Chapter 5

“I tried to forget her
like smoke forgets the fire,
But every breath I take
still burns.”

One Month later…

Nathan’s POV

I’d gone through four pens this week. Not because I had anything worth writing, but just because the ink felt more honest than my mouth ever did.

The notebook under my palm was stained, smudged, and frayed at the corners. It used to be my most prized possession. Not anymore. Over the past month, every page started to feel the same. The words blurred, verbs and verses collapsing into each other, consonants kissing vowels in ways I didn’t intend.

The alphabet started to rot in my hands, each letter unraveling into the next, until language became useless.

Because no matter what I wrote, every line, every letter, every inked whisper, it all circled back. Looped inward. Curved like a blade. Until all twenty-six letters bent at the spine just to spell five letters. Her name. That’s all.

The notebook sat in my lap now, it was almost like…her in pieces. It was like…me pretending not to look for them.

The tip of my pen scratched across the paper, moving still, relentlessly, to silence the voices in my head…until the doorbell rang.

My head shot up, and everything in me froze. For a very long second, I held my breath, not because I cared who it was, but in the fleeting moment, I thought maybe it was her.

That was the worst part of it all, not me hoping she’d come back, asking for me. It was knowing that if she did, I was more than ready to ruin her all over again.

I shoved the notebook shut and stood slowly, having no care for whoever stood behind that door.

The bell rang again, longer this time. In some way, it even sounded louder.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” I muttered as I walked to the door, my voice raw, hoarse with sleep and leftover rage.

I opened the door just as he rang the bell for the millionth time. His hand paused mid-air when his eyes fell on mine. My jaw tightened at his sight, as if I needed him, out of all people, and now, out of all the days.

A huff of breath pushed past my lips, “So, it’s you,” I mumbled, my tone anything but welcoming.

Nikolas’s eyebrow raised, “Well, hello to you, too,” He said, not an ounce of enthusiasm in his tone. Classic him.

Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped past me into my house, almost like we were long-lost buddies, almost like I had time for him, almost like I wasn’t planning his death only months ago. Why is he here again?

I didn’t move right away. I just stared outside, deeply fucking annoyed. “Yeah, sure, sure—come right in. It’s not like I have better things to do…” I grumbled and slammed the door shut.

He walked in like he’d done it a hundred times before. I followed him with slow, quiet movements, glaring at his back and wishing him into non-existence. Every step he took felt like an invasion I hadn’t agreed to.

Nikolas didn’t say a word, but I saw the way his eyes scanned everything. Like he was collecting evidence, like I was the crime scene.

He noticed the closed curtains. Light, hated that shit. He saw the discarded bottle near the couch. The empty glass on the stand, still smudged with fingerprints and apathy. The medicine pill bottle tipped on its side like it had given up halfway through trying to help.

I watched his jaw tense when he noticed that one. Then his gaze landed, it stuck, actually, on the notebook. It sat crooked on the couch, spine cracked, pages stained, bleeding ink of smudged words and obsessions.

He sat down on one of the couches, casually pulling out his phone and glancing at the screen, as if to give me the illusion that he didn’t discern every little detail around him, and every little detail about me. I could read him so well. Of course, I did, I spent half of my life studying all there is about him.

I knew him all too well.

He pushed his phone back into his pocket, his eyes landing on me as I settled back in my seat, removing my notebook and resting it aside.

“Where have you been?” He asked. Right into the subject.

I shrugged, “Around.”

His eyebrow raised, sensing that I would dodge every question, “We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Yeah. That was kind of the point.”

His voice stayed even. “Ronald said you aren’t returning his calls.”

I shrugged, “He is so clingy. I don’t do clingy.” I reached for the glass and tipped it slightly, watching the last bit of amber swirl before I brought it to my lips and drank it.

Nikolas’s jaw ticked. He hated my attitude, almost as much as I loved giving it to him.

“Natalie asked if you’d drop by for dinner,” he added.

I shook my head, “Can’t. Been on a…special diet lately.”

Nikolas’s eyes fell on the discarded liquor bottle on the ground, and he nodded, “So, I’ve noticed.”

