Page 6 of Kadra: The Unfeeling

“What is your name?” His deep voice stops me dead in my tracks. His tone sounds detached and bored, yet firm and commanding.

Looking over my shoulder, I spotted him looking at my backpack where I just shoved my copy of The Iliad with curiosity.

I don’t know why I told him. Maybe it’s the fact that for the first time in forever, someone looked at me as if I were a person and not someone’s property. “Kadra.” I give him that. Just my name. Not my last name. That one is dirty and comes with a lot of pain and heartache.

“You like wars, Kadra?” he asks, looking down at his gloved hands now.

What an odd question.

Frowning, I think about it for a second. Yes, I’ve been fascinated by them but that’s it. Just fascination. Wars in our world are typically fought and won by men and women are only caught in the middle.

My eyes darted to him when I asked suspiciously. “Why?”

“That’s how you get rid of your monster. You start wars, shatter empires, and by the end… You ruin their legacy.” He doesn’t wait for me to digest his words which play through my mind in a loop. Instead, he turns around, giving me his back.

“Wait!” I ran after him and touched his gloved hand, stopping him.

“Why do you wear gloves?” I asked him for some reason I didn’t want him to leave.

“Humans are filthy.” That is all he gives and it’s more than enough. “Raise hell, kotyonok.”

Kty-oh-what? I make a point to look up what the Russian word means when I get home.

“Goodbye…” I watch as he slowly disappears between the burial plots and I realize that he never told me his name and I forgot to ask.

But then the man with the storm in his eyes and the aura of an angry god says over his shoulder, “Mikhail.” Then he disappeared as if he wasn’t here to begin with as if my chaotic mind made him up.

Mikhail.

His name.

That day changed me.

It made me look at the world differently than I did before.

It doesn’t escape me how he not once made fun of me for my oddities and not once did he make me feel inferior. He talked to me as if I were the same as him.

For just a moment I didn’t feel so lost, angry, or hurt.

I felt like somehow our encounter in the middle of a cemetery during a rainy day was meant to be.

Sadly, I wouldn’t feel the same way again.

Not until a year later.

When we were not the same.

Because the darkness within spread and so did the hate in my soul, even then Mikhail’s words stayed with me as the years passed. Giving me a new purpose. Conquer, shatter, and ruin everything that means something to the Parisi family.

Everything that played a role in my and my sisters’ pain and misery.

Piece by piece my father’s empire will fall to my feet even if it costs me my life.

Even if I must bleed for it to happen.

It will fall.

Now

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