chapter 13
Iselyn
I’m hiding under the counter, the gun in my hand.
My hands are shaking, my breaths coming in ragged gasps, sweat running down my back.
I point the gun toward the door, and then the door opens.
I shoot, the bullet hits a man in the head.
His dead eyes meet mine before he collapses.
The trembling in my hands increases. I’m suffocating. There is no air. My lungs are burning.
I force my eyes open, sit up straight, taking gulps of air, feeling my lungs on fire. I run my shaking hands over my face.
“No. I didn’t kill anyone.” I aimed for the stomach. Papa told me it’s the place that’s not life-threatening, it’s not even the heart. “I didn’t kill,” I mutter, breathing hard, holding my head in my hands.
“You didn’t kill anyone, Angel.”
My head jerks up at the voice. My hand reaches my neck, which I sprained from the sudden movement. Good God.
My eyes find him in the darkness. He is sitting on the couch. I can’t see him clearly, only the silhouette of his huge body.
I collect myself. “What are you doing here?” I ask in a tired snap.
He gets up from the couch and comes toward my bed. I’m too exhausted to fight him right now. Even if he decides to manhandle me, I won’t resist. But he simply sits on the edge of my bed, not too close, not too far. The darkness is still thick enough that I can’t see his face clearly.
“Keeping you company along with your nightmares,” he says in his usual cocky tone, though there’s an underlying tiredness in his voice.
“What time is it?”
“Past 2 a.m.,” he says.
“Why are you not in your bed?” The question leaves my lips before I can stop it.
“I like your worry for me.” I can’t see him, but I know too well he’s smiling now.
“I’m not worried,” I say quietly.
“Go back to sleep, Angel. You won’t see it again tonight.”
“How do you know?” I ask tiredly. I need sleep, but I can’t bear to see those images again.
“They don’t come after 3 a.m. if you are very tired and got woken up once,” he drawls.
“How do you know?” I ask again, unable to hide the concern in my voice. And I know he’s smiling again.
“I’ve got enough experience to know,” he says in a light tone.
In the darkness, I can only focus on his voice, his deep baritone, sometimes calm, sometimes teasing, sometimes cocky.
And tired. I’ve never seen him tired before.
I want to see how he looks when he’s tired.
He always looks regal, commanding, authoritative.
Matleon
I want to turn on the light to see her. She sounds concerned, is she also looking concerned?
I know how she looks when she’s concerned: a small frown on her smooth forehead, her lips pressed into a line, but not too hard, not like when she’s pissed.
I’ve seen that look on her face before, when she faced that Australian about to die. I want to see it for myself—lots of it.
But I can’t turn the lights on. I don’t want her to see me like this.
I know I’m not looking good, I never do when I haven’t slept enough for too many days.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t getting sleep because of worry.
I had been so fucking worried for the past week; every time I fell asleep, a horrible nightmare would wake me.
It’s also been a long time since I stopped seeing nightmares of any kind.
Today, the worry is over—she is here—but the lingering effect hasn’t died down.
The fear is still here, useless without any backing of logic.
I was afraid something might happen to her if I had gotten late tonight.
I wasn’t late, so there’s nothing to be afraid of, yet I’m still here.
Now I’ve become irrational, thanks to this woman, and I’m not ready to stop here.
I think I’ll soon reach the point of being completely illogical and irrational, dumber than Avi and Wen.
“Matleon,” she mutters my name this time without shouting or snapping. I smile; this one reaches not only my eyes but also my heart. Yeah, I’m quite a romantic person after two a.m.
“Yes, Angel,” I mutter back, lovingly. Romance is seeping out of me.
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. I guess it’s more difficult for her to accept my romance than it is for me to express it.
“When did you kill for the first time?” she asks.
“When I was sixteen years old.” It was the man my dad asked me to kill.
By then, I was completely trained to kill anyone, with my hands or with a gun.
“He was a traitor. My dad was interrogating him. I was with him. It wasn’t my first time seeing a man being tortured.
I had been witnessing that since I was twelve.