I stayed silent. I was getting more annoyed by his presence as the seconds ticked by.

He huffed out a loud breath and leaned forward. “Where have you been, Nathan?”

He was demanding an answer, now. There was that quiet edge of authority I never asked for. I didn’t like that. No one interfered in my shit all my life, who does he think himself?

I stared at him, long and hard, then let the smile crawl back onto my face, “Why? You gonna ground me?”

He exhaled slowly. “You can’t just disappear like this.”

“Sure, I can.”

“You can’t—”

I cut him off with a tilt of my head. “I don’t recall owing you explanations, Nikolas.”

He sat up straighter. “Actually, you do.”

I chuckled. “Nope.” I met his eyes, and let the poison in mine show. “You’re not my father,” I added in mockery, “You’re not my brother.” Even though we shared a father, technically, not biologically.

I leaned forward, my smile sharpened. “You’re just the guy who married…my sister, the sister that I don’t really know, so maybe let’s not pretend we’re more than whatever the hell that makes us.” I smiled, ever so innocently, “Let’s keep our relationship there, let’s not get comfortable. Let’s not play house, Nikolas.”

He didn’t speak right away, and he didn’t blink. He just held my gaze with his, for a very fucking long moment, like he was trying to drown me without touching me. The silence stretched until it tasted like metal in my mouth. I looked away first.

But I could feel his eyes on me still, and I shifted in my seat. God, I hated it when he did that, like…like he could see through me, like he is able to catch that wild dark thing that roams my head day and night, like he knows how to make him tremble, like he knows how to shut him up. Or worse, how to make him listen.

“Where have you been, Nathan?” There was a finality in his voice that I couldn’t fucking fight.

Well, like they say, the third time he asks is a charm. I looked at him, “At work.” Maybe lying would shut him up.

He shook his head, “I asked around. They said you haven’t stepped foot in the office for over two months.”

I take it back, he is the clingy one, not Ronald.

“Perks of having a trust fund that could end world hunger,” I said. The company was the least of my worries. Working is optional when your father’s ghost keeps writing the checks.

“Yeah, Isaac’s money?” He taunted, pushing me to the edge. I want to hit him.

My jaw ticked. “You do know that I have a life, right?” I checked with him, “I mean, other than planning to kill you, I did have other interests, hobbies, and whatnot.” My smile widened. “Ask Lilly, we played tennis the other day.”

He nodded his head, and he stopped asking, maybe he finally gave up. Or maybe, he found his answer and didn’t like it.

Either way, I couldn’t stay in that space with him, not with his holy-fucking-discerning stare trying to peel me open like some sad goddamn fruit.

I stood up from my seat with a loud huff and started to walk away, hoping he’d take the message and leave me be.

“Where are you going?” His voice followed me, so casual, like we were fucking roommates, like I wasn’t seconds from losing it.

I turned fast. My chest was on fire. “To the bathroom,” I snapped. “Or do I need a hall pass for that, too?”

He lifted a hand in fake surrender. “Be my guest.”

Fucking asshole.

I slammed the door behind me, hard enough to shake the frame. I turned on the faucet and splashed water on my face like it could douse the heat under my skin. I tried to breathe. In. Out. In again.

I don’t like getting angry. When I do, I stop being me, and I already don’t know who the hell that is most days.

I tried to gather myself, and when I came back out, half-wet towel in my hand, I froze.

Nikolas wasn’t sitting anymore. No, he was standing right next to the couch where I’d left my notebook.

It was open. One page facing up. My handwriting was exposed like an open wound.

My body moved before I could stop it. I stormed forward, shoulder slamming into his arm as I yanked the notebook from beneath his hand.

“Hey!” I snapped. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

My voice cracked at the edges, my rage taking over, “Ever heard of privacy? Or are boundaries not part of your saintly parenting handbook?” I snapped, “You don’t go through people’s diaries.”

Nikolas’s gaze stayed calm, so fucking calm I wanted to break something beautiful across his jaw. He shook his head, “It’s not a diary.”

