Chapter 2
AJLA
When I was seven years old, an organization came to our primary school to runa workshop on what to do in dangerous situations and how to react if we ended up in the middle of a shootout.
Well, let me tell you one thing—no one fucking told you how frozen you’d be as bullets ran over your head, or that you wouldn't even think about moving from the spot.
The movies lied to us, people. They. Fucking. Lied.
The people closest to the exit managed to escape out of the restaurant, but the rest of us?
The rest of us were huddled on the floor, shaking, crying, praying, begging for this shit to stop.
I couldn't even see who was shooting or what was happening, because somewhere between hitting the floor and guns blazing all around me, I ended up underneath the table covered by a massive table cloth, with just a little bit of space through which I could see a few other people in the similar position.
And that fucker I came here with was nowhere to be found. For a second,I thought he might’ve been shot when he simply disappeared. But when I tumbled down on the floor and didn’tt see him bleeding out and praying for Mimi, I knew he’d fucking ran away, leaving me there.
My phone was somewhere on the table, and while I liked to pretend I was a reincarnation of Lara Croft from time to time, there was no way in hell I was getting out of here any time soon. At least not until the police came.
And where were they anyway? Shooting like this in the middle of Redmont couldn't go unnoticed.
Granted, I'd only been living in the city for about a year, but someone must have called the police.
I wanted to be the brave soul that would get out of my little hiding place and grab my phone, but truth be told, I was scared shitless. And I didn't want to die.
God, I really, really didn't want to die.
I haven't told my mom I loved her. I haven't seen my grandma in two years, and I wanted to be there when my little sister got married.
I still wanted to adopt a dog or a cat. I wanted to feel loved.
I'd spent years of my life chasing my career, chasing these wild dreams of success, only to figure out that success was subjective.
What meant everything for one person meant nothing to another.
My position at Altay Inc. was amazing, and as a Director of Marketing and PR, I should've been happy.
Elated, even, that I got to live a life many dreamed of.
But I wasn't living. I was existing. Going through motions Subjecting my entire life to my job without looking over the fence to see that there were other things I could be focusing on.
In reality, I knew I was just trying to fill the void.
Because when you don't know where you belong anymore, you try to replace that hole in your chest with the next best thing.
And I? I didn't know where I belonged. I didn't even know what I wanted to do and whether this was the way my life was supposed to be.
My home country was now just a place where I was born and where I grew up, but it wasn't home anymore.
I felt like a tourist walking through the streets of my hometown, pretending I still knew what it felt like living there.
And I would always be a foreigner in this country too.
Not because people here tried to isolate me, but because I would never be one of them.
I would always be a girl from a small country in the Balkans, dreaming big and succeeding even when everyone told her she would fail.
But right now, this girl was just dreaming of getting the fuck out of here and surviving another day.
Then I’d go down to that shelter and adopt a cat, because if this was a sign from the universe, it was literally telling me to give up on men.
And I promised myself that if I got out of here without a bullet in my chest, I’d delete every dating app and become a nun.
Well, maybe not a nun. My relationship with religion wasn't exactly the best. But as close to the nun as one could get without having to practice.
My knees throbbed from the position I was in, but I didn't dare move. Even my breathing was as quiet as possible, though there were zero chances of anyone hearing me over all the screaming and ruckus happening outside my little table.
This was nice.
Safe.
No one could get me here.
"You're gonna be fine," I murmured to myself. "Just fine. They aren't here for you. You'll get the fuck out of here, go home, eat that burek you were eyeing before going on this damn date, and in a couple of days you’ll be laughing about this entire situation. Yeah. That's what you're going to do."
Or at least that's what I wanted to believe.
As if on cue, the shooting stopped, leaving behind the sounds of loud sobbing, screaming, and something that sounded way too much like someone puking, which I didn't even want to think about.
"You're fine, you're fine, you're—"
But I wasn't fine.
I was as far away from fine as it was possible to be, especially when long fingers appeared in my line of sight, pulling up the curtain the table cloth had become.
And then there were the eyes. Eyes I never thought I’d see again, attached to a face that belonged on a cover of some fashion magazine.
He appeared in front of me, making me breathless, dizzy and way too fucking scared to immediately realize that he wasn't looking at me like he wanted to eat me this time around.
No. The dark, mysterious stranger no longer had his mask on. And what I’d seen earlier had definitely been a mask.
The cold, harsh look he gave me when the darkness of those eyes collided with mine, sobered me instantly.
"Well, look who's been hiding here all this time.
" His voice felt like velvet on my skin, brushing over my bruised knees and my battered heart.
But it didn't take me long to realize what his words meant.
It didn't take a genius to hear the violence in his voice or the bitterness emanating from the eyes that were filled with heat not so long ago. "I finally found you, kitten."