Page 135 of Kadra: The Unfeeling

Taking a deep breath, I do as he says.

I inhale and exhale.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I hold my hand over my chest and feel my heart beating. Even when the world is falling apart, it still beats for him.

I keep inhaling and exhaling until my pulse slows and once I’m calm, I slowly open my eyes and meet angry and sad ones. When our eyes lock, I find my answer to what I need to do for me to free myself from this never-ending turmoil. I realize what I need to do for them.

For my family.

My imperfectly perfect family.

My gaze travels from the man that I love more than life to the little life that made me believe in love again. His son. My Azariel. Vitali is holding Azariel’s hand while my little warrior looks at me with that empty expression that cuts me more than any knife could. Looking at Azariel and no one else, I bent over and picked up the gun Vitali dropped the moment we made it outside the building. “You, Azariel, don’t deserve to live in a world where scum like him are still breathing. I’ll make sure you can breathe. That you’re always safe. Always. Just… trust me.” I plead with my eyes, hoping he forgives me.

I don’t want him to grow up always looking over his shoulders wondering if that day will be the day tragedy will fall upon his life because of a deranged man. I want him to be free and he nor I will ever be truly free if I don’t make sure Logan Beauregard is burning in hell.

Azariel doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink.

I put him in danger.

I did that.

Pain like I never felt before consumes me as I watch my boy looking off to the distance as if he’s somewhere far from here. This morning he was full of life and now he’s here but not really.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Vitali’s gravelly voice breaks me from my thoughts, and my eyes snap to his face.

Oh, how I love that face.

Those eyes.

His smile.

How many times have those eyes kept me from drowning? I don’t remember a time when I didn’t see his eyes saving me when darkness came for me. My Russian. It has always been you.

Some say the devil was once an angel who fell from grace because of his corrupted desires and wicked greed. Others believe he fell because he lost faith in humanity. I think it was both. Both light and darkness. Because just like light can’t exist without the dark, good can’t survive without evil. God knew this. He also knew his favored angel couldn’t remain in paradise while his heart never belonged in the light from the start.

It belonged to the shadows.

He knew this, just like I know the dried organ inside my chest never had a place in the light.

I wasn’t always like this.

I did have a heart that once thrummed with purpose but life managed to corrupt it like it does everything else, everything that is good.

I am darkness. The chaos around us proves it.

This is who I’ll always be.

Always the dark cloud, never the sunny day.

No matter what the man currently standing in front of me with betrayal written on his handsome and cold face chooses to believe.

He knows as well as I do that this was always meant to end like this.

Holding my head high, I look at him and only him. Only ever him. “I can’t go on with life like this, Vitali.” My grip on the item that will end my torment tightens as I try my best to harden my heart while facing one of the two people who can pull me back from the edge. The man who became my light in the dark. My salvation and my faith. “I can’t…” My voice breaks in the end, my throat feels raw. “This has to end.”

I have to make sure that bastard is dead. That he can’t hurt us again.

Vitali knows I’m right. I can’t go on through life just existing and never truly leaving too stuck in the past to embrace a future with him. I no longer want to wake up each morning and wonder what could have been if darkness never touched me. I don’t want to fight every waking moment of the day trying to keep myself afloat. I only desire to put an end to this once and for all. Only then will I be free.

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