Page 20 of King of Ashes
Now she’s my chaos.
“You remind me of her.” The words rush out before I realize my slip. Fuck.
“I don’t like being a replacement for your dead love.” Her eyes turn to slits, and she wriggles in my arms, struggling to escape, but I only tighten my grip on her.
“Aren’t I the same?” I arch a brow, a violent surge of jealousy spreading through me. Now I am fucking jealous of myself.
I am a realist—the only dream I had was her, and without a single doubt, I know it will end in catastrophe. One I don’t have the power to stop. I’d choose death over continuing to live without her.
A flush covers her cheeks, and she avoids looking at me.
I crave her eyes on me––those mesmerizing brown eyes that have captured my heart since the very first moment.
Through the hard facade, her vulnerability seeps through, giving me hope she feels safe with me. Everything between us is fragile. One wrong word or touch, and the dream before me will disintegrate.
“Something to drink?” I offer, and she slips from my hold, leaving me aching.
Approaching the living room bar, she observes every detail once more. It’s sleek and modern.
“It is tasteful but lacks a homey feeling. Why?”
This is not home, it’s a place I lived in your absence.
“Home has never been a place to me, but a person.”
She nods, hugging herself. No flicker of recognition flashes in her eyes, and I pour her a Merlot, knowing it’s her favorite, and myself a glass of whiskey.
“We should get to know each other better,” she says as we sip from our glasses.
We know everything about the other, but that was in the past. Not letting that thought deject me, I focus on the fact that I get a second chance with the love of my life. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I just became hardened by life.
“What do you want to know?” I ask, leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window.
She looks out the window. “How was your childhood?”
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “Great. I grew up in a loving household. Family was everything to my parents. And they instilled that deep sense of loyalty from the beginning. I adored my mother. I revered my father.”
In the same year, I lost all three. My mother from pancreatic cancer. My father, by a betrayal I didn’t see coming. And her right afterward.
As if she senses my pain, she palms my arm. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“No one can stop death.”
No, reminding me that there’s no absolute power a human can gain. We are born, we live if we’re lucky enough, and then death waits to snatch us—the circle of life I am helpless to influence. It is what it fucking is.
As if she can read that my thoughts are heading in a dark direction, she changes the topic. “Your cousin seems nice.”
I nod, remembering they used to be close. “Noemi is when she doesn’t make me want to pull my hair out.”
She giggles. “Be glad to have some family left.”
I am. My aunt and uncle quickly took over the role of parents. And my uncle is my underboss. There are no power struggles, just support, sometimes silent, sometimes loud. Without him, I doubt I would have become the man I am.
He took me aside and said, “If you allow despair to rule you, you will lose everything.”
With a crater burrowing into my heart, I stepped in and took the role entrusted to me by birth. Over time, it became the only rope I had to cling to.
“Why weren’t they at the wedding?”
