FORTY-NINE
Milan
PRESENT
I take a deep drag from my cigarette, the smoke forming into a hazy white veil. The burn in my throat helps me to calm my thoughts while I wait for my father.
The door opens, and Evan Shane steps into the office.
“You know smoking isn’t allowed in my office,” he says in greeting.
“Oh, yeah?” I take another drag, provocatively.
Evan sighs, shakes his head and settles into his desk chair.
He’s dressed, as always, in a tailored suit, with a neatly knotted tie and polished shoes.
“Why’d you call me here?”
It’s been a while since I last saw him – months, to be exact. Most of the time, he’s too busy to come home, and when he does, I’m not around. We mainly communicate through his secretary, but today, oddly enough, he wanted to speak to me directly.
“Have you started studying for your exams?”
I scoff. “Fuck the exams.”
He tenses his jaw. “Watch your language. We need to talk about college-”
I raise a hand, cutting him off. “College? Are you serious?”
Evan lets out a sigh, rubbing his forehead. “You need to start thinking about your future, son.”
I crush the cigarette in my hand. “How about we put my ‘future plans’ aside and talk about something more important, Father.”
His expression doesn’t change. “About what?”
“For instance, how you found out Kilian isn’t your son.”
He pauses, his somber gaze holding steady with mine. “So, you figured it out.”
“Don’t act so indifferent,” I hiss. “You knew for years that Kilian wasn’t your biological son, yet you pretended to be his father.”
Evan’s impassive expression falters. “Sit down, Milan.”
I remain standing with a clenched jaw, no intention of sitting.
His gaze drifts to a framed photo on his desk as he leans back in his chair. “Kilian was my son, regardless of whose blood ran through his veins.”
“Oh, really? And what about me? Do I have a different father too?”
His eyes darken, a shadow clouding his face. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Evan opens a drawer, takes out a cigarette, and lights it, despite having just told me that smoking is not allowed in his office.
“A week before he died, he asked me if it was true that I wasn’t his real father. I could have lied. Denied it. But I told him the truth.”
He takes a deep drag from the cigarette, his eyes fixed on the tiny ember. “I’ve never cared if he’s another man’s child or not. I gave him his name. I raised him. No matter who his real father is, Kilian was a Shane. He was just as much my son as you are.”
“Bullshit!” My patience snaps. “After he died, you had his death certificate faked. According to the media, he’s alive and well in California, going to college. And you’re still paying his phone bills. What’s wrong with you, Evan? Are you ashamed that he took his own life? Are you embarrassed?”
My father’s jaw tightens, the vein in his neck pulsing visibly with anger.
“You never cared about him, just like you don’t care about me. All that matters to you is your damn image, your precious status, and your fucking company. He took his life because he was suffering. You want to tell me you cared about him? Then why the hell didn’t you notice he was struggling?”
He stands abruptly from his desk, his chair creaking under the sudden movement. “Don’t twist my words.” His voice is calm but with a dangerous undertone.
“Do you really think I was ashamed that he took his own life?”
Evan shakes his head, a hint of regret flashing in his otherwise impenetrable eyes. “I wanted to protect his memory. I knew the news of his death would create a scandal. People would talk, judge him. Kilian’s death …” He pauses, his voice stifled. “It broke me. It still does.”
His confession catches me off guard.
I always saw Evan as an unyielding man – rigid and unbending. But now, it seems he’s revealing not his facade, but a piece of his true self.
As a child, I never understood why Kilian admired him so much. He was always stern, cold, never showing any warm emotions like affection.
But maybe Kilian saw something in him that was always hidden from me.
I believed my mother’s words. Every time she told me he had hit her and locked her up, my resentment toward him only grew.
And even after I learned through the letters that everything Melanie told me was a lie, I can’t help but be angry with him.
Because when I needed a father, he wasn’t there.
The sound of the basketball hitting the asphalt fills the air as we play in Shin’s backyard.
“Thanks, princess.” Damian winks at Shin’s baby sister, Rina, as she brings him a bottle of water. She giggles, blushes and runs back into the house.
“Stop flirting with my sister.”
“I was just saying thank you,” Damian defends himself, grinning. “What’s up, ShinShin? Jealous because I’m giving someone else attention? Aww. Don’t worry, I only have eyes for you.”
Shin throws the ball with exaggerated force. It bounces off the rim and jumps back over the yard. “Don’t ever fucking say that again.”
Today is a shitty day.
Just like every other day for the past few weeks.
