Chapter 1 - Bardil
Taking the wrong girl was the beginning of the end for me. It's something I've thought about over and over again for the past few months since it happened.
I wish I'd paid more attention when Marlen was asking me to kidnap Nikita Abashin. If I had, I wouldn't have accidentally taken Stefania Shevchenko and marked the start of my entire life collapsing in on me. She was the beginning of the end.
It's her fault Marlen switched sides and turned against me.
I've been keeping my head low lately. Staying out of sight and hidden from my family and their new friends while I try to figure out what to do next.
I'm sitting in my car parked on a lookout point that, for the most part, people don't know about. It's always quiet here, which is why I like to come here when I need to think.
The engine is off, and it's dark apart from the LCD on my dash, lighting with pulse lights moving in rhythm to the music I've left playing. The car glows red and purple as patterns splash across the LCD.
Numb.
Linkin Park is a band that's helped me relax and clear my mind more times than I can count. But lately, even the music isn't able to pull me out of this sinkhole I'm lost in.
I lean further back in my seat, my eyes tracing over the view, and my heart feeling heavy with anger and vengeance on my mind.
The sun set over Miami an hour ago, and in the valley below, the city has fogged up with pale grey fog that rolled in from the ocean. Through the mist, all I can see are stars of light from buildings and cars.
It's beautiful with a full moon shining above it all.
I sigh in the darkness of my car. I feel set apart from the rest of the world. As though I don't belong in it anymore. I'm not a part of any of that. I have nothing on my side. Nothing good going for me.
Every step that I take is another mistake to you.
This song is resonating with me too deeply. It's aching inside me as guilt taints the anger that hasn't stopped flowing in my veins since the last time I saw my brother.
I know he's disappointed in me. But it goes both ways. I haven't spoken to Marlen in months. Not since he sold me out to the people who have been our enemies for longer than I care to think about. It's all because of that Shev girl. Stefania.His wife. I can't believe he actually married her.
I'm the reason that my family is in a new alliance with the Shevchenko and Abashin families. Something I don't think any of us could've dreamed would happen in a thousand years. They've never been people we wanted to be in an alliance with.
Yet here we are. My whole family brainwashed into thinking they're good people.
I hate it. I don't understand it. Why agree to work with people whom you can't even trust?
It's a joke, really. Marlen not speaking to me over all of this…
Instead of turning his back on me, he should bethankingme anyway. If I hadn't kidnapped the wrong girl, he would never have met the love of his life.
Fuck.
Why did he have to fall in love with a Shev? Of all the people in all the world, why her?
Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for him. He deserves everything and more. But why her?
Still, he is happy. Somehow. My brother is a good person. He's the type of person you can call any time of the day or night, and he'd be there.
Not anymore, Bardil. Those days are over. He probably wouldn't even answer the phone if I called him now. And if he did, it would only be to tell me what a terrible person I am.
Yeah, I know I messed up. I'm not a fool, despite everyone thinking it.
I accept that I deceived my brother, and I did some really stupid things. I didn't intend to jeopardize my family's positions so badly, though. I never meant to hurt anyone, either. I trusted the wrong people. As usual.
Everything that happened… fuck… that was never myplan. I wanted to fix the mistakes I made without asking Marlen for help. I wanted to make it right before he even found out I'd messed up.
If I weren't so impulsive, I would've thought it through a little more. I would've thought everything through, I guess. I wouldn't have been so quick to trust.