That made it worse somehow.

Because it wasn’t, it was worse than a diary. It was a confession. Ramblings. A bleeding pulpit. The kind of pages you fill when your hands won’t stop shaking and you’re too fucked up to scream. It was the voice in my head given ink. The monster I never named, spelling itself out in metaphors.

It wasn’t something I wrote to remember. It was something I wrote so I could survive forgetting.

When he looked at me again, it wasn’t anger, it was more like a realization, like he’d finally pieced something together I didn’t even know was missing.

I felt naked, and believe me, not in the way I liked.

My eyes dropped to the page he was reading, and my own words glared back at me…

“I didn’t replace her.
I replaced the silence she used to fill.
With ash. With ink. With the sound of my lungs cracking like old floorboards.

I walked streets at 3 AM like they owed me answers.
Picked fights with shadows just to feel bruised again.

I wrote her name in cigarette burns on the backs of napkins I never threw away.
I rewrote every poem I said wasn’t about her,
and they all bled the same.

I let my phone die.
Let my body rot a little.
Let my chest get too quiet just to see if anything screamed back.

I didn’t chase her.
I kept my word.

But the madness?
That stayed.
Screamed.
Multiplied.
It crawled into my ribs and called itself home.

And I still don’t miss her.
I miss the noise she made in the silence.
I miss the damage.
I miss the distraction.
I miss not hearing myself think.

I don’t miss her.

I just hate
the space
where she
was.“

I slammed the notebook shut, harder than I meant to, and let it fall onto the couch. My jaw clenched as I faced Nikolas again. He didn’t ask, he didn’t utter a single word, and that was the only reason I didn’t break something.

He waited for a beat, then said, “Anyway…” his voice was still neutral, “I didn’t come here just for this,” he elaborated, referring to questioning my life choices, “I have an offer.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, and my eyebrow raised, “An offer?”

He nodded his head and slipped his hand into his pocket. “Yeah, Emma called, she’s tying up some loose ends around here. Nothing major, really. Usually, I would send one of my men, but…” The pause was deliberate on his side. He saw the way my expression changed, and his mouth twitched. Just a little. “But this time, I thought you might want in.”

The grin that cut across my face was immediate, honest in the worst way. “Yeah,” I breathed, “I fucking do.”

Forget looking for a release, or chasing a high, forget scribbling poems like I was trying to bleed out the ghosts. This was pure gold. This…was the kind of high I hadn’t touched in some time. This was a purpose. The kind of thing I was born for. Or bred for. Or broken for.

Isaac used to whisper it into my ears like a prophecy, day after day. That I was meant to be part of this. That I was made for this, born to lead, and to rule.

I stopped believing that when I realized he was the devil wearing a father’s face, but the itch? The hunger? That never left.

Nikolas tried to hide his smile, his eyebrow raised, “That’s all it took for the color to come back to your face?”

I leaned back and let my smile stretch wide. “Told you. I’m simple. Just give me something to burn.”

He exhaled through his nose, something between disbelief and acceptance, and pulled out his phone. His fingers tapped the screen. “I sent you the details. Be careful and tell me when it’s done.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.

I had fire again. Not in my hands, in my fucking bloodstream. Burning sweet. Burning loud. Things finally made sense again.

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

The water was still drying in my hair when I stepped into the garage, freshly showered and freshly stitched together. Clean on the outside, chaos humming beneath. Like rinsing off blood would make the bones feel less broken.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

I stepped into the garage, and the overhead light flickered once as my eyes fell onto my car; it gleamed in the corner. It was too clean for a dirty job like this, too loud, and obvious for such a mission.

My hand ghosted over the hood, but it didn’t purr for me. I changed my mind and turned around, heading for my bike. I haven’t been on it for a while. It waited for me in the shadows, matte black, brutal, and discreet. The kind of ride you take when you don’t want to be seen…just what I needed.

Helmet on. Keys in. Engine growling under me like it had teeth. And just like that, I was gone.

The city blurred ahead of me, headlights. Tail-lights. Ghosts…I picked up speed, split lanes like I was cutting through old memories, weaving between strangers and streetlights like maybe if I moved fast enough, the voices wouldn’t catch up.

