𝓐 𝓑𝓮𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓲𝓯𝓾𝓵 𝓣𝓱𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽

I barely remember my father. Most of what I know comes from the rare, fragile sentences my mother allowed herself to speak. She said they came from two different worlds—worlds never meant to collide. And despite everything, she loved him. She repeated that the most. He died when I was a child, too young to grasp death, old enough to remember its sound. I remember my mother’s screams more clearly than his face. As my brother Kilian grew older, something changed in her. A constant worry settled into her bones. She watched him like a storm forming on the horizon—inevitable, unstoppable. Kilian moved out early. Officially, for independence. I didn’t know that he was continuing our father’s legacy in silence, stepping into a role no one named aloud: the mafia boss's most trusted man. I visited him often. Kilian became my protector, the only person I trusted blindly. But there were things he never spoke of—the reasons he came and went at night, the scars multiplying across his skin, and the man whose voice I once heard drifting through the hallway. One evening, I saw him. Beneath a streetlamp, short black hair falling over his forehead, striking green eyes, a cigarette resting between amused lips, smoke curling like a secret. For the first time since my father’s death, something shifted inside me. I had just begun to accept the past when everything unraveled again. Kilian was in a car accident. My mother collapsed, as if time folded back on itself. Another man she loved, gone. Another scream I will never forget. I didn’t return home. I stayed in Kilian’s apartment, searching for truths he had kept from me. Flipping through a brittle photo album, I heard footsteps in the stairwell, a low, familiar voice—the stranger beneath the streetlamp. My heart stuttered. I rushed to the door. It felt cold beneath my palm. I opened it—and collided with him. Taller than I imagined. Broader. Stronger. A scar slashed across his forehead. Up close, the amusement was gone.