I slump onto the dark gray outdoor sofa and take a cigarette from Damian’s pack on the table. The smoke burns my lungs, but the pain is a welcome feeling compared to the constant anger that’s been following me for weeks.
Snow drifts from the gray sky and settles on the cold, bare ground.
It’s December now, and the new year is approaching.
Weeks have passed since that night.
A month, a week, and three days since I last heard her voice, touched her and inhaled her scent.
Back then, when I watched her from the shadows, I didn’t know what it was like to hold her in my arms. Now it feels like torture to see her but not be able to touch her.
I notice every little thing she does. How her hair falls into her face, how she immerses herself in her tasks, and how her dimple appears when she laughs at something with Silver.
That fucking dimple.
My only Achilles’ heel.
She doesn’t know it, but she holds my life captive in that little hollow.
Sometimes I catch her glancing in my direction. But every time I notice her, she looks away so fast as if she hadn’t looked at me at all.
I want more, I need more. But she doesn’t want to stare at me.
And I feel like I’m going to die if she never looks at me again.
That day, I stormed off and left her behind. I was so fucking angry with her. Angry because she lied to me and held all the secrets of the past in her hands, refused to show them to me.
But by now, I don’t care about any of that or the letters.
She can tell me more lies if I can just hear her voice again.
“Someone’s grumpy again.” Damian pulls me out of my thoughts and sits down on the other couch in front of me.
My gaze glides over his bare torso.
How the hell does he manage to sit outside in December without his shirt?
Like me, he also has a scar on his body. A burn scar he got in a car accident when he was ten years old. I still remember him being in a coma for two months.
I was a damn kid when I thought I’d lose my best friend after my mom.
“Why are you in a bad mood this time?”
“I’m not in a bad mood.”
“Since Halloween, you’ve been more grumpy than usual. You look like you want to punch a wall.”
He’s right.
I really want to punch a wall. Or something else. Or someone.
Instead, I clench my jaw and refuse to look at him. Just like Aliya refuses to look at me.
Shin joins us and glances back and forth between us, confused.
“Let me guess,” Damian says when I don’t respond. “Servant has something to do with it, right?”
Both he and Shin have noticed the distance between Aliya and me. But they’ve been smart enough not to bring it up.
At least until now.
“Shut up,” I reply irritably.
“It’s obvious.” Damian leans back. “Why don’t you tell us what she did this time?”
I know Damian’s twisted nature.
And I know what he would do to her if I told him she kept letters from Kilian from me.
I’ll be damned if I let him near her.
“She didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you acting like a moody bastard?”
I exhale a cloud of smoke. “That’s between her and me. Stay out of it, D.”
“Between you and her, huh? So she did do something. Why don’t we punish her for it?”
His eyes light up in that sadistic way they always do when he’s planning to make someone’s life hell.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Why not?”
“Stop it.” From the corner of my eye, I see Shin give him a menacing look.
“You’re not touching her, Damian.” I make sure he hears the warning clear in my voice.
A small smirk plays on his lips. “Have you gone soft, Shane?”
The rage in me flares up, boiling like a volcano. I ball my fist, almost crushing the cigarette between my fingers.
He’s deliberately provoking me. He knows he’s hitting a nerve.
“Since when are you sulking after a slut? There are plenty of other pussies to fuck.”
My left eye twitches. That’s it.
A burning heat rushes through my veins like wildfire.
“I swear to God, Damian. If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll personally make you.”
Silence hangs in the air like a thick fog as his grin slowly fades.
I don’t make empty threats.
We all know that.
Shin, who has been watching us, breaks the tension. “That’s enough.”
After taking one last drag from my cigarette, I extinguish it in the ashtray on the couch’s armrest and stand up. “I’m out.”
I don’t want to hear another word from Damian today, otherwise I might do something really reckless.
“Milan-,” Shin calls after me, but I don’t look back.
“You like her.”
At those words, I stop.
A cold, calculating spark lights up in Damian’s eyes as I look at him. He leans back, balancing a cigarette between his fingers.
“You have feelings for her, don’t you?” His voice is calm, but his words are sharp like ice. “You desire her. You want her.”
It’s true.
I desire her.
I want her.
I need her.
Like doesn’t even begin to express how she consumes every thought, every desire, every breath I take.
I’m obsessed with her to the point where it’s literally consuming me.
But that’s none of his fucking business.
Without another word, I turn away, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a response.
But as I make my way toward the garden gate, his voice sounds out again.
“Just remember one thing, Shane. Having a weakness can be dangerous, especially when that weakness holds so many secrets.”