Page 152 of Kadra: The Unfeeling

“Good girl. Always my good girl.” She kisses my hands so lovingly that it makes my own tears fall just as fast as hers.

I think I never cried this much, not even when I was a young child being hurt and neglected. Not even when my sisters get hurt.

But I cried now because my soul knows that this is the end. The end of my mother’s suffering and it’s all in my hands.

“Shhh…” I rock her gently as she would do me when I was a child.

I always knew my mother would one day leave this world either by my father’s hands or by her own but never would have imagined it would be my hands.

With a broken heart, and tears falling down my cheeks and onto my mother’s face, I pick up the bottle of pills, shake a few onto my hand, and then slip all of them between my mother’s cherry red lips before picking up the bottle of whiskey that she left on the floor and helping her drink the pills down.

Mom’s eyes close swiftly as if she were saying a silent prayer before opening them again. “I love you. That won’t ever change. I’ll love you until we meet again and until the end of time, Kadra. My Kadra.”

“Go to sleep, Mom. You’re free now.” I keep rocking her trying to save this memory in my brain so I never forget what I did tonight. Something on the floor next to the bottle of whiskey caught my eye. There’s a photo of my mom when she was younger with a man that I’ve never seen before. A man with the same skin color as me, eyes, and hair color. The man looks nothing like Gabriele with his long hair tied back in a low bun, ripped jeans, and black Gun and Roses shirt. In the photo the man has one arm wrapped around my mother and the other is holding a guitar close to his chest.

You look like him…

My eyes fall to my mother’s peaceful face and I whisper for the last time. “I love you too, Mom.” I kiss the top of her head, her sweet vanilla scent on my nose, a moment I won’t ever forget. “He won’t hurt you again. Fly high and free.”

She takes her last breath with a smile on her pretty face.

Crack.

My heart was never the same after that.

Nothing was.

* * *

My mother went to sleep that night and she never woke up again.

I set my mother free by giving her the one thing that managed to give her peace and what ultimately killed her. I carried that guilt with me for years until now. My mother was sick and even if she sought help and beat the addiction there was no way she was ever going to survive Gabriele. She wasn’t built like me and my sisters. She was too soft for this life and it ended up killing her.

The night I lost my mother was also the night I learned why my father hated me more than he did my sisters.

I wasn’t his.

I was the daughter of my mother’s first love.

A man with a poet’s soul and the lead singer of one of the most popular rock bands in history, Reign of Madness.

Reign Cross.

My biological father.

Looking down at the positive pregnancy test, calms settles over me as I think of him or her. The little life growing inside of me smiles because unlike me Vitali this child and Azariel will have a life filled with love, magic, and adventures. The life our parents should have done everything and more to give us.

I lovingly touch my flat stomach and whisper, “You are so loved little one. So loved and so wanted.”

“Thank you.” I’m startled when I feel Vitali’s hand on my neck caressing my skin lovingly. Raising my gaze, I look at him through the mirror as he stands behind me looking at the pregnancy test that now sits on the vanity. I reached up and took his hand in mine. We no longer wear our gloves. We don’t hide our scars from one another. We embrace them just like our love. “Thank you for this beautiful life we have.”

“I love you…” I breathe out just before he pulls out what seems like a gold necklace from

his black slacks and puts it on me with hunger, love, and possession shining in those gray orbs of his. Touching the chain, I see the letters K, A and V on it. Tears threatened to fall from my eyes.

The first letters of our names. Azariel, Vitali and mine.

Our eyes lock, love shining in mine matching the look he’s giving me. “Soon we’ll be adding another letter to the necklace,” he whispers before gently pulling my hair back and taking my lips in his.

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