The address Nikolas sent dropped me near the docks, a quiet industrial graveyard. It was too quiet for this side of the city.

I parked beside a rusted chain-link fence, pulled off my helmet, and kicked the stand down with a snap. The air was heavy with salt, metal, and something vaguely like blood.

My pulse was a war drum now, each step closer felt like turning up the volume on something buried inside my ribs.

The bunker was tucked into the concrete, with a cold steel door. No windows. One camera at the top.

I studied my surroundings, taking note of everything before I stepped in.

The job was simple, stupid simple. Something far beneath my skill set, but Nikolas tossed it my way like a bone to a rabid dog. To give me purpose, something, anything, a release, a distraction before I spiral again, or maybe to keep me from biting someone who didn’t deserve it.

All I had to do was roughen up one of the remaining men still bowing to Isaac’s ghost. Those stubborn bastards who believed loyalty to the dead was more noble than loyalty to the living.

What can I say, my father was a bastard, but he was good…so good he managed to stay alive in men’s minds long after his body turned to ash.

And going after his leftovers? It felt like spitting in his grave with brass knuckles on. This was like a gift, a ritual, a small fuck you to the devil who built me.

One day I’ll do it in person, sure, but for now, death keeps dodging me. Coward.

Still…if I keep playing with fire long enough, I’m bound to get the invitation.

In the middle of my thoughts, violent and half-formed and clawing their way through my skull, one sound sliced clean through. Not a voice. Not a word. It was the sound of heels clicking against the floor.

They echoed off cement and steel like gunshots wrapped in perfume. Click. Clack. Power. Intent disguised as elegance. A fucking warning dressed in red bottoms.

My hand twitched near my hip, where the knife always waited, my little loyal buddy. My reaction was mostly out of instinct; I was just curious to know who the hell thought it was smart to wear Louboutins into a concrete grave.

That’s when she stepped through the shadows like she’d been born from them.

I froze. It was Emma.

Her dark hair was slicked back, her face carved in ice. Her eyes were unreadable. Her shoulders squared like she didn’t walk…she conquered.

It took me only seconds to understand, maybe less even.

Her stare hit me like the wind before a storm, “Nathan,” she said, smooth as fuck, “We meet again.”

Her voice was calm, perfectly controlled, and still sounded like it was halfway through planning my autopsy.

My fingers fell from the knife. Not out of relief, just because I knew it wouldn’t save me.

“Didn’t think a mission this minor would pull you away from your throne,” I said, my tone casual, almost lazy.

But the air had shifted. My lungs felt tight.

Her lips curved into a smile. “When Nikolas told me he handed this one to you…” She moved forward, so very measured, and so fucking deadly. “I cleared my schedule.”

She didn’t stop until she was standing ten centimeters away. Ten centimeters from my goddamn judgment day.

I don’t get scared easily. But this woman, she doesn’t scare. She is the fear. My father warned me about her, warned me to be careful when I am near her…Well, he knew the monster he created.

I couldn’t help the way my eyes flickered over her face, noticing how age never touched her. No, it only made her sharper. She was still beautiful in the way knives and guns are, sleek, gleaming, and most dangerous when close.

She carried herself like a queen who never needed to raise her voice to start a war.

I admired her, really, almost as much as I was sure she was here for me.

The mission? Probably all a lie. The target? A ghost. This wasn’t an assignment. It was a trap.

“Are you here to kill me?” I asked, smiling, because smiling is what I do right before things go to hell.

Her grin widened, like she wanted me to ask that, “I’d love to.”

She exhaled dreamily like she was picturing it. “But my brother gives a shit about you… And I love my brother a little too much to hurt him like that.”

She brought her hand up and flexed her fingers, “That doesn’t mean,” she murmured, “I can’t have fun.”

And that was it.

Without a warning, in the split of a second, her fist slammed into my face so fast I didn’t register the pain until I tasted metal. It cracked against my cheekbone, sharply and with no wasted movement. God, she fought like someone who’d trained to kill gods.

