Chapter 2 - Selene
The past two months have been hell. The past five years have been hell.
Far worse than the last two months, actually.
But I am so tired today that I can hardly string a thought together.
My beautiful babies, Solenne and Arron, have been so amazingly patient during the last two months.
At five years old, they are far too young to worry about things, but I know they worry about me.
And it’s getting harder to hide my exhaustion and my fear from them.
Fear that follows me everywhere with the need to be vigilant at every corner, every store, in every moment of every day… my father could come from anywhere. And I know he has men tracking us. I haven’t seen them yet, but I can feel them. Their eyes are always on us.
That’s why we have to keep moving. Motel to motel, staying hidden, staying free. We have to keep this up long enough for me to find a way out of the country that he can’t trace.
“Mommy, can we have cookies?” Arron asks, drawing my attention as he steals a quick glance over his shoulder at his sister, who has clearly instigated the question. She shoos him forward, encouraging him.
“For breakfast?” he adds, as though it’s important.
“Cookies for breakfast?” I smile, trying to make my voice sound lighthearted and happy. It feels like every smile I have lately is fake. I’m so tired I feel it in my bones.
I look around the motel room, taking it in. Bare, bland, and beige. It’s boring and horrible. The curtains are drawn to keep us hidden, and it’s dark in here despite the beautiful sunny morning outside.
“How about… we go to the park instead?” I ask, thinking that I can’t keep them locked away like this. They need sun, they need a break. They need to have some genuine fun for a moment.
“Really?” Solenne pushes past her brother, grabbing my hand and staring at me with as serious a gaze as she can muster. Her caramel eyes, just like her brothers’, still make my heart stammer sometimes. Sometimes—when they remind me of Simon. All the time. Every day.
“Yes, really. Go get your shoes on. You too, Arron. Maybe we can get cookies on the way home.”
Both of them leap into action, laughing and climbing over the beds in search of their socks and shoes.
It breaks my heart that this is the first time in their lives that they can laugh loudly without me having to hush them for fear of it bothering my father.
For five years, he has ruled our lives, ruled every movement and every choice I made. He controlled me and held me prisoner in a place that was supposed to be a home.
My father is a Bratva man, but many people have no idea.
He isn’t the conventional mafia man who makes a splash by being well known and powerful; instead, he prefers to move quietly and under the radar.
His entire business was built around providing untraceable services to other Bratva families.
Services to make things, people, or problems disappear.
And he happens to be very good at it. He can move anything anywhere, and no one will know if he doesn’t want them to.
He can make it so that a person is living right under your nose, and you won’t know they exist.
He made me disappear. He turned me into a ghost. Apt, considering that when people whisper about my father, they don’t talk about Alek Mykros. They talk about The Ghost.
He’s my father, my family, but I hate him.
He was never an easy man to be around, but when my mother died, he seemed to become darker, colder, and less caring than ever before.
Perhaps in a way, she was the thread of good that made him seem softer, but when she was gone, he was broken and free to be himself. I was young when she died, twelve years old.
The entire home changed. My older brothers changed.
Vasya, Bogdan, Yaroslav, and Yakov all became his puppets.
Pawns to be carved into whatever he wanted them to be.
And they didn’t know any better. They obeyed without question because questions earned your punishment.
Painful, bruising, bleeding, starving punishment.
As his only daughter, I was not exempt from such punishment and also learned to obey without question.
That was until I met Simon. I was twenty. Young. Naive in some ways, but full of curiosity for a world I felt I didn’t know enough about. I was frustrated with my father, but at that point in my life, he hadn’t broken me. I still had dreams and hopes and ideas.
And I had Simon.
I met him by chance at a coffee shop. We connected right away, and for six months, he was my entire world.
My everything. He told me his name, and I recognized it right away.
Volkov. A prominent mafia family in the city.
Powerful, more powerful than my father, and one of our rivals.
Instinctively, I gave him my mother’s maiden name instead of the Mykros name.
It wasn’t meant as a lie. It was my first step towards leaving my father, leaving the name, the misery…
I wanted to be someone else with Simon; finally, I could be.
I would argue with my father at home and then escape to see Simon, and he would make me forget everything bad that had ever happened to me. With him like was perfect. He was my home. My home in a way I had never experienced before.
Simon looked at me as though he truly saw me. We laughed for hours, we talked for hours, and we could be silent for hours, just lying in each other’s arms.
I wanted to give him everything of me, and I wanted him to be my life.
I think he felt the same. But when I think about it now, I might have been naive. Not that it matters anymore, it’s in the past, and I can never have him back. Even though he still owns my heart to this day.
I arrived at my father’s house late one evening, and he was waiting for me; his hand shoved into his pocket, a drink to his lips. I could see the look in his eyes. The look that warned me pain was close by.
“Dad?” I said cautiously.
“Simon Volkov,” he replied, and it had made my stomach drop.
He’d found out. And he told me that I had only one choice after betraying our family and dating one of our enemies.
I had to make it up to him by spying on the Volkovs.
I was too terrified to say no. If I said no, he made it clear I would never see Simon again, and I needed him. I needed him so badly.
I kept dating him for a week, but every day of that week, I was weighed down with guilt and fear.
