It’s too much.
It’s too cozy.
I fucking hate it.
Glancing across the table at Maria, a thick vein of nostalgia burns through me like fire.
It aches in my veins because all I want is to be able to go back to the past, before all the shit happened, and to pretend like everything is okay again.
I used to sit at the breakfast table with Misha and Maria, just like this. We’d laugh. We’d talk shit. We’d share stupid stories and tease each other.
It felt like I had a family. It was the closest I ever came to understanding what that might be like.
Then it was all over like a knife in my back.
It was gone.
And after I came to Chicago, I was more alone than I’d ever been in my life. I didn’t know a single person in this city. The loneliness was absolute.
And all I could think about was why my best friend had stabbed me in the back. Why his sister had been completely fine with it.
Why did it happen?
I didn’t let the misery stop me from building a new name for myself. From creating businesses and building contacts. I started from nothing all over again, and here I am today with an empire. They didn’t break me. They made me stronger. They made me more aware of the evil in this world. They made me a better man.
But even looking at it in a more positive light, taking the good from it, I can still feel that pain. That loneliness and the endless emptiness of all those nights and days I spent without anyone around me, knowing they’d been that cruel and didn’t give two shits about it.
Maria looks up at me, sensing the intensity of my gaze.
She doesn’t smile. Her eyes linger on me, narrowing for a second. A flicker of something. She presses her lips together and then looks away as though I mean nothing to her.Because I never did. I never meant a damn thing to either of them.
“How have you been, Artur?” one of Leila’s husbands calls for my attention from across the table.
“Sorry, I missed that?” I say, pulling myself together. I was lost in thought for a while there.
“How have you been? Moving in with a bunch of other guys and all that… I remember how frustrating it was in the beginning. Took a while to get used to,” he muses.
Kolya. That’s his name.
“Yeah, it’s quite a big thing to get used to,” I smile politely and nod. I don’t want to be rude to anyone, but I also really don’t want to be here playing nice.
It’s not like I even have anything against these guys.
I don’t know them.
But this all feels awkward and fake to me.
I learned the hard way that you can’t trust people. And the more you know about them…it doesn’t actually change whether or not you can trust them.
Yes. Life truly is a bitch.
My eyes drift back to Maria. She ignores me.
“So, what have you guys been doing to stay out of each other’s hair?” Viktor asks, smirking at us.
“Working out. Working. Swimming. I think the heat is getting to us more than the added company,” Joe says, smiling at Leila, then Viktor.
Conversation flows back and forth, and I add my answers where they are required. But all in all, I only speak when spoken to, and I keep my answers short and polite. There is no reason for me not to be civil.