My head whipped to the side, vision flashing white, but I didn’t fall. Not yet.

She followed it with a jab to my ribs, not a punch, a goddamn statement. My lungs stuttered, and my body folded. Pain lit me up when she targeted, on purpose, the scar of my surgery.

I stumbled back, and she came forward.

Another blow, it landed on my stomach this time. Then again, and again. She didn’t waste a breath. There was no emotion on her face, just fury executed with elegance.

She didn’t hit like a woman scorned, she hit like a soldier who remembered.

My body collapsed against the wall, then the floor. My knees gave in, and I dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, the burn on my chest unbearable.

I could’ve fought back. But, I didn’t.

Because this? This was what I’d been searching for all month. Not poetry. Not alcohol. Not a distraction. Punishment.

I could’ve picked fights in alleys and started brawls in bars, but none of them would hit me like this. None of them would know exactly where to aim.

She did.

She kicked me hard in the ribs, once, twice, each strike a punctuation mark on something I hadn’t written yet.

I groaned but didn’t curl up. I didn’t flinch. I welcomed it all with open arms.

Her heels landed again, square in my gut. I gagged. Coughed. Spat blood onto the concrete. It looked beautiful there, like something I could write poems about.

She grabbed my hair and yanked my head back so I was looking at her. Her face was still unreadable, so cold, except for her eyes.

Her eyes were on fire.

“Don’t think this makes us even,” she hissed. “You think just because Nikolas let you in, just because everyone else accepted you, that you’re forgiven?”

I didn’t say a word.

“I will never forgive you.” Her voice cracked, only this one time, and I knew why, and that made it worse.

“This,” she said, grasping tighter at the roots of my hair, “is for Noah.”

Then she slammed my head back down against the floor, hard enough to rattle the bones, hard enough to make the silence echo.

I didn’t black out. I didn’t scream in the pain that was eating me.

I just lay there, breath ragged, blood seeping between my teeth, and I thought: Finally.

Her heels clicked away, echoing down the corridor until the silence came back to sit with me like an old friend.

She didn’t look back. She didn’t even offer a threat. This? This was just…something she needed to do.

I didn’t move after she left. I didn’t try to.

I lay there, my face turned sideways on the cold ground, watching my blood pool like it was trying to draw constellations only I could see. Red galaxies. Crimson punctuation. A brutal little stanza smeared across the concrete. It was pain but dressed like art. And to someone like me…that was beautiful.

My lungs stuttered, and my ribs ached. Something cracked when I breathed too deeply. Good. Let it.

My arms stayed limp, my fingers twitchless, my legs heavy like the earth was claiming me early.

And I let it.

Because the truth is, I liked it here. In this stillness. In this ruin. Where nothing moved, and nothing expected me to either.

I closed my eyes. I rested my eyelids down, and without permission, without even a sound, the tears came.

Not because of what she did, or the physical pain that I felt, but for everything else.

For the mother I never got to know.
For the father, I did.
For the life, I built from scraps and ghosts.
For the voice in my head who never shuts up unless I’m bleeding.

It wasn’t a sob, no, just the quiet kind of crying that feels like you’re leaking from the inside out.

My face didn’t twist, and my mouth didn’t tremble. It was just silent, cold tears sliding from beneath closed eyelids, slow and stubborn, like even they were tired of being trapped with me.

I didn’t wipe them. I let them fall, let them soak into the floor, mixing with my blood.

I almost smiled. Because this? This was mine. The ache. The mess. The poetry of breaking.

This is where I made sense.

I didn’t count the minutes or the hours. Time blurred in the way ink does when it’s soaked in too much blood. When I finally opened my eyes again, they were dry.

My body groaned in protest as I finally moved. First, a twitch in my fingers. Then my forearm dragged across the floor, almost like it didn’t belong to me.

I turned slowly onto my side, breathing sharp and shallow. I tried to push my weight onto one elbow and nearly collapsed again. Everything screamed back at me. My ribs. My spine. The splitting pulse behind my eyes.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself up, inch by inch, until I stood on two feet. Crooked. Bent. But somehow still breathing.

