands grasping at her skirts. She knelt down and wrapped him in her arms, pressing his head against her chest as he looked past her to the body on the floor.

“We’re safe now darling,” Ana whispered.

For the first time in years, she felt a flicker of something she hadn’t felt in so long—relief. It wasn’t just the end of Klaus, but the end of the terror that had gripped her life, the constant fear of losing her son, of being forced to play the part of the compliant wife of a monster.

As Luka clung to her, she whispered, almost to herself, “We can be free now. We can live again.”

And as Klaus’s body lay still on the cold wooden floor, the silence in the room was not one of death, but of possibility.