Page 4 of Oblivion
I lied to myself, to him, to all of them, when I said everything was going to be okay, because it wasn’t. Nothing would ever be okay, but for a few moments when everything seemed perfect, I liked to pretend. And this… This was my last sacrifice for the one I loved, even if he hated me forever. My mind longed for happiness, but my soul was far too tainted to surrender itself to the feelings that didn’t invoke misery every step of the way.
The scars on my back were nothing compared to the ones I carried deep inside myself, where all my fears and all my love laid hidden beneath the thick layers of broken pieces that I couldn’t bear to even touch.
And I could’ve had a beautiful life. Maybe even a peaceful one, but the restless soul would always remain inside of me. And no matter how much my mind and my heart fought against each other, it was that third part of me, the core of who I was, that damned me every single time.
And this time, I broke my own fucking heart.
There was no one else to blame for the knife I pushed through my chest when I took off from the clubhouse, running away from the one good thing that had happened to me. I’d allowed my own fears to get the best of me, and instead of going forward, I went backward, ruining everything.
One step forward, ten backward—same old story, same old me.
Some people shed their old skin like snakes, changing every year, working on themselves, improving who they were. Me? I apparently didn’t know how to change.
I wished that there was a manual on how to fix everything that was wrong with me; everything that didn’t only hurt me, but the people around me. I wished I could go back in time and run as far as I could, instead of going into that basement when I was seventeen years old.
I wished I wasn’t born with a dark mark on my heart, the one that every member of my family had. Maybe then I would’ve been a better person; less bitter, less vengeful, and more forgiving.
My eyes flickered down to the destroyed snake tattoo on my forearm and I traced the scars with the forefinger of my right hand, wincing, even though the pain wasn’t there.
But the memories still were.
Like a kaleidoscope of pictures, they played in front of my eyes, reminding me of every fucked-up thing I'd done. Every bloody trail I’d left behind, every broken heart and every destroyed life, they all danced in front of my eyes, laughing at the regrets swirling in my mind.
And the most fucked-up shit I ever did—I broke a man who didn’t deserve to be broken.
I broke the only person that ever gave a fuck about me. Maybe I wasn’t the one holding that knife, but I was the one that lured Nikolai. I was the one he wanted and I let him hurt Storm.
But tonight was not the time to wallow in self-pity.
Not even when my eyes traveled from the ancient-looking grandfather clock that probably stopped working ages ago, all the way to the large, framed picture just above the fireplace, where the face of the man I despised with all my might, stood smiling, frozen in time.
He looked like a proud father, with his hands around the much smaller man I only saw in pictures Cillian sent me. Nikolai Aster stood there, hugging a guy that was my age, smiling at the camera as if he wasn’t the boogeyman we all feared over the years.
But even a boogeyman wasn’t immortal, and if I could’ve, I would’ve dragged him out of hell and back, just to hear him scream one more time. Just to see the fear in his eyes as the tip of my knife pressed to his skin, when he realized that I was no longer the little girl he could manipulate.
I used to be nothing more than a puppet for his sick, fucking games, and I was naïve enough to think that anything I ever did would be enough for him.
All I needed was love; just a dash of love, a dash of patience and maybe a little bit of softness, but he didn’t know how to give that. At least not to me and not to my siblings.
But he knew how to shower Vincent Brown with everything he ever failed to give us.
I stood up and walked toward the picture, my body already knowing what I needed. I needed to see. I needed to make sure before I did what I was about to do.
But when my eyes zeroed in on Vincent’s, I could see that there was no resemblance, not even a little bit. He wasn’t Nikolai’s son, or my brother, but he was something.
He was someone my father loved more than he loved me. I could see it in the way his hand squeezed Vincent’s shoulder. I could see it in the proud, honest smile Nikolai wore—he was beaming, and I wanted to know why.
What was it that this scrawny little kid with glasses had that I didn’t?
And what was it that made this kid hate me enough to lead my father back to me, when all I wanted was to be left alone?
My finger traced over the glass protecting the picture, and before I could stop myself, my hand wrapped into a fist, and with all my might, I smashed against the glass, letting it fall down over the fireplace, and all the way to the floor.
Wet, hot blood ran down my arm from the cuts on the side of my hand, but the pain never registered. I pulled out the knife I kept strapped to my boot and pressed the tip into the throat of the man I used to call father.
But he never deserved that title.
He never deserved anything from me, yet I gave and gave and gave until there was nothing else to give. Underneath all my hatred toward him, there used to be a seventeen-year-old Ophelia, still hoping that her father wasn’t the monster she saw that night.