I wiped the blood from my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt, smearing red across the fabric as I walked outside. The city lights buzzed in the far distance like nothing had happened. The world tilted slightly as I stepped toward the bike, but I didn’t falter.

I didn’t reach for the helmet this time, letting the wind take my thoughts, letting the speed blur out what I couldn’t.

I climbed on it, turned the key, felt the engine purr under me, and I rode into the night, into nothing in specific. Because when you’re built for ruin, there’s no such thing as destination.

I didn’t plan. I just moved, fast and recklessly, like I was chasing nothing and being chased by something worse.

I turned left, then right, then left again.

And somewhere between the wind screaming past my ears and the ache clawing up my ribs…I realized where I was.

Not because I meant to be there. But because my body, my fucked-up, bruised-up body, and brain had taken me to her.

The bike idled beneath me as I stared up at the building. I didn’t mean to come here, but pain has its own kind of compass, and apparently, mine pointed straight to the edge I swore I wouldn’t fall off again.

I was drugged on agony and muscle memory, and her.

I didn’t think. I parked and then walked forward. I slipped into the building. I pressed the elevator button with a bloody finger.

My chest tightened. Still, I walked. Still, I rang the bell. Still, I waited.

My breath stuttered in my throat when the seconds stretched, and then the door opened.

Aylin stood there, blinking like she’d been pulled out of sleep. Her blonde hair was loose, her face bare and flushed from sleep. A simple t-shirt and pajama shorts hanging off her sweet body.

She squinted at first. Her brows pinched. Then, her eyes widened. Her mouth parted slightly. Her pupils dragged across my face, “Nathan…what the hell—” Her voice came out hoarse, a mere whisper as she drank in my state.

She didn’t get to finish.

Because I stepped inside, not rushed or frantic. No, it was like I belonged here. Like she opened the door and invited damnation in.

Her bare feet padded backward as I moved forward, one slow step at a time. She didn’t stop me. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t want to.

My eyes locked on hers, still wide, still unreadable, “What happened to you?” She asked, and I fucking hated the worry in her voice, I loathed the concern in her eyes.

My jaw ticked, “Unless you want me to lose what little control I have left, don’t look at me like that.”

She blinked, her throat bobbed as she tried to comprehend, but I didn’t let her, I just grabbed her roughly, fast. My fingers dug into her waist like I needed to feel something real. Feel her.

God, on instinct, she melted into my touch, right into me, like she always fucking did, like she belonged there. I leaned in, crashing my mouth to hers. Hard. No prelude. Fuck, I almost whimpered as her taste invaded me, and my body almost collapsed.

My sweet addiction. My drug and my withdrawal.

I kissed her like it was the only goddamn thing left that could silence the noise in my head. Hard. Messy. Tongue and teeth, and pain. Breathless. Addicted. Obsessed…

My hands gripped her face, no longer gentle, not that I ever was with her. I was rough and desperate, like I was holding the edge of a cliff and didn’t know if I wanted to fall or drag her down with me.

She gasped into my mouth, she tried to breathe, but I didn’t let her.

When I finally pulled back, just barely, just enough, my forehead rested against hers. My hand came up, slid into her hair, and curled around the strands like a lifeline I’d snap in half.

“Why are you here?” She asked, looking up at me, and blinking her sweet eyes, in confusion, in shock, in defiance and in anger, mostly at herself, that she was letting me in again.

I didn’t answer her right away. My lips grazed her cheek, her jaw, her mouth again, kissing her like I’d die if I stopped. “I came because I was losing my mind…” another kiss, deeper now, “…and I figured if I was gonna shatter—”

My thumb dragged along her bottom lip, “…it might as well be at your hands.”

And fuck me, I meant it.

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

Author’s note:

Hello my crazy fam *hugs and kisses*

I plane to update a chapter weekly for this book. So, next chapter would be on 12.07.2025.

Please do vote, and leave your comments, tell me about your thoughts on Nathan.
And hang on tight, we are just starting *wink wink*

See ya next week 🙂