I never told my father anything about his family. I couldn’t betray him that way.
I decided, instead, to tell Simon who my father was and what he wanted me to do.
But before that happened, as life does, something else got in the way of my plans.
I found out I was pregnant.
And so did my father. Back then, I didn’t realize how carefully he stalked me, how he watched my every move. He had the discarded pregnancy test in his hand when I got home one morning. He held it up and smiled at me in that terrifying way that made my blood run cold. “A Volkov baby?” he snarled.
That night, he made it clear—he owned my children, and he owned me. And if I didn’t spy on Simon’s family, he would take my children from me. He would do things that I don’t even want to think about.
I still couldn’t bear to spy on Simon, to betray him, so I broke up with him.
It was over the phone because I couldn’t look into his eyes when I said the words.
I couldn’t hold myself together and manage that.
Leaving him was the only way I could see out of the mess.
I could keep my children safe; I could no longer be used as a spy…
To my surprise, my father didn’t even get angry when I told him I’d left Simon. I expected so much anger. But instead, he helped me vanish. He turned me into a ghost.
For five years, he locked me in his home, a prisoner, disregarded, mistreated, and abused.
I put up with it every day as long as he didn’t lay a hand on my children.
I had nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. He controlled everything.
I would hush the kids, keep them out of his way, and try to make the most of our time together.
But it was hell. And I know they felt it, even as I tried to protect them from it.
Then two months ago, everything changed. I overheard something that forced me to make a decision that led me to be hiding in a motel today.
My father was in his study talking to Bogdan, my oldest brother. “Their alliance with the Nikolais makes them more valuable than before.”
“And the blood connection those children have with the Volkovs means that we can control the Volkovs.” My brother’s voice carried a hint of excitement as he discussed my children, just as my father often did—as useful items. Tools. Bargaining chips to use in business deals.
“The Nikolais are the strongest Bratva family we’ve ever come across,” Bogdan had said.
“Yes, and the Volkovs will soon be as powerful as them now that they are allied.”
“We need to move now, while the alliance is still relatively new. We need to do this now,” my father had said.
And I knew I couldn’t stay in that house for one more moment. I had to take my children and leave.
With a handful of cash, barely enough to survive four months, I took my babies and I ran. And ever since then, I have been running and living in fear that my father will find us and drag us back to his house.
“We ready!” Solenne declares, showing me that they both have their shoes on.
“Alright, let’s go then. It’s not far to the park; we can catch a taxi. But remember the rules?” I say carefully.
“Always listen. Run if Mommy says run.” Arron knows the rules better than Solenne. She is more carefree than him, less aware of things. I trust, though, that in the moment, he will take care of her as best he can.
“Good. Let’s go.” I grab my backpack, filled with our passports and our cash, and sling it over my shoulder. With the way my father is, I have no idea when he will attack or find us, and I always have to be ready.
Solenne is screaming happily as I push the swings higher, watching her blonde hair stream behind her as she kicks her feet up, trying to go faster. Arron is up on the jungle gym, playing on the monkey bars. I keep looking from one to the other, making sure they are both safe.
And at some point, my eyes fall onto a tall man, taller than anyone here, with wide shoulders and a thick neck, his back facing me.
His blonde hair catches the sun.
My heart stops cold in my chest, and I stop pushing Solenne. My body is screaming danger, and my mind is screaming that it’s not possible. It can’t possibly be Simon.
He turns to the side, talking to a little girl, helping her unwrap a chocolate. Nausea floods me as the panic gets worse. It is Simon. My Simon. And I can’t let him see me.
I can’t let him see me for the same reason I didn’t go running straight to him when we escaped my father—because it’s the first place my father would look.
“Solenne, get off the swing,” I demand. “Arron, I need you here,” I call over my shoulder as I move to grab the backpack at my feet and slip it over my shoulder.
“Mommy,” Solenne protests.
“Solenne,” I stay sternly, and she catches the familiar warning in my voice. The way I used to tell them to leave the room with one word when I could hear my father coming.
Solenne jumps off the swing and runs to my side. I take her delicate little wrist in my hand, ready to turn and escape along the back pathway that leads through the trees.
But as I look up, I look straight into his eyes.
And my heart sinks to the pit of my stomach.
Simon. He has changed. He looks harder. His expression is distant and walled. He is still the most gorgeous man I have ever set my eyes on, but his eyes don’t hold any of the warmth I remember in them. I can feel my palms beginning to sweat.
My Simon. The man I loved more than anything.
We stare at each other for a long moment. His face is one of absolute shock. His eyes drift from me to the children, and my heart races three times as fast. I know how obvious it is. I know how much they look like him.
I see it the second he understands. The moment reality hits him. His body seems to slump, then straighten in a matter of seconds. His lips part, and his caramel eyes shoot wide.
This morning, when we came to the park, I had a million thoughts on my mind, but seeing Simon was not one of them.
“We need to go,” I whisper to Arron. “Don’t let go of my hand,” I tell them both.
“Mommy, who is that man?” Arron asks nervously.
“It’s… It’s someone I used to know a long time ago,” I say weakly, hating that I have to lie to him. Hating that my son is looking right at his father, and he doesn’t know it.