But that day, my dad handed me the gun and told me to finish him. ”
“And you shot him?”
I hum.
“Did you… did your hands shake?”
I pause for a moment, then hum again. I’ve never talked about this with anyone. Not even with my mom. She wanted to, but I refused.
Silence falls between us.
“Did you have nightmares after that?” she asks, breaking the silence with a whisper.
I hum. “For two weeks.”
“Then?”
“Then I killed another man.”
“And the nightmares stopped?” she asks quietly.
“I made myself understand that taking a life is not a big deal.”
“But that’s not true. Taking a life is a big deal.” Her voice drops even lower. “Did your heart believe that?”
“You can’t kill anyone without killing your heart, Angel,” I say slowly. “When you see someone in pain, you’re bound to feel it—unless you kill the part of yourself that can feel.” I take a long breath. I don’t like talking about these things.
She goes silent again. I hope she won’t ask more.
But she does.
“What do you feel now when you kill someone?”
“Nothing.”
“When you hurt someone?”
“Nothing.”
“When—”
I stop her. “I don’t feel empathy, sympathy, or anything of that sort for anyone, no matter how badly I hurt them or how miserable their condition is.” My voice hardens. “I stopped feeling all that a long time ago.” I sound pissed. And I am. I just hate this kind of conversation.
“Do you not feel empathy for your family as well?” she asks.
I sigh in frustration. “I like seeing my family happy. I don’t like seeing them sad. That’s it. And no more stupid questions, for God’s sake. Why the fuck are you even asking these, and why the bigger fuck am I even answering them?” I mutter the last part to myself.
“Yeah, right. It’s not like your feeling empathy—or not—affects my life. You can leave now. I need sleep, and it would be good if you don’t come into my room without my permission.” Now she’s sounding pissed.
I purse my lips. Why is she suddenly angry? She was asking those nonsensical questions, and when I pointed it out, she’s reacting like this.
I get up from her bed and leave the room. Frowning, analyzing the situation, I climb the stairs and reach my room. The first thing I do is start Yan.
“Hello, Matleon. How can I help you?”
“Listen, she was asking me stupid questions about how I felt when I killed someone for the first time, how I feel when I kill or hurt someone. ‘Do I not feel empathy for my family as well?’ I answer her despite getting irritated, and then she gets pissed when I asked her not to ask these stupid questions.”
“She has a valid reason to be upset.”
“And what’s that?”
“She was interested in knowing how you think and feel, and you told her not to ask. She was trying to have a heart-to-heart talk with you, and you were getting pissed about it. That tells her she is not important enough for you to open up in front of her.”
I frown. “What the hell are you talking about? How is this related to her being important?”
“It is. Normal humans think like that. And you’re claiming you want to marry her, but you don’t want her to peek into your heart. Now I’m curious, Matleon, why do you even want to marry her?”
“I want to marry her because she is mine.”
“Can you explain that?”
“No, I can’t, because it’s just that. She is mine, and she will live with me forever.”
“Do you love her?”
“Now again. You again with love.” I scoff. “A husband’s love is wanting to fuck his wife, keep her safe, and keep her away from other men. And I do love her in that sense—very much.”
“Love is more than that.”
“Like you know more than me. Shut the fuck up. If I wanted to talk about these stupid things, I would’ve done that with her. Now tell me, what should I do next time so she doesn’t get pissed like this?”
“Just answer her. If you tell her all the wrong things you’ve felt, all your emotional struggles, she’ll understand you better.”
I smile. “I could do that. I’ll tell her emotional stories next time, make her feel sorry for me.” I lie back on the bed, hands tucked beneath my head. “The thought of seeing that look on her face for me is… delightful. Imagine how much better the reality will be.”
“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t suggest you take advantage of it.”
“Quietly fuck off now,” I murmur, a smug smile playing on my lips.
“When do you want me to wake you up?”
“When she does.” Yan is under orders to watch her all the time. He summarizes all her activities whenever I want.
“Alright.” It goes silent.