𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐃𝐎 𝐔𝐒 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 - 𝟏𝟖+

T W E N T Y - O N E

Trigger Warning: This chapter mentions suicide and has a depiction of it.

N I K O L A I
Seattle, USA
P A S T

She was dead. My wife was dead. I thought if I'd repeat it enough it'd make sense, however, I still couldn't bring myself to believe it. It didn't feel like she was gone. All of her clothes were still in our shared wardrobe, her makeup still cluttered the dresser, and her shoes still took an unreasonable amount of space in the closet.

Her perfume still lingered in every room of the penthouse we lived in.

She was everywhere, and yet she wasn't anywhere.

I didn't think my refusal to believe her death was denial. It was the rather suspicious conditions of her disappearance. I'd grown up with enough bloodshed to know how a crime scene didn't just disappear unless it had someone's hands on it. And this one had personal vendetta written all over it. I'd like to think it was because of me, however, that wasn't how the Bratva's enemies operated. They wouldn't have left me alive, or free, and above everything they would have made me the prime witness of Keira's suffering, not to mention neither of them knew about me.

I reckoned a part of me recognized this wasn't an ordinary situation, and if I had any chance to figure out what the fuck happened, I'd need to go to Chicago. Back to the haunted place dedushka liked to call my birthright. I didn't hate my grandfather, the Pakhan of the Chernov Bratva, I admired the man, I always had, but my mother's hatred for this life of violence had always kept me away. I'd ignored the hymn in my veins to take a plane and go up there because I knew if I ever went back to Chicago, I wouldn't be coming back. The call of it all was too strong, and I probably wouldn't have made this decision and gotten a ticket, but I knew I was no longer a man. I couldn't stay this way. Keira was my purpose, and now that she was gone, there was nothing I could do for answers unless I did what was expected of me, and took my place, even if it would kill me and everything I'd stood for once upon a time.

As I poured another shot for myself, throwing it down my throat, barely even registering the sting, my wedding band glinted on my finger like a painful reminder of the day she'd slid it over my finger, emerald eyes locked on mine, overflowing with happiness. I'd felt like I was the luckiest bastard alive, and even if it was just the two of us, I'd never felt the need for anyone. No friends. And any family I might've had on my wedding was dead, the ones that were alive, I wanted miles away from Keira.

To torture myself further, I reached for my phone and opened up the pictures I'd managed to take of hers over the years, some with me, some when she wasn't even aware I was taking them. I was scrolling through pictures aimlessly, my eyes glassy with tears until my hands stopped moving, and I dropped my phone in horror. I'd taken this mere minutes before it happened, and she seemed so happy, however, there was also this fear. Ironic how I hadn't noticed it that day, but now that I was looking at her through a screen, her lips stretched in the most beautiful smile that never reached her eyes, I was realising that something was amiss. And Keira knew it.

I'd wanted to drown then. I want to stop my heart from beating because the pain that ricocheted through me with every beat of it killed me. It was like chaos in my blood. A mortal sickness. As if every single breath I was taking was strained, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn't seem to get the air back in my lungs.

Now that I was drunk on the alcohol in my blood, and the pain in my very being, I realized that maybe Keira was a dream. A beautiful one. But a dream, and now it was time for me to wake up, but fuck, I didn't want to. I clawed at the emptiness inside me, the darkness that seemed to be seeping through, but nothing seemed to hold, and I kept slipping farther. My fingers shook as I reached to pour myself another drink, but I didn't register the shaking of my hands, or the tremble in my spine, all I cared about was chasing the bitter heaviness in my throat away, and maybe, just maybe, if I was drunk enough, I'd feel her kiss against my lips.