Page 24 of Ricochet
I think that a part of me always knew we would end up here. There was an impending doom written in our stars, I was just too stupid to realize that. I always knew he would start pushing me away or was it maybe me who pushed him away?
The two of us... We weren’t born to love. We were born to destroy.
Was I too blinded by my love for him to see that he was slowly slipping away? Did he even notice it, or maybe he didn’t even care? I sometimes dreamed of running away, taking him away, his brothers, Ava... But those were just dreams.
The reality was much harder to deal with, and the knowledge that there was no escape from this life we were thrown into was eating me alive.
I hated to admit it, to admit what he didn’t want to hear, but I didn’t resent who I was and what I did. The adrenaline, the excitement I felt every single time the life would leave somebody else’s body, it was keeping me alive, and I clung to it like a newborn child to its mother.
Sometimes I felt like one, if I was being honest. At least my father started behaving more like a father, and less like this stranger who just made me. Ever since that night in Siberia, ever since the jobs I did in Russia, he involved me more. He wanted my opinion, he wanted to hear how I would do things.
And no matter how much I hated him, no matter how much I hated what he made of us, I loved the way he made me feel.
Like I was loved. Like I was important to him, and if that made me a psychopath, so be it.
He was my father, and even Kieran’s refusal to acknowledge that what we did wasn’t that bad, I wasn’t going to stop loving somebody who’s my blood.
Jesus fucking Christ, when did all of us become such a mess?
This wreckage of our lives was pulling us beneath the water, and the only difference between Kieran and me was that I stopped fighting the current.
I used to hear that phrase “If you can’t beat them, join them”, and wasn’t that the truth. I didn’t want to beat my father anymore. I didn’t want to see him suffering, because somewhere, deep down in me, I knew he went through the same things I did, he did the same things I did, and I refused to believe that Nikolai Aster was born a bad man.
More often than not, bad people were made. Or well, what somebody else thought was bad, but for others was normal.
The only difference between my family and other families was that instead of going to the church on Sundays, we attended meetings in Syndicate, taking assignments and discussing which target bled more.
Mine usually bled the most, and I could always see the proud gleam in my father’s eye, appreciating everything I did for our group.
If only he would tell me where Maya was.
But hell, one disaster at the time. Right now I had to deal with Kieran and the clusterfuck our relationship ended up being. I didn’t want to marry somebody I didn’t know anymore.
Somebody I couldn’t trust.
Somebody who didn’t want to be with me anymore.
I just couldn’t understand when we became virtual strangers; hiding things from each other, pushing each other away, destroying our hearts and everything we ever worked for.
I knew he struggled with the reality of our actions. He never really accepted this world, and seeing me embrace it with open arms, I knew it never sat well with him.
What was I going to do?
I tried figuring out a way to bring us back together to the way we were. What if I surprised him in Ventus City?
I didn’t exactly need his permission to enter the apartment building he usually stayed at, and looking at the clock, I knew he was going to be home in the next three hours. It was the perfect amount of time for me to get ready and get my ass there from Croyford Bay.
I had to check if Ava would want to visit the city as well. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Theo, but he was here and she could use some time alone with me, away from all this madness.
She had questions, I knew that. I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to hide shit for much longer. She was getting suspicious, seeing my bruises, seeing me disappear for days on end, and she wanted to know.
I would rather be the one to tell her what was going on, than to have somebody else kick her mind into overdrive.
“Ophelia.” A knock on the door pulled me back from my thoughts, and I turned around to see a nervous looking Ava standing there. “May I come in?”
Since when did she ask for permission to enter my room? Well, technically it was Kieran’s room, but I guess with the amount of time I was spending on Nightingale Hill, it was becoming my room as well.
“What’s